Family isn’t only those who live under one roof, it’s those who say yes to loving you, however the story unfolds. Betsey always felt adoption was part of her calling. Long before she became a mother, she and her husband talked beside Reedy River Falls about building a family that way. A neighbor introduced them to families adopted from Taiwan, and the path began to take shape. They were under 30, too young for many programs, but Taiwan’s rules fit. After the home study, a small orphanage matched them with an eight-month-old baby girl. Betsey still remembers checking a voicemail between first-grade lessons, then rushing home to find her husband in their prepared nursery, crying happy tears over a photo of their daughter, Rylyn.
As their travel date approached, Betsey’s sister agreed to help by flying to Taiwan. A week before leaving, Betsey learned she was pregnant. Even with morning sickness and long flights, the moment she reached the orphanage and touched Rylyn’s tiny fingers made everything worth it. That was the day she became a mom. Later that year, their son was born, and they went from zero to two babies in a blink. Life moved forward. Years later, an email from the orphanage stirred a gut feeling about a sibling, though it was only an address update.
In 2015, after an unexpected pregnancy and a painful loss, Betsey and her husband restarted adoption, this time in China. The day China approved their match, a message arrived from Taiwan: Rylyn’s birth parents had another child and asked if Betsey’s family would adopt him. They said yes immediately. But silence followed, then news that the parents had changed their minds. Betsey understood how hard that choice must have been and asked to be contacted if anything changed.
They brought home Brooklyn from China in 2017 amid job loss, a BRCA2 diagnosis, and selling their house. Betsey chose a preventive double mastectomy. The family traveled across Europe with three kids before settling in Georgia. Every few months, she wrote to check on Rylyn’s brother. No answers came until she learned he’d been placed with a foster family in Taiwan. It broke her heart. She had prayed for him for years and dreamed of reuniting the siblings. In 2019, Betsey’s sister announced plans to adopt again. Betsey asked a big question: would they consider Taiwan? They switched agencies, found the boy’s file, and after nine months, they were matched. The pandemic slowed everything, but in late 2021, her sister and brother-in-law completed the journey. Nearly six years after first hearing of him, Rylyn’s brother, Z, joined their extended family as a nephew. It wasn’t the picture they first imagined, but it was a family all the same.
From Rylyn’s side, the news arrived on a quiet evening. Her parents invited her onto the porch and told her she had a full biological brother, and that her aunt and uncle would be adopting him. Oddly, she had been nicknaming her older brother at home “En-Chen” on a vacation, not knowing that was her bio brother’s Taiwanese name. She had often wished on dandelions for “another brother.” When she finally met Z in Charlotte, everything felt strange and right at once.
He was unpredictable and funny, and he looked a lot like her. He even helped carry her suitcase to the car. She could see how hard it must be to learn a new language and start over, and she felt grateful they could finally meet. The journey to Z was long and winding, with paperwork, prayers, setbacks, and detours through loss and illness. Yet what shines through is how love found a way, even if the shape of the family shifted from what they first pictured. Rylyn’s wish for another brother was answered through her aunt and uncle; Betsey’s hope to connect the siblings came true in a different, beautiful form.
