Sometimes we find powerful applications for life in the strangest places. Like an airplane. Where we’ve gained a simple, obvious, yet profound illustration for self care!
This is a guest post by Jennie Owens. Jennie and her husband, Lynn, have parented over 100 children and worked with thousands of families. Together, they founded Forever Homes, a non-profit organization that seeks to support, encourage, and empower foster and adoptive families. Jennie has an MA in Education and extensive training in trauma-informed care and therapeutic parenting. She provides trainings at conferences, schools, retreats, and workshops.
This post is written by adoptive mom, Kristin.
The children we care for may need to spend time every week seeing a therapist to help them process their trauma history. This is a good thing. However, it begs the question…what about you? The caregiver? What if you need therapy to? How do you find this?
“I have both adopted and biological kids and I find my bio kids often get lost in the shuffle of everything we deal with as an adoptive family. How do we support them and stay connected to them?”
The journey started off on a good note, only to come crashing down on you a few months later. When you find yourself whispering, “I didn’t sign up for this,” where do you go next?
We know that children who have come from difficult places experience trauma, but what about you and I as parents? How do we handle the secondary trauma we experience as a result of the day in and day out battle of parenting them?
For the majority of the world, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is misunderstood and often judged. But, there are powerful truths that can change your life when you understand, and embrace them.
Along with providing content that enriches the lives of adoptive, foster and special needs parents, we want to be proactive about creating resources you can pass on to professionals, like a teacher or coach. So when our friend Michele asked us to make a video explaining trauma to teachers, we jumped at the chance!
This is an open and honest post by my wife Kristin. In the post, she chronicles our struggles with our oldest son, who suffers from mental illness. Our hope is that any parent reading this, who deals with this with their own child, will find hope and comfort, and a voice.
