Luck and Destiny Unite: Embracing the Magical Journey with Our Daughter

As nature and nurture are woven into our lives, so to are luck and destiny.

Luck, by definition is success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions. Destiny, by definition, is the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future.

My daughter Seeley is now eight, and on the day she was born, she made our family whole. I can recall every detail of the day.

First, we got the call! Labor!

Then we rushed, smiled, cried, hurried, called, showed up and prayed.

We sat, sending all of our love down the hall from the waiting room. Her birth mom was about to give birth to our daughter!

We had no idea what was going on, but we knew we had never been this close to our family forming. During our years of turmoil and trying, we dreamt of the day where we would finally become parents.

We had dreams of taking pictures of our family doing things, going places, having quality time and sharing memories in the making. We even hurried off to Costco to get the best, all inclusive 35mm camera package we could afford.

Long before we knew her, we knew she would wear stripes and polka dots, we thought of green eyes and curly hair. We planned for coaching her teams and traveling to far away places.

We were so sure that the universe would bring our daughter to us, that even after we had lost hope, we said yes one more time.

My husband Billy and I knew we would get a girl, so when we were at the ultrasound with her birth mother, and we learned she was in fact a she, we felt it was a confirmation that our plan was unfolding.

She would love rain boots, adore swimming at the cabin, she would be down for some Motown music. I hoped she would love crafting and that we could explore creativity together.

Most of all, she would be kind, genuine and aware of her strength. We knew our daughter would learn to hug a person so deeply that they felt impacted after.

She would grow up celebrating her differences, and we would encourage her to find anything in herself that brought joy and we would teach her to chase it and become it proudly.

For all we knew, her differences could have been her heritage or something else, but we knew our plan for parenting was to be free of shame, and all about embracing and empowering.

Guess what happened? We got our wildest dreams, they all came true, and she was wild right from the start.

Our Seeley girl is as strong as the mountains she was named after. 

She is curly, with eyes that sparkle like the ocean.

She has the most stunning skin, beneath it, a strength all her own with a shield of fierce.

She is a radiant force, a compassionate and loving member of her community and a natural, often rigid leader.

Seeley Flanagan is a mermaid for God’s sake, how much more magical could a girl get? A performer in her soul, she expresses herself with a lot of energy and a carelessness that is so admirable.

Am I lucky? Sure am!

Is it destiny that Billy and I get to be hers, it sure is!

Would she be this lane of awesome if she had been placed with another family? Probably, but we are sure proud to be hers.

We will continue to embrace, accept, encourage her and celebrate her in every way we can, every day.

We will spread the word, change the world and continue to sound the alarm so the folks around know to get ready as she enters.

We are the lucky ones, and on a good day, she thinks she is lucky too.

Written by Rachel Flanagan of FlanaVille.