When 'Weeds' star Mary-Louise Parker decided to adopt a child, she was fulfilling a dream from when she was a little girl.

"I would daydream about it all the time," the Emmy-nominated star of Weeds, now in its fifth season, told PEOPLE – speaking for the first time about the subject – earlier this summer at a benefit for Worldwide Orphans Foundation
hosted by La Perla in Beverly Hills. "I thought about the fact that
there were children who didn't have anything, and I felt like I could
help. It was something that weighed on me."

So when Mary-Louise went to Africa in 2007 and adopted Caroline Aberash (a.k.a. Ash), it was no spur-of-the-moment decision. Ash joined older brother William Atticus. 

Yet Mary-Louise makes it clear that being a single parent isn't easy, but she feels it was worth it.

"It was something I did for the world and for my son and then for me,"
Parker, 44, said of adding a second child to her family. "And when I
say the world, I also mean my daughter. Once I knew her, she became
part of that.
But it's hard raising two kids as a single person. It's a lot of
pressure." 

What a wonderful gesture!

Photos by INF