Forever Family: Meet Wyatt

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - I have always had a soft spot for our sweet Seven Homes family, the Ganns. A family that has adopted two sibling sets to create a beautiful family made up of children with big personalities, unconditional love, and incredible compassion. While I have always loved them it was this past year that I saw a strength and extreme loyalty unmatched by nearly any other family I have ever known. Working in this field I’ve known some pretty remarkable foster and adoptive families. However, this is the first family I’ve known that adopted a profound special needs child from a residential facility. This is also the first Seven Homes family that I’ve personally known to total the number of adoptive children in their home to SEVEN!

The Gann family finalized their adoption of Lexi and brought her home from Holy Angels to be with her brothers and sisters. We asked the Gann’s to share their testimony alongside this week’s featured story on a sweet boy named Wyatt. A blonde haired, brown eyed young boy with profound special needs who resides at the same facility that Lexi once did. We understand what the Ganns’s did was above and beyond the call to not just adopt Lexi but then to eventually bring her home. Wyatt’s needs are a little more complex and so what we are hoping for is a family to adopt Wyatt while he continues to reside at Holy Angels.

The Gann’s saw not a list of diagnoses, they looked past the tubes and medical complexities and they saw a child that deserved to have a family. Wyatt and Lexi have had to endure multiple medical procedures, daily medications, and therapies and a challenging road filled with pain. What breaks my heart is not the severity of their medical needs, but the fact that they have had to walk that path without family there to support them. Lexi has a faithful family to hold her hand when something hurts, to give her kisses and tickles and to affirm as they whisper in her ear, “you are loved, you are precious, you are mine.”

Wyatt needs a family to visit him at Holy Angels, to hold his hand, to watch him meet goals, to walk with him on this journey. We are not looking for a family to take him home, to be experts with feeding tubes and medications or know the answers. Wyatt needs a family to visit him, to claim him as a son and to love him. Wyatt needs a family to tell him he is not alone in this world and to sit with him, to read to him, to run their fingers through that blonde hair and watch him smile with innocence and joy from finding delight in simple things.

Holy Angels is a residential facility that cares for individuals with profound disabilities. They have a loyal, loving and incredible staff who our crew was in awe of. They know Wyatt, what makes him light up, how to care for him and how to read his non-verbal cues. As dedicated and loving as they are, it is not a replacement for a loving family that Wyatt can call his own.

The Gann’s recognized that in Lexi, they saw a child that they could cherish and show love to. We know there is a family out there who can offer the same to Wyatt and we hope that a family watching is willing to say yes. Yes to adopting Wyatt, yes to visiting him, yes to loving him, and yes to looking into those chocolate brown eyes and telling him, “you are precious, you are loved, you are my son.

This article was written by Ashley McKinley. the Program Development Director and North Carolina Forever Families Coordinator with Seven Homes Inc.

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