Her arms were ready to cradle her first daughter, but her heart wasn’t prepared for what was about to come: losing her to stillbirth.
Shattered beyond imagination, she experienced a kind of pain no mother on earth deserves. But in the midst of her grief, she and her husband found comfort in God’s words, making them realize how precious every life is. Mommy Chrina Cuna Henson then chose the road less travelled: to continue to embrace parenting through adopting a child.
Here’s her story.
“My personal journey into adoption was one that started with grief and loss,” Mommy Chrina begins. Loss is crippling, and only a few could have anticipated that a heart as broken as hers would still be capable to love another child completely.
While the loss of their daughter left a void in their hearts, her and her husband Jonathan’s decision to adopt was never rooted on replacing their daughter. She viewed adoption as another beautiful season in motherhood to embrace and learn from.
Mommy Chrina understood the social stigma that comes with adoption, especially here in the Philippines, where adopting a child is still taboo. Parents who may have a strong desire to adopt often fear doing so because of judgment. So when Mommy Chrina’s family and friends learned about their decision, she and her husband were met with mixed reactions, exactly as expected.
They pressed on in their adoption journey, though she candidly shares that it took time for her and her husband to truly get on the same page. She explains that, in many cases of adoption, “one spouse might be more ready than the other,” and emphasizes the importance of aligning as a couple—especially since the process naturally comes with questions and uncertainties. In their case, that alignment eventually came.
Reflecting on a pivotal moment in her journey, she shares: “I realized that just as I long to have my daughter in my arms, there are children in the Philippines without mothers, too.” Understanding this reality became “the most significant milestone” in her adoption story.
Back in high school and college, Mommy Chrina took part in service-driven missions, such as outreach programs and orphanage visits. There, she stood face to face with the “vulnerability of children” and the “impact of poverty’s grip in their lives.” She claims to have been desensitized at the time but she believes it was the beginning of her long preparation for the moment.
“It is such a gift to be able to become an answer to a child’s prayer,” she says, her words echoing the purpose that now defines her family’s mission.
Welcoming a child in her heart and in their family was not the end of Mommy Chrina’s adoption story. She had strong desire to advocate adoption and foster parenting in the Philippines, which she has been doing through her very own Generations Home, where she serves as an Executive Director.
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She openly shares that the adoption process in the Philippines is unique, and that the process today is very different back when she processed it for her daughter. There used to be a “very long” process, involving an administrative process, followed by a judicial or legislative process. With the establishment of the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) that sits under the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), parents now have a “one-stop shop for adoption” – or an agency that processes adoption from start to finish.
As a licensed child-placing agency, Generations Home works with families who would like to pursue adoption. Through this, Mommy Chrina lives out her advocacy to build more families and give children a home they deserve.
She also wishes to share that a family cannot adopt a newborn just yet, for all the paperwork of the child needs to be prepared first. The average age of a child available for adoption in the Philippines is 2-4 years old. Through the work that she does, she hopes and prays for families to be “more open to adopting children” and to “experience the joy of welcoming a toddler or a young child into their homes.”
Through being an adoptive mom and a foster care advocate, Mommy Chrina lives out the saying, “Biology is the least of what makes one a mother.”