We have known Mr. Youmans over 20 years and have the utmost trust in his wisdom concerning adoption.
Thanks to Mr. Youmans, our family was able to complete the adoption of our daughter and give her the sense of belonging and family permanency she so strongly desired. She was born to a troubled young woman with a history of drug addiction and criminal behavior and consequently unable to make a consistent maternal bond with her daughter. Our daughter, now 22, is a compassionate, loving, young woman, beautiful inside and out, intelligent; a contributor to society.
Our daughter is happily married since November 2007. Recently, while contemplating pregnancy, she contacted her birth mother with questions about her abandonment and medical background. She received some answers. Her birth mother told her that through the legal proceedings and interactions, she saw and knew that her adoptive parents loved her more than she was able to, because of her criminal history and drug addictions. Additionally, she was given some information about her birth father.
We shutter to imagine what her childhood life would have been, if not for the assistance of Mr. Youmans. Our daughter's first year was of hospitalizations, abandonment and foster placements. Then at 2-1/2, she was ordered by the juvenile court system to live with her birth mother (a virtual stranger) in a special state program. At this time we retained Mr. Youmans. Numerous professional psychiatric opinions predicted this reunification would fail. Mr. Youmans accepted our plea for help and he remained available as we struggled through the hardships and emotional legal proceedings, as we feared for our daughter's future and she clung to the hope of permanency in our family. The driving mind set behind our perseverance was, as long as she dreamed of being a part of our family; we could not live with the thought of being responsible for our daughter's perception of being abandoned again. Without Mr. Youmans' aide, our family would have been just another foster family in a childhood full of foster home placements, she would have been just another child lost in the system.
Because of Mr. Youmans' dedication, we have been blessed with cherished childhood memories and childhood concerns, like her question during a 4th of July fireworks show, "Mommy, will God be mad at us for making war in Heaven?" Our daughter has had the experience of unconditional love. Instead of as our daughter said, "When I grow up I want to be a kid", she actually got to be a kid while she still was a kid!
He helped us keep focused and lightened our hearts at times as when he issued a billing credit for a candy mint we gave him just before one of the court proceedings. Little things are so important.
He's as real as it gets, we will always appreciate all he did for our family.
Sincerely,
Mike, Linda and children
