Kayla Summers adopted Paisleigh on September 30, 2026, two years and three months after the toddler arrived at her Georgia home as a temporary foster placement. Summers is a 30-year-old single mother. Paisleigh is three. Summers is Black, and her daughter is white, and the first thing Summers did with that difference was say it out loud.
“Paisleigh, your skin is white. Mommy’s skin is brown,” she told her. The three-year-old repeated it back to her. “I don’t work in a colorless world,” Summers said. “You can acknowledge my color because I acknowledge our color difference.”
Paisleigh came to her in June 2024, at 12 months old, and the plan on paper was reunification with her biological family. Summers started asking about adoption about four months in. “I’d have to push the thought out of my mind,” she said of the time before that. When she learned the girl’s middle name was Renee, the same as her own and her mother’s, she said, “I literally gasped.”
The court terminated the biological parents’ rights before the adoption was final. Summers has stayed in touch with Paisleigh’s biological extended family and says she hopes for a relationship with her biological mother. She has learned her daughter’s hair and how quickly her skin burns. “She is a mini version of me,” she said.
She is not pretending the two of them look the same. “See my heart and see hers, and just move with love,” she said.
