Meet Kortni, mama through adoption, who has kindly agreed to share her story with us. Read on to learn more about her motherhood journey.

My journey to motherhood really began as a sophomore in high school, while driving to the hospital with my girlfriends to offer our young teenage support to one of our best friends, who was about to deliver a baby boy and place him into the arms of a woman she didn’t know. I don't think even then that I realized the magnitude of her choice. By the time we got to the hospital she had already given birth and said goodbye to him. To this day I still remember my friend laying there, undried tears streaming down her cheeks, tired, solemn and heartbroken. In that moment I realized that she was the bravest person I'd ever known.

I wouldn’t know this until years later, but that strong and selfless friend of mine prepared a hidden chamber of my heart for the beauty of adoption.Ten years later I was snuggled up on the couch with my husband, both of us completely speechless after watching the movie Martian Child. The story hit us like ice cold water to the face. We both knew we wanted to adopt at some point in life, but we had been trying to get pregnant on our own first so adopting wasn't exactly the first thing on our minds...Until we saw that movie and heard the line "how do you argue against loving one who's already here?" From that moment on, adoption was all we could think about.The next day my husband called me from work and said "I don't know how, but we need to start the adoption process today."

We met with an agency that night and handed them a check with all the money in our account to cover the intake fee and not a clue how we would pay the rest. Our profile was shown to an expectant mom a week later and Eli was in our arms exactly one month after the night we watched that movie. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Four years, a house and a few pets later we knew we were ready to grow our family. When we started the process for our second adoption, we fell in love hard and fast with the girl who chose us to raise her baby. During her second trimester she sent me emails letting me know about the Spaghettios he was making her crave. She told me about the conversations she had with him while her hands rested on her belly at night. She told him all about the family that would be adopting him–the mom and dad who would love him and the big brother he would have. She gave us a jar of hundreds of pink and blue candies and made us count every single one to find out if it was a boy or a girl. When we counted a few extra blue ones we were handed a card from her that said "congratulations you are having a boy!" She invited me to ultrasounds and put my hand on her belly to make sure I felt him kick. She gave me the closest possible experience to pregnancy that a person can. My son’s birth mothers endured their greatest loss in order to deliver me my greatest joy. They gave these boys life and loved them first and even though the stretch marks from their pregnancies might not be found on my skin, these women made sure they were etched all across my heart before my boys were ever born.

I will spend the rest of my life looking into those eyes that hold no gene of mine and be reminded of the love and bravery and heartbreak it took for them to let their babies go. They chose the bravest, strongest love there is and the privilege it is to have these little souls call me mom because of their sacrifice is never lost on me. I feel so very lucky to get to be the one who tells my children how much they were loved before I ever came along.

Follow along Kortni Miller's journey here: @born.from.my.heart