The Adoptive Mom: Recent Episodes
Alex Fittin
The Adoptive Mom Podcast is a show for mamas (and dads) in the trenches of adoption, those considering and walking toward adoption, and the tribes that support us through this wild ride.
Subscribe now to get every new episode directly to your device!
Be sure you're signed up for:
emails https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/community
Patreon https://patreon.com/theadoptivemom
Stock up on AMP merch: https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/shop
Follow along on social media: https://www.instagram.com/theadoptivemom/?hl=en | https://www.facebook.com/theadoptivemompodcast
Y’all. It’s happening. It’s time for season 7 of AMP to come to a close.
For our finale, I really wanted to sum up everything we’ve been talking about this season. In addition to going through all 9 numbers, finishing up with Jeanette Tapley last week on Enneagram 9s, we have spoken to experts like Suzanne Stabile on how we can treat our stress numbers since we as adoptive moms are often dealing with tough situations and trying to handle them with grace and love. We’ve talked to Beth McCord about how God has gifted each of us with an attribute of His own to reflect Him to the world. We talked to Joey Schewee on how we can look at our kids and families through the lens of the Enneagram, and we are wrapping it all up by chatting all about rest and how we can truly refill and recharge and get ready to go back out there and be the Warrior Moms that we are.
I’ve been able to ask just about every guest this season how they find true rest, and I always include the caveat that I don’t mean surface-level rest and self-care, but real-deal rest.
Here to chat with us all about this for each number is the incredible Ryan Mayfield. Ryan sat down to tell us our core longing based on our number and how we can overcome this longing through Jesus and find that true rest that we crave...https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/ryanmayfield
9s are easygoing, complacent, calming, and amazing listeners. They always strive to make their environment peaceful and inviting for everyone. Literally, everyone. They are welcoming and want all to feel invited, included, and safe. Since they are the crown of the Enneagram, so to speak, they hold qualities of all of the types and can get along easily with just about everyone. They seek to understand others and hold space for their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs to be validated and heard.
I am so excited to re-introduce you guys to Jeanette Tapley. She’s going to talk to us all about being an Enneagram 9 on this adoption journey! She told us her entire adoption story back in season 3, so you can listen in on that if you haven’t already and then hop on this week’s episode to hear all about Enneagram 9s and adoption!... https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/jeanettetapley2
Enneagram 8s are called The Challengers. They are motivated by the desire to protect themselves and their loved ones at all costs. They also feel a strong pull to remain in control of their own lives and trajectories, and this makes their basic fear of being controlled by others to be hurt by others.
8s are the highest energy number on the Enneagram, and they get much of this energy from confrontation. They are quick-thinking and take a direct approach to everything, and they REALLY appreciate it when others take a direct approach with them as well. They are less relational and more resourceful than other numbers on the Enneagram, which gives them a unique perspective of seeing things logically AND being motivated to do something about it.
All of this is why they make amazing adoptive moms! They protect their people with fierce loyalty and they seek to keep the world a safe place for those in their care. Adopted kids need this kind of protection and safety in their lives!
Here to chat with us all about being an adoptive mom and Enneagram 8 is is the one and only Olympic gold medalist, Wheaties box alumni, and incredibly awesome human being all around, Laura Wilkinson! If you want to listen to Laura’s complete adoption story, you can check out episode 67, but today, we’re talking all about being an Enneagram 8 on this crazy adoption ride we’re on as adoptive moms.... https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/laurawilkinson2
We women take a lot of credit for being superheroes in the adoption world (thank you, thank you), but dudes are quite the heroes, themselves. Most kids from hard places bring a lot of dad-related baggage to the table. Abandonment, abuse, the list goes on. Adoptive dads can often feel set up for failure when it comes to caring for their kids.
On top of all that, society has trained them not to have feelings or emotions or safe places to talk about the hard stuff and get support. Men are set up for success in so many ways in this world, but dealing with the pain of being on the front lines of trauma is not one of them.
That’s why we started the Dudes Who Adopt series, to give men a voice and representation that this is tough and they are not alone in it.
This is still the Enneagram season though, so yes, while our dude representatives talk about…well, dude stuff, they also talk about their specific personalities and the nuances that come with being a 3 (Bryan) and an 8 (Ryan) in the adoption world.
Enneagram 4s are thought to be the least represented number on the Enneagram. Since they are withdrawn, moody, and struggle to know themselves, they tend to be among the most misunderstood as well.
They are marked by a distinct desire to bring beauty and creativity to the world around them, which benefits everyone they love as well, including their adopted kids. They are more comfortable than most with darkness and hard times and struggles, so they are amazing at walking others through their pain without being pulled down in the process. This makes them amazing listeners who aren’t afraid to sit with their people in the face of trauma...https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/shannonguerra
We 1s are an interesting bunch. I feel like we get labeled as a lot less fun than we actually are. Most of the 1s I know, including myself, are social, reasonable, funny, and charismatic, but how do we balance the desire to be all of those things with our other desire to be good, just, and righteous?
