I turn a little, toward the glass doors and the five small shapes behind them.

“I can’t give those children a mother, Your Honor.

I can’t give them a big bank account or two parents or a normal-looking family.

But I can give them a home, and I can give them my two hands, which know how to build a bed a child can feel safe in.

And I can give them the one thing almost nobody in a courtroom can promise and mean all the way down: I know their exact pain.

I have felt it in my own chest for twenty years.