Stranger Care
A Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours
After deciding not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles and her husband, Eric, try to adopt a baby through foster care. Knowing that the system aims for reunification with the birth family, they open their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate, and prepare them to welcome a child into their lives, even if it most likely means giving that child up. After years of starts and stops, the phone call finally comes: a three-day-old baby girl, Coco, in urgent need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home. 'You were never ours,' Sarah tells her, 'yet we belong to each other.' A love letter to Coco and to the countless others like her, Stranger Care shares Sarah's discovery of what it means to mother: in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but also the birth mother who loves the child too. Coco's story is a reminder that we depend on family, and that family can take many different forms
