A little girl was crying and screaming: “Mommy, please, don’t leave me, take me with you!” Yet, Hope didn’t even look back and silently walked away.

 

We’ve all heard many stories about families adopting children from foster homes. Each story ends differently – some happily, where parents and child accept each other and live happily together, others not so much, where the parents may be overwhelmed by the huge responsibility.

For some time, my husband worked at a boarding school where parents brought their troubled children. There were cases when children were rehabilitated and returned to their families, but usually, they were all referred to foster homes.

The story I’m going to tell today, unfortunately, did not have a happy ending.

Hope, a very kind woman in her mid-forties, had been working at that boarding school for many years. She and her husband had an adult son, but she always dreamed of having a daughter. One day, a six-year-old girl was brought to the boarding school. She and Hope quickly developed a very warm relationship.

Little Sophia never left Hope’s side, tearfully said goodbye to her every evening, and joyfully greeted her every morning. All the employees said: “Hope, she is definitely your child!” Eventually, Hope decided to adopt Sophia, and her family was very supportive.

However, two weeks later, Hope returned Sophia because her husband had issued an ultimatum – it was either him and their son, or Sophia. Everyone at the boarding school was shocked: Hope, who adored children with all her heart, returned the girl back to the orphanage without any explanation!

All the employees, including my husband, were in tears. Sophia was crying and screaming: “Mommy, please, don’t leave me! Take me with you!” Yet, Hope didn’t even look back, and silently walked away. That same day, she submitted her resignation.

Many years passed before I heard this story. My husband came home from work one day and told me that he had run into Hope at the supermarket.

He hesitated for a long time, but eventually, he asked her about that incident. Hope told him that from the first day, Sophia began to behave very inappropriately: she wouldn’t let anyone talk to Hope, she would throw terrible tantrums, throw forks and plates at her son, and even seriously injured him once. Sophia absolutely hated Hope’s husband and refused to listen to him.

At first, the family tried to understand, but one incident crossed the line. When Hope woke up, she found Sophia standing by her head with a pair of scissors in one hand and her hair in the other.

What she intended to do remains a mystery to this day. After this incident, Hope’s husband couldn’t take it anymore and gave Hope a tough choice – it was either him and their son, or Sophia. Sophia’s birth parents never came back for her, and she was later transferred to a foster home. Unfortunately, no one knows how her life turned out.

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A little girl was crying and screaming: “Mommy, please, don’t leave me, take me with you!” Yet, Hope didn’t even look back and silently walked away.