When you become a parent, your life as you’ve known it for the last 20, 30, 40 years comes to an (often unceremonious) end — and a beautiful, chaotic, enriching, exhausting, unbelievably fulfilling life begins.

Everyone knows that to be true.

But when you become an adoptive parent — even if you’re already a parent — your life will change in ways that aren’t common knowledge, and that are in fact uniquely specific to this uncommon and very special path to parenthood.