A mother has written a poignant letter to her daughters to commemorate the day of their adoption - and her beautiful insights above love and family are resonating with thousands.
Jamie, who shares the ups and downs of fostering at Foster the Family, took to her blog to celebrate the moment her "family became complete".
Addressed to her two little girls, the letter begins, "I've called you by that label, that sacred name, 'daughter', many times. But today is different."
For the first time there's no prefix, Jamie explains, no subtext and no "sort of but not really".
"You're not my foster daughter," she writes, " I don't love you 'like you're my own'. Today you are wholly, completely, forever my daughter."
Sharing her memories of the day the girls were "dropped" into their family, Jamie explains that from that moment, they chose to love them both "like a daughter".
"We chose it even before we had the chance to fall in love with you," Jamie writes, adding, "but the falling happened."
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The little girls who "burst" into their family of four eased into their lives and hearts.
"The formalities of our state-regulated, court-appointed, 'temporary' relationship faded away," Jamie describes, sharing that they dropped the "foster" from the title.
"You simply became 'daughter,'" she writes.
Reflecting on this time, Jamie, who also has a biological son and daughter, explains that becoming a mum, and loving the children as fiercely as she does, came as a shock.
"One moment they weren't here," she writes, "and the next I loved them more than life."
Jamie admits, however, that the day of her girls' adoption felt different from the birth of her two children.
Officially adopting her two foster daughters was more akin to marrying her husband, she said.
"I met him. Then I fell in love with him, knew I would spend the rest of my life with him." When the day came to make it official, although "papers were signed, names were changed and ceremonies were had", Jamie notes that she didn't love her husband any more that day than she had the day before.
"He was the same. I was the same," she writes. "Nothing had changed. But everything had."
While their love was the same after their wedding day, "we belonged to each other," Jamies writes, "officially, forever."
Coming back to her daughters, she writes, "Today is our day, my dear, when I take you as my daughter, when I vow to love you forever. Today is our day when nothing and when everything changes."
The proud mum describes the adoption day as one of the "happiest days of [her] life".
"Today I became your mother," she writes. "Today, you became my daughter."
Jamie's words have resonated with thousands of families around the globe, many expressing gratitude for so cleary articulating how they feel about their own fostered and adopted children.
"This especially hit home for me," wrote one foster mum. "My husband and I are adopting our foster daughter TOMORROW!!! We have two biological children as well. However, I have all of these amazing feelings I can't put into words...but you just did so PERFECTLY for me."
"Very well said," wrote one commenter. "The day is soon coming when my own two daughters will be "official", but they are already official in my heart."
Jamie also shared a very sweet video of the night before adoption day.
"Tomorrow is adoption day," she captioned it, "and we're over here like ..."
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