Kara-Kae James and I are chatting all about it this week. We are also of course talking about how our 1-ness influenced our adoption processes and how it impacts our lives now as adoptive moms...https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/karakaejames2
I teased in the last episode that there would be a lot of episodes with specific, practical adoption tie-ins coming. Well, little did YOU know that one would be coming the VERY NEXT WEEK... https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/suzannestabile
This season of AMP is dedicated ENTIRELY to The Enneagram. You will hear me give an overview of the Enneagram in the episode, and I will link to additional resources (as always) down below. But what I really want to talk about is that lady up there, Whitney Charles!
SO usually I bring you a guest for the season premiere that is a bit more known, so why am I introducing you to someone new for this one? Because she and I have partnered up to bring to fruition something that encapsulates the entire point of the Enneagram: to understand ourselves and others better to build community and connection....
https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/korierobertson
When I started The Adoptive Mom Podcast, I made a list of names that I really wanted to have on the show some day. They were big names of incredibly influential people in the adoption world. Today, I can cross one of them off my bucket list.
Korie Robertson was on that list because I am continually amazed at how she lives out her family’s adoption story in subtle but influential ways. Always just living it out in grace and love and letting us all have a glimpse into how she does it.
Even though Korie and her husband WIllie had a huge platform in their hit tv show, Duck Dynasty, all 3 of their adoptions happened off-screen, so they got to just casually showcase their family and life, and influenced countless adoptions because of it.
I am so excited for you guys to listen in on this amazing finale’ episode with sincerely one of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasre of talking to, Korie Robertson!
Today I get to collaborate with Kandace Lecocq from the Adoption Hacks podcast! Kandace is doing amazing work on her show by featuring experts in the adoption world and teaching the masses how they can join the adoption community. Kandace and I did an episode for her podcast as well, and that of course will be linked in the show notes. So give this episode a listening, and while it’s playing, go to Adoption Hacks and subscribe to stay in the know with everything Kandace is doing.
https:theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/natalievento
Being an adoptee is a journey in and of itself. Being an adoptee with a dream of motherhood and adopting is another journey. Being an adoptee with a dream of motherhood and adopting and infertility issues is another journey. Being an adoptee with a dream of adopting and a husband who doesn’t share that dream is another journey. Being an adoptee with a dream of adoption going through a divorce is another journey.
It’s safe to say that Natalie Vento has lived a whole lot of journeys packed into a short amount of years.
She’s sharing it all with us in this week’s episode, so buckle up for a roller-coaster of an adoption story in-the-makin
interview with CEO Brendan Synnott about his adoption story and ethical clothing company, Pact.
interview with Katherine Wintsch about her book, Slay Like a Mother and her research on motherhood and shame and all the things we go through as moms
Interview with Gina Heumann about her memoir, Love Never Quits, about adopting and raising a child with RAD.
Alright Guys, who’s ready for season six of the adoptive mom podcast? I know I am! Ready to know when it’s coming? NEXT WEEK! That’s right, one week from right this very second, you will have a brand spanking new episode of AMP in your podcast feed and I hope you are so super pumped because I am like doing cartwheels over here.
Let me tell you what you can expect from this season, cause y’all know I have almost all of the episodes already recorded and on deck for you. This season, we are going to be chatting with bloggers and influencers, authors, CEOs, social workers, birth moms, counselors, and, maybe a celebrity or two! Not to mention lots and lots of adoptive mamas doing the very best Kingdom work by saying yes to Jesus, standing in the gap for the least of these, and raising the actual future of this world. It’s jam packed with goodness and I can’t wait to get it to your ears starting when was that again? Oh yeah! Next week!
So let me tell you guys about some updates happening over here.
First off, let’s talk about Patreon. Now I know, this is a fancy word that you may have never heard of, but it is actually spelled phonetically and way less scary and intimidating than it sounds. Patreon is simply a service that allows me, the creator to get premium content to you, the listener in an easy-for-everyone way. So when I first launched, I did what a lot of creators do with patreon and I threw a bunch of stuff out there and saw what stuck. I had multiple tiers, or levels of support, different types of content, etc. But, over the break, I took a survey, evaluated the situation, and made some changes, so here is a quick explanation of the new patreon:
First, there is the $5 per month level: This will get you a 5-day Bible study guide each and every week, even in between seasons of the main show. It also gets you a special bonus episode that I record each and every week to follow up on the topic from the main show.
Next, there is the $7 per month level. This gets you the Bible Study, the bonus show, PLUS: a monthly Q&A with me and a guest, fun and hilarious bonus interviews with every guest from the main show, you’ll get the Monday episodes in your feed a week early, and you will get a whole brand new show called America’s Mom! What is America’s Mom, you ask? Well let me and America’s Mom herself tell you about it!
