B.C.

After the Wallish Family Reunion, it would be a few weeks left of summer before school started.

The living arrangement over summer was only supposed to be a patch to give my biological mom time to gather up funds to set up a more permanent home for us, to get back on her feet.

The funds ended up going towards her boyfriend’s bail.

This is the part where I have gone back and forth on many times, and I’m not sure I even fully understand it still.

I don’t blame her for making that a priority over us. Again, all of the challenges were a blessing in disguise.

She had needs, and the need to love and be loved is more primal than Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

She made the decisions she did out of her own “necessity” and survival.

The science backs up what I've had to learn through grace: the brain's decision-making center isn't fully formed until our mid-20s. She was doing what she could with what she had.

Out of a need to establish stability, and their inability to imagine life without us together, Brian and Tammy had a discussion with us kids about permanency.

We, the kids, had a say in the decision, and we all decided to make it official in August.

To become a singular unit family - seal The Miner Clan in place.

So with the help of a notary at church, the kids, Brian and Tammy, and my biological mom met and signed the papers.

My biological mom would relinquish her parental rights.

Brian and Tammy coined the acronym B.C. as Before Children, but also the before and after of our own lives. The moment the legal guardianship was finalized is the dividing line between two completely different stories.

I look back on old pics of Brian and Tammy, and they looked so relax and carefree, happy, and in love with one another. Because they established that foundation before we entered the picture, it held strong.

That was 25 years ago.