It really was a magical time of year for one Ohio family after a girl asked her stepmother to adopt her on Christmas Day.
A minute-long video posted to Facebook on Dec. 26 showed the moment 21-year-old Marissa Thamann asked her stepmom, Heather Thamann, to adopt her with an ornament that read “will you adopt me?”
“The papers are already signed. You just have to sign them,” Marissa was heard telling Thamann in the video.
Thamann was then seen covering her face, crying and apparently speechless.
“I’ve been waiting for so long,” Thamann finally replied.
During a phone interview with Global News, Thamann said she and Marissa had discussed adoption before but “unforeseen circumstances” halted their efforts.
“We just eventually thought we don’t need a piece of paper to say ‘you’re my mom or you’re my kid,’” said Thamann.
One of the difficulties of adoption the pair pointed out was the financial burden.
According to Adoptionphotolistingohio.org, the price for a family within Ohio to adopt a child can be up to $35,000. Thamann and Marissa said they themselves would only have to pay a few hundred dollars for their adoption process.
But even though the process for the Thamann family is still in the works, Marissa decided to take it upon herself to continue what the mother-daughter duo had started – even if that just meant the paperwork for the time being.
“I want her to feel good. Just so she knows.” said Marissa. “That’s the reason I did it.”
‘It was overwhelming,” said Thamann. “We were all hugging.”
But Thamann did admit there are struggles of being seen as the “stepmom” to a child she’s considered her own for 17 years.
“I don’t like being called her stepmom. I’ve done everything for [Marissa] since she was four….doctor appointments to getting her ears pierced. It’s not that it’s a slap in the face, I just feel like – it hurts a little bit. It hurts in your heart a little bit.”
Marissa’s biological mother passed away at the age of 24 when Marissa was only three months old.
“Pulmonary embolism,” said Marissa.
Thamann added that when she met Brian, her husband and Marissa’s father, she fell in love with Marissa, too.
“It’s hard, it’s hard raising someone else’s child. Thinking if you’re good enough or if you’re doing it right.”
But to Marissa, Thamann has been doing an outstanding job.
“[She] may not have been there for my first breath, or the first time I walked or talked but [she was] there when I lost my first tooth. When I learned how to ride a bike. When I started having feelings for boys. When I was becoming a woman,” said Marissa in a note to Thamann.
According to Adoptuskids.org, “more than 12,500 children in Ohio are living with foster families or in other out-of-home placements, such as group homes.”
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