AMERICA’S MOM TRAILER
So obviously I am super psyched about that, and if you are already a $7 supporter, or AMP Best Friend, you already have the first two episodes of America’s Mom in your Patreon feed! So head to Patreon.com/theadoptivemom and sign up to gecho premium content now.
Before I sign off for today, I want to mention something that’s going to be coming up later this year with The Adoptive Mom, and that is a Small Group initiative. If you follow me or the podcast on social media, you have probably seen me posting about AMP Groups in specific areas of the country. That is because we are testing the group structure in just a few locations for season 6 and getting ready to launch it to the masses, that’s you! In the summer. I will have more information to come later in the season, but if you’ve been wanting more adoption community and support not just in audio form, but also in-person, I’m going want to talk to you about AMP Groups!
Ok guys, I am so excited to connect with you over the next season of the podcast and to share with y’all about everything going on with The Adoptive Mom as a company, and I will talk to you next week!
www.Patreon.com/TheAdoptiveMom As an adoptive parent, I have come to know that for something as beautiful and restorative as adoption to happen, something else has to be broken and wrecked first. Someone has to lose their child in order for someone else to adopt them. That’s what God was trying to tell me that night. He had to lose His perfect Son to the sinful world so that we could be adopted by Him and be saved. Christmas IS magical, but first it had to be devastating. It was the night that Jesus became separated from God and made “lower than the angels for a time” (Hebrews 2:9). It was the night that changed everything.
For us, Christmas is when we praise God for sending His Son to save us from our own sinful nature, and for God, it’s the night His heart was broken so that we could be made whole. I wept that night and several times since at the thought of sending my precious newborn baby boy away from my safety to die. That’s when it changed for me. I began to see Christmas with eyes better attuned to its magnitude and complete holiness.
Oh Holy Night, the stars were brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.
Long lay the world, in sin and ever pining, till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.
Interview with Adrian Collins about her journey from birth mom to bio mom to adoptive mom to re-adoptive mom.A s a birth mom and adoptive mom, she writes and speak about the complexities of adoption and making peace with choices that bring heartache. She is both brave and blemished, learning to accept her imperfections and live each day to the fullest! She loves to read and travel and drink coffee.
Every week over on Patreon, I do a bonus show for Team AMP - the AMAZING listeners and supporters who choose to invest their cash money in helping to produce the podcast starting at just $5 a month. Today, I wanted to give all of you guys a preview of what these shows are like! They are always a deep-dive on the topic discussed in the regular show, and always chock-full of research, practical tips, and my heart for the issue. They usually run about 10 minutes long and go along with the Bible Study Guide for the week that Team AMP receives every Monday morning.
In this AMP Plus episode, we’re deep-diving five different ways that support systems can offer help and assistance to adoptive families.
www.theadoptivemompodcast.com Interview with Camille Lancaster about their story of adopting their sponsor child, who turned out to be deaf.
www.theadoptivemompodcast.com Kelli has a background in marriage and family therapy, and as a fellow adoptive mom, she is a perfect person to walk alongside mamas and help them feel love and connection through these hard times.
She and her family waited over SEVEN YEARS to bring their baby girl home from Ethiopia, and that long, hard waiting process is part of what we talk about in his week’s episode. She describes to us how difficult it is to walk with the Lord when your soul feels like it’s being ripped out of you and when you can’t see the overall plan. She describes the “after the airport” times and how we can often forget that there’s more than the finish line of bringing a child home. She talks about these things and so much more in our conversation together, and I can’t wait for y’all to hear it!
The title of Shannon Guerra’s book includes “Understanding and supporting attachment in adoptive families.” So when I sat down to talk to her in our interview, I was expecting to talk about attachment parenting and other Connected Child-y type stuff, but that’s not what happened. Instead, we talked about the journey we go through as moms of kids from hard places. The journey of feeling let down by unmet expectations, and of realizing what “hard” actually means, and of learning to love someone who can’t love you back, and of finding your people who are really your people. It was like a breath of fresh air to talk to someone on the other side of the country to experiences the exact same things I do (with her own specifics, of course). It’s validating somehow to know that my struggles are not unique and that we are in it together, even if we don’t even know each other.
Shannon Guerra is an author, wife, ministry leader, and mama to eight kids via birth and adoption. She and her husband Vince live in Wasilla, Alaska, where they spend their time reading, writing, homeschooling, ministering to families, and wading through cats and small children.
Every season, my husband Bryan takes over the show and does an interview with a fellow stellar adoptive dad. I love love love getting to feature these because as much as moms are often overlooked in this adoption thing, dads are too! Their role is often seen as support for their wife and kids, which is fair, but they have a crazy important role in raising these kids and showing them Jesus in a broken world. These kids have often been hurt by their earthly bio fathers. In many cases, they will never know who their bio dad is. So that’s the groundwork that Bryan and his guests tackle in these special episodes.
Today’s episode features Charlie Loften, an adoptive dad and adoption advocate in Northwest Arkansas. He and his wife Heidi have two biological daughters and one adopted daughter. They obