Parenthood is often idealized; painted nurseries, elegant baby showers, and milestones are neatly checked off on life’s checklist. But parenthood hardly ever follows a script.
In For This Child, Angela Wheeler delivers an honest memoir that defies the cultural blueprint of family and reframes what it means to become a parent, not through biology, but through faith, loss, grit, and adoption. This story challenges how we define building a family.
Parenthood Isn’t Always Conceived—Sometimes, It’s Chosen
Angela confronts the reader with a truth many struggle to voice: wanting a child doesn’t always mean bearing one. After years of infertility, endless treatments, miscarriages, and medical side effects, Angela and her husband, Shawn, chose to stop trying. Not because they gave up on becoming parents—but because they redefined how they would do it.
They decided to adopt. It was a deliberate, faith-filled pivot that challenged the deeply held notion that parenthood must be biological to be real.
Adoption: Not a Rescue, But a Relationship
Mainstream narratives often portray adoption as a heroic act—parents “saving” a child. For This Child turns that narrative on its head. Angela writes about open adoption as a gift: a chance to build a bridge between families.
Rather than painting birth mothers in the background, Angela puts their courage center stage. She shares how her children’s birth mothers showed “true love and grit,” forcing readers to reconsider the outdated belief that adoption is the erasure of one family to build another. It’s not subtraction. It’s an addition.
Redefining Strength: Not in Control, but in Surrender
Society often equates strength with control—planning, achieving, overcoming. Angela’s story dismantles that. Real strength, she shows, is sometimes letting go. Her six-year struggle with infertility involved every imaginable attempt to “fix” the problem. But healing didn’t come from another procedure. It came from surrender. From the moment she and Shawn said, enough.
By embracing adoption, they surrendered not only the dream of biological children but also control over timing, outcome, and expectations. In doing so, they gained something even greater: peace. In Angela’s words, “God made it crystal clear… it was His plan this whole time for us never to have biological children.”
The Double Standards of “Qualified” Parenthood
Perhaps one of the most eye-opening aspects of the memoir is the spotlight on how adoptive parents are scrutinized. For instance, they must go through fingerprints, background checks, home studies, and psychological evaluations, while biological parents only need biology.
Angela doesn’t shy away from calling this out. The irony isn’t lost on her: couples like her and Shawn, who endured years of heartbreak just to be parents, now had to prove they were “good enough.” Meanwhile, others stumbled into parenthood without preparation, training, or intention. The contrast is stark, and Angela invites readers to wrestle with it.
Growing as a Family
For This Child challenges the cultural idea that family is something you have. Through her journey, Angela makes it clear that family is something you build—with time, vulnerability, and intentional love. From painstakingly creating a birth mother portfolio to navigating the emotional minefield of failed adoptions, Angela and Shawn earn every moment of parenthood. And because of that, their bond is unshakable.
Adoption Isn’t the End of Grief—It’s a New Chapter in Healing
However, Angela doesn’t wrap her story in a neat bow. The loss of biological motherhood didn’t magically disappear when she held her adopted children for the first time. But it gave those wounds a new language. It turned pain into purpose.
Her memoir is honest about the layered grief adoption brings, especially after infertility. But it’s also a celebration of growth through that grief.
Why This Story Matters—To All of Us
Whether you’re navigating infertility, considering adoption, or simply curious about how families are formed in unconventional ways, For This Child has something to say. It challenges you to examine your assumptions about what makes a family legitimate.
For This Child doesn’t try to be a guidebook or a manifesto. It simply tells the truth. In doing so, it breaks through the surface-level narratives we often hear about adoption and reclaims the idea that families formed through love are just as real as those formed through blood.
Angela’s journey dares us to see family not as something we’re born into but as something we choose. And in that choice lies the greatest act of love there is. Grab your copy today.
