Adoptive Mom Explains Gotcha Day: ‘It’s When Your Child Comes Home To You’

“There are so many ways that God builds families, biologically and sometimes through adoption, just as He does with marriage, and we’ll celebrate all of them. And not one is more valuable or more precious than the other,” explains Chrina Cuna-Henson when Smart Parenting asked her about Gotcha Day.

According to the website Considering Adoption, Gotcha Day celebrates the day a family adopts a child. For some families, this means the day of placement, while for others, it’s the day the adoption was finalized in court. In the U.S., the celebration and even the term itself have sparked controversy. Author Mirah Riben, who has written books critiquing adoption, argues that the term derives from the pet rescue lexicon and suggests that celebrating it overlooks the “other side of the story—the side in which the child ‘lost everything’ connected to their family of origin.”

However, this perspective does not resonate with Chrina and her family.

Chrina, Adoption and Foster Care Advocate, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Generations Home (formerly known as ROHEI foundation), and a member of the Smart Parenting Board of Experts, has always been transparent about her family’s adoption experiences. Her journey began after the heartbreaking loss of her first daughter, who passed away due to stillbirth. “It’s almost as if God allowed the brokenness that we felt, that we experienced over the loss of our daughter, Celine, to really help us see just how precious and valuable one life was. And in losing her, in the process of grieving our daughter, we came to see that every life is precious, no matter how long or short of a time they spend on earth,” Chrina shared.

Reflecting on this period, Chrina recalled, “I remember telling God, ‘My Lord, I feel like my arms are empty, that I’m a mother, but there’s an emptiness in my arms.’ There was one day that I realized, that I felt like God really spoke to me very clearly, ‘Chrina, your arms are not empty, but your arms are available.’”

This realization shifted Chrina’s perspective and led to the decision to adopt. “Here I was, desperately wanting to mother my daughter who was not here, but also realizing that there were so many children without mothers to love them and without mothers to hold them.”

“Gotcha Day is the day that your child comes home to you”

This is how Chrina explained Gotcha Day. “A lot of times, families who adopt, they miss out on the opportunity of having a birth story. I have both an adopted daughter and I also have biological children. And it’s true, we end up telling our children about the day they were born and recounting the memories around their birth.”

“For a child who comes to a family through adoption, it’s Gotcha Day,” Chrina emphasized. “That was a term coined out of the U.S., but for us, that’s the day that a family is born through adoption.”

Chrina and her husband Jonathan are very intentional about helping their adopted daughter, Chloe, understand the significance of this day. “We painted as vividly as we would paint it for our children who came to us biologically. Just as I would explain how my water bag broke, and we rushed to the hospital, and then this happened, and the contractions increased,” she explained.

“We narrate Chloe’s Gotcha Day to her the same way… I tell her about the moment I first laid eyes on her, and that I started to cry immediately. And that my husband, John, wanted to carry her. And I said, ‘No, wait, I need to hold her a little bit longer.’”-Chrina Cuna-Henson

These stories, Chrina notes, help Chloe feel secure and establish early memories of attachment to their family. “These are the details that I tell her so that she’s able to build a sense of security, and establish a memory. And that memory of those early days of attachment to our family.”

Celebrating Gotcha Day

Chrina and her husband celebrated Chloe’s birthday and Gotcha Day right from the start, a tradition that continues even as they have two younger kids. “We would recount [her story] and we would go out to celebrate how God built our family in such a unique way. We might celebrate with a cake. We might retell the story as a family and now that we have younger children, we make sure that they’re part of that story and they hear that story and they recognize that their birth story is just as precious as our Gotcha Day story and that God builds families many different ways.”

“We’re at that place where we’re now kind of forming small family traditions to make sure that we’re intentional about recognizing the significance of that day for our family,” Chrina emphasized.

As children grow older, Chrina finds that their involvement in Gotcha Day celebrations increases. “[Chloe is] now at this age where she likes to tell the story and she’ll be the one who would remind us of that. We might show her pictures. We’ve recently showed her videos of the day that she came home to us, the day that we first carried her and held her in our arms,” Chrina shared.

These stories and memories hold significant value for Chloe. Chrina noted, “And we’re finding that those are really very, very precious for her… These stories have really bonded us. She loves when we look at those photos. We tell her stories about how the day that she came home to us, so many people were waiting at our house to meet her, that my house was full and that I could hardly hold my own baby because our relatives, even our extended family was in our house to welcome her.”

“I didn’t realize how precious this was going to be to her… She would say, ‘Mom, do you remember how you wanted to hold me, but you couldn’t because this person was holding me and then this person wanted to hold me and this person wanted to hold me. And that story really resonates with her and she shares it very proudly."-Chrina Cuna-Henson

“I feel it’s been really good for our relationship. It’s really helped us build trust.”

 

“The story is beautiful but it’s also broken”

Chrina acknowledges that as Chloe grows older, she is processing her adoption story more deeply. “We are recognizing that as our daughter gets older and because of the nature of my work and how intentional we’ve been about talking to her about her story, that she’s processing it a lot more deeply. And so we follow her lead.”

One way they address the complex emotions tied to adoption is by praying for Chloe’s biological parents, “We would sometimes pray for her biological parents as one way of just acknowledging that we’re thankful that they loved her enough to carry her to full-term and that God allowed our stories to intertwine. And we pray that God would bless them and that they would be safe and that God would watch over them.”

“And so these are things that help us recognize that the story is both beautiful, but it’s also broken. And there are parts of it that are painful and hard and difficult.”

“Stories we want to tell”

As an adoption advocate, Chrina encourages families to celebrate Gotcha Days in whatever way feels right, “Our heart is that we would encourage families to not do anything they’re not comfortable with, but to celebrate their Gotcha Days, especially with their families, to remember it, to acknowledge the significance of that day in their family.”

“For us, as an adoption and foster care agency, we’re really mindful of the Gotcha Days of our families. And we try to make sure that we stand with them in celebrating that, in commemorating that day that their families were formed through adoption.”

She also advises adoptive parents, “Do things that are age-appropriate for your child, but definitely making it about creating that environment of celebration is important. We want to be intentional–and that’s one way for you to start having these conversations about adoption with your child is to acknowledge it.”

For Chrina, Gotcha Day provides an opportunity for both parents and children to process their love and acceptance. “You’ll find that as the years go by, you’ll be sharing a little bit more of their story with them every year. And that helps us parents because sometimes it’s difficult for parents to start those conversations with their child about their adoption story.”

“If you’re ever looking for the perfect time, this is one of those milestones, which give you the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, you know, this is the day that you came home to me and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Did I ever tell you about how I was feeling that day? Or did I ever tell you about what happened that day?’"

“Those are the stories that we want to tell. Those are the stories we want to preserve. And we want to help our kids draw a sense of connection to those stories and to realize that, that was when our attachment journey to one another started.”-Chrina Cuna-Henson

Gotcha Day is a powerful reminder of the love, resilience, and joy that adoption brings into a family’s life, says Chrina. By embracing Gotcha Day and sharing their experiences, adoptive families like Chrina’s play a crucial role in promoting a positive understanding of adoption, helping to create a world where all families, regardless of how they are formed, are celebrated and cherished.

Read here to learn more about the Philippines' adoption law.