Simone Biles Quotes

When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted.

Adoption has been a part of my life and a part of my family, so it was how I wanted to start. It felt natural and right to me.

You may not know it, but I was adopted as a baby by my wonderful parents, Allan and Margaret Atkins of Cumberland Gap, Tenn.

I speak about family and adoption because it 100% changed my life and who I am. It definitely played a very large role into just learning how to be grateful for what you have and being fulfilled in a way that a lot of adopted kids don't feel.

I was adopted. I was born in Edinburgh, and adopted when I was about two weeks old. And it's a good thing, I think, really, that back then, in '75 when I was born, you were really given a lot more information than you're given now when you're adopted. And you know, you can access that information when you're older.

I was adopted when I was a baby. My mother carried me for nine months and she held me for one hour, and didn't see me again.

I've had a lot of different lives. I was adopted, I grew up in Nebraska, and then I went to Northwestern... Then I had this really extraordinary, different life than my parents.

I want to say that, in general, when it works, open adoption is great.

I've always known I was adopted.

We've heard some theories, but there is a lot of mystery surrounding my adoption.

When I ride the subway back and forth, sometimes I look at the other passengers and wonder if any of them are children who have been adopted or parents who have adopted.

My father was adopted. He grew up in the Italian household.

I want adopted people to know they were chosen.

What I'm finding is there's an awful lot about adoption and relinquishment and the complicated nature of family that we, as human beings, haven't been able to have a real discussion about yet without a lot of censorship.

My adoption journey fully fuels my inspiration, my drive, what my vision of success is.

I remember my mum explaining to me what adoption meant when I was still at primary school. 'Son,' she said to me, 'you didn't grow under my heart, you grew in it'.

The process of open adoption is not discussed in the way it should be. Everyone I know who has adopted domestically has at least one tragic story. It was important to me to be able to describe those situations.

A full accounting of adoption as an option would not underestimate its emotional challenges - the grief and loss for birth mothers, the uncertainties for adoptive parents operating under a patchwork of state laws.

It wasn't easy to adopt an American child. Actually it's quite simple, but finding out how to do it was the hard part.

The journey into adoption started for my parents, as it does with so many families: my mother and father desperately wanted to have kids, but they couldn't.

I say to everybody, 'Adoption is not for the faint of heart.'

I've never been keen on open adoption. It doesn't seem to solve the main problem with adoption, which is that somebody feels she was abandoned by someone else.

I was worried if you adopted a foster child, someone from the birth family could still come and take her back. I was afraid that any child in foster care might have suffered such trauma or neglect that she would be impossible to reach. I'm not proud of these fears. But I understand now when others ask me the same questions.

I have a family member who was in the foster system briefly, and so I've kind of grown up knowing about it myself.

I was adopted, and so was my mom. And so I just was in tune with how life can be intentional. I feel like maybe that helped me to not feel super entitled to a lot of things as a kid.