What began as an unexpected turn in life has blossomed into a story of love, resilience, and family for Nikie Walker. The Brescia University professor has transformed her family’s adoption journey into a children’s book titled “You Grew in Our Hearts,” designed to show young readers that families can be formed in many beautiful ways.
Walker’s path to authorship was far from straightforward. She describes herself as “a wayward child and a young adult” who drifted through her early education before finding direction in psychology and human resources. After earning her master’s, she moved back to Owensboro in 2010 when the economy faltered, a move she thought was a setback but ultimately became a turning point.
Back home, she reconnected with her now-husband, a physician whose timing would prove life-saving when Walker fell gravely ill in 2014. While negotiating his own medical contract, he insisted that doctors reimage her condition, leading to emergency surgery.
“He inadvertently saved my life — truly divine intervention,” Walker recalled.
The couple married in 2017, initially convinced parenthood wasn’t part of their story. But a slip of the tongue from a niece who once called her husband “daddy” shifted their thinking.
“We started the adoption process that week,” Walker said.
In October 2021, they were approved, and by April 2022, their daughter Ellie was home. Another unexpected call from their adoption lawyer led to the arrival of their son in December 2023.
Those experiences became the heart of “You Grew in Our Hearts.”
“The phrase that I always told my daughter was that you grew in your birth mommy’s belly, but you grew in mama and dad’s heart at the same time,” she said. “That is where the genesis of this book and this writing came from.”
The book, illustrated to reflect her children and their birth mothers, spans about 15 pages and highlights the many forms families can take.
“We have older people in there as a representation. We have same-sex couples, single moms, single dads, mixed-race couples,” Walker said, noting her own household reflects that diversity. “My husband’s African American and Caucasian. My daughter is a quarter Mexican, and my son is African American. We’re a very kind of nontraditional family in that sense. And so I wanted that represented as well.”
Though writing was a heartfelt process, self-publishing required navigating technical hurdles such as ISBN numbers and formatting. Still, the response has been encouraging.
“Adoption today is much more open than it was 10, 20, or even 40 years ago, when it was often hush-hush,” Walker said. “We try to maintain a close relationship with our children’s birth parents because I never want them to feel ashamed of their journey. It’s what makes them special.”
For Walker, the project also feels like a childhood dream realized. She keeps a framed essay from 2nd grade that begins: Hi, my name is Nikki. I am a doctor. I get paid $25 every week. I have a child. I have another child, and she’s in college, and she’s going to be just like me.
“I was 8 years old when I wrote that,” she said with a smile. “I never thought children or marriage or anything like that was going to happen in my life — and here my husband and I are. So it’s pretty remarkable.”
“You Grew in Our Hearts” is available through Walker’s website and online.
