This article was originally printed in the September/October 2025 issue of ‘hood Magazine. To see this article in print, and to read the rest of the issue, check out our digital issue.
By Bridget Bennett
We honestly thought this would be simple.
We’d already done this twice—so adoption would be just like adding one more. Right?
Our son Landry was three and our daughter Lindley was just 7 months old when we started the process that would lead us to our son Levi. We’d talked about adoption since we were teenagers on a mission trip in inner-city Chicago. We saw kids growing up in painful, dangerous circumstances and knew we wanted to give a child love, safety, and the kind of stability every kid needs and deserves in order to reach their full potential.
While adoption had always been our plan and our passion, we had no idea what we were actually walking into.
Adoption
First was the journey to meeting Levi; the nearly 3 years and two failed adoptions on the way to Levi were unexpected and heart-wrenching. But eventually, we made the life-long connection with his birth mom that changed all of our lives forever.
The love came instantly. That part really was exactly like we expected. From the moment we met him, we loved him. He felt like our precious baby boy from day one.
But right from the start it was clear—we were going to have to do things differently.
We discovered parenting Levi comes with its own rulebook and would stretch us in ways we didn’t see coming.
His Own Person
Around 8 months old, we started noticing some big differences. Levi needed movement. Constant motion. He was climbing furniture before he could walk. He needed deep pressure, heavy play, hours outside, and space to feel everything all at once. He’s a huge sensory seeker, impulsive, always testing gravity and limits—and sometimes our sanity.
But those same pieces of Levi also make him the most joyful little boy, the best storyteller, laugh-out-loud funny, wildly creative and endlessly kind. He has no filter and zero chill—sometimes that looks like dodging random flying objects or bracing for a sneak-attack bear hug followed by a yelled: “Mommy, I just love you soooo much!”
He keeps us on our toes to say the least. But combined with his brother and sister, the Bennett babes are a force to be reckoned with. They are a perfect little pack—loving each other fiercely, fighting like crazy, and making the kind of wild, beautiful memories you dream of for your kids.
Loving him has always been easy—for all of us, including the extended family he’s also added to our pack.
We have a very open adoption, which means a new set of aunties, grandmas, cousins, siblings and birth parents. To us, they’re all a piece of him—and we love every single part of him. A love that helped us open our hearts and our home to more of his family.
Foster
When he was about 2 years old, we were asked to foster one of his teenage relatives. Honestly? We were scared. We’d never parented a teen. But we said yes.
It was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done—and one of the most life-changing. We got to see up close the reality of what kids in foster care are carrying. Trauma that runs deep. Trust broken by so many. Coping mechanisms just to survive. And all of it, through no fault of their own.
It wrecked us—and reshaped us.
It opened our eyes to the urgent need for more families to say yes. Not just to adoption, but to fostering. To showing up for kids who are so often passed around and left behind. It opened our hearts to other foster parents too—the ones who keep saying yes when it’s hard, who keep making space, who keep loving kids they didn’t bring into the world, but would do anything to help heal.
Get Involved
Organizations like The Foster Network, The Abbott House, The Gathering Well and more have helped us build relationships and find volunteer work that’s taught us so much. Not just about foster care and adoption, but about how to be the kind of parents Levi needs us to be as he is still growing, still asking questions, testing boundaries, and figuring out where he fits in this world.
We’ve learned not to parent Levi toward some version of “normal”—we’re parenting him toward the full version of himself. Toward who he was made to be. And we get to be there to delight in every step of it.
Adoption was not at all what we expected.
And we wouldn’t trade a single part of it.
