Larisa Negru, adopted person: Adoption – a Birth from the Heart / March for Life Bucharest 2026

Larisa Negru, adopted person, spoke Saturday, March 28, at the March for Life Bucharest 2026:

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There are children who, when they lose a parent, feel that their entire world collapses like a sandcastle scattered by the wind. In their silence, heavy, simple, and crushing questions are born: “What will happen to me? Do I still have a chance?”

I was such a child. And yet, today I am here because, in the midst of my trials, God did not abandon me. My life was not left without a helping hand, without a voice whispering: “You are not alone.”

I was born into a family with ten children. Life was not easy, but it was warm, because my mother was the light of our home. When I was only six years old, my biological mother went to heaven. My father, overwhelmed by grief and by his own weaknesses, could no longer take care of us, children.

One year after my mother’s passing, I received a priceless gift, a gift I had never thought about and never hoped for. In my life and in the lives of my two younger brothers, two wonderful people appeared—the ones who would become our parents.

The moment they took us home felt so natural that from the instant we got into the car, a new life began for us. God had given us other parents, whom from the very first moment we called “mom” and “dad.”

The certainty that we were their children, born not of their bodies, but of their hearts full of love, gave us the courage to step with confidence into this new family.

I started school the very year I came to live with my parents. It was a difficult moment for me, but also for them. I was confused and did not even know how to hold a pencil properly in my hand. And yet, even in this delicate moment, God worked through wonderful people—especially through Fr. Vasile Gavrilă and through all the teachers of the “Holy Three Hierarchs” Theoretical High School. In this school I was not only a student; I was seen, understood, and constantly encouraged.

There were moments when I wondered why God had arranged things this way, why we were not born directly into this wonderful family. Later, however, I understood that this life experience shaped me: it taught me to rejoice in the presence of every person in my life and to be grateful.

Through their sacrifice and unconditional love, our parents lifted me and my brothers up. They gave us a home—not only a physical place, but a space of the heart, where we learned that true love goes beyond every trial.

My parents are for me living icons of gentleness, sacrifice, unconditional love, and humility. Through them I learned what it truly means to love.

For me, this process was the chance for a new life—one in which I came to know God, received as a gift the most wonderful parents, and soon afterward received a wonderful little sister as well, another priceless gift from God.

Nothing that I am today is only my own merit. I graduated from university as valedictorian and received the award for the best bachelor’s thesis in the field of the humanities—a thesis that carries my own story: “Adoption – a Birth from the Heart.”

But behind these achievements stands the hand of God, working through people: through my parents, through the teachers of the “Holy Three Hierarchs” Theoretical High School, and through all the dear people who stood by me, supported me, encouraged me, and helped me.

For me, the March for Life means being a light in someone else’s darkness.

It means not turning your eyes away when someone is suffering. Not judging. Being present, being supportive. Knowing how to say, at the right time: “You are not alone.”

If I have learned anything from my life, it is that each of us can become someone’s hope. We do not have to do great or extraordinary things. It is enough to be present, to be a helping hand, to be the voice that says: “You are not alone.”