She was touring a model home, thinking of buying, and wondering if the basement option wasn’t actually such a great idea. That’s because just nine months previously, the South Carolinian adopted Boone, a Bulgarian toddler and full-time wheelchair user. Maybe the combination of basement stairs and a wheelchair was too dangerous, Myers mused. 

As it turns out, she needn’t have worried about the basement. It was the stairs into the home’s garage that turned out to be the bone-breaker. While playing with his same-aged adoptive brother, Boone fell down the stairs in his wheelchair and landed on his head, fracturing his skull. 

“I thought that was the end,” says Myers, a 40-year-old public school teacher. And when child protective services interviewed her while her newest son was in the hospital, she thought she was going to jail.

“It was not funny in the moment, but just the way Boone recovered from that, it still blows my mind,” Myers says. “It’s more of a testament to God’s grace and power of healing.” 

The same could be said of Myers’ own life story, which has unfolded not at all how she planned. Sure, she became a special education teacher like she wanted, and yes, she is the adoptive mother of a child with special needs, like she dreamed of since middle school. But she never foresaw the divorce that arrived post-adoption, nor the figuring out how to parent a young man with spina bifida often on her own. 

“I did go through a time with the divorce wondering, ‘Would Boone have found a better family? Did I get him too soon before somebody else could have done better?’” Myers admits. “I don’t want him to feel like he was being rejected again, and I struggled with that for a very long time.”

Even finding Boone came with its share of heartbreak. Myers and her then-husband discovered Reece’s Rainbow through a friend, initially committing to a sickly small boy named Samson. But his fragile body gave out before the adoption could be completed, and he died. Boone, with his smiley, laughing self, called to them like a ray of sunshine through the computer screen. 

Bulgarian translators told Myers upon her arrival that her newest son was at a 19-month-old cognitive level, but she soon saw that to be wildly off. 

“There was a lot more to him than what he was being given credit for,” she says. “He presented himself as a typical three- to four-year-old. Maybe a bit of immaturity and he didn’t have the same interactive play, but his interactions with us seemed about age-appropriate.”

Once home in South Carolina, Boone picked up English easily, laughing and smiling the whole way. Myers breathed a sigh of relief, thinking, “Yay! We’re not going to hit the Reactive Attachment Disorder thing; it’s going to be great.” 

She was right — at least about the RAD, which Boone was never diagnosed with. But after about a year of being a Myers, he did start displaying some trauma-related behaviors, like drinking paintbrush water during art and throwing up as a reaction to stress, especially during the divorce. Medical reasons were ruled out by his providers. 

“I recognized those behaviors as a child who may be trying to control things,” Myers says. “Like, ‘To avoid this situation, I’m going to vomit. I’m scared and nervous, and this is my response.’”

Thankfully, with a stable schedule and living situation and the support of a great school and community, 12-year-old Boone no longer struggles with vomiting. He thrives at the same junior high his adoptive mother works at, attending a general education classroom, playing the clarinet in band and participating on the mock trial team. 

“He’s in advanced English Language Arts and breezes through novels — he’s probably read more in the past year than I have in the past five,” Myers says. “He’s very well-mannered, respects all adults and very easily makes friends.” 

Part of that comes from Myers treating him no differently than she does her two biological sons and one daughter. It can be hard to find activities that all five of them can do together — and with Boone’s growth, hiking with him on Myers’ back is no longer an option — but she is determined to keep making it happen.

“I don’t want my other three kids to have resentment with Boone, like, ‘Oh, we can’t do this because of him,’” she says. Behaviorally, “I hold him to a lot of the same standards as our children, like, ‘You know what’s right and wrong.’” 

Days are filled with weaseling out of homework, catheters, picking out snacks at the grocery store, therapy appointments, hefting Boone in and out of the house, dance and football practices and attending musicals. The family just saw Wicked, which Boone loved, even more than he loves sleeping in on weekends. 

None of that would have happened, Myers knows, if Boone had remained in his Eastern European orphanage.

“I see that our family didn’t end in the way the painting was supposed to have ended, but the Lord is still working it out,” she says. “Boone is still able to be Boone and who he’s intended to be, even when we as humans mess up the painting.” 

There are lots of lovely feelings that come along with Boone, especially when he shows affection through playing with his mom’s hair or giving nightly bedtime hugs. Myers loves those. 

“It’s been worth all the pain of wondering if he should have been with another family,” she says. “Seeing that now is the best part.”

Yet she discourages any potential adoptive family from taking the leap based purely on feelings. And no matter what, don’t adopt because you feel sorry for a child. Do it instead because you love them. 

“It takes a lot of analyzing your heart, of not doing it to make yourself better, like, ‘Look at me,’ but because you really want to do it for the other person,” Myers says. “And if not, maybe your role is being supportive to someone else who can.”

As it turns out, she can, despite the particulars looking different than she once envisioned. Because even if Suzanne Myers has no idea what her future involves, she knows deep within her bones that she can indeed be the mama that all of her children — Boone included — need.