Earlier this week, Madonna visited the opening of Malawi's first paediatric surgery and intensive care centre, that she named after her daughter Mercy James.
She brought 11-year-old Mercy James with her, alongside her other adopted children from Malawi, 11-year-old David, 4-year-old twins Esther and Stella and her son with Guy Ritchie, Rocco. Her eldest daughter Lourdes was not present.
In her speech for the opening of the centre, which was funded by her charity Raising Malawi, she made a speech talking about the trouble she had adopting her daughter almost eight years ago.
People reported that her moving speech discussed how she fell in love with then three or 4-year-old Mercy James and David in their respective orphanages in Malawi, and the promise she made to keep them safe,
As you may remember, though Madonna successfully adopted David fairly swiftly, her journey to adopt Mercy James was not as easy.
In her speech, she discussed how she believes sexism played a role in that difficulty,
The divorce she had just been through was with director Guy Ritchie.
She continued her speech,
In fact, it took Madonna about three years to finally take her daughter home and start their life together.
She noted that adoption laws in Malawi had not been reformed since the early 40s at the time of her appeals to the Supreme Court, ' So my argument was that women have been raising children for centuries, on their own … not to mention the fact that I was doing just fine raising my own three children.'
Her message to the crowd as she spoke of her daughter and her fight to get her, was that tenacity and good faith were sure to win out in the end, she concluded,
Mercy James also apparently gave a speech at the hospital opening, in which she called her mum 'the bomb' and ended with a dab.
Rocco also played his part by painting a mural on one of the walls.
Hearing the story of how Madonna came to find her children is truly heartwarming and her charity work appears as successful as ever.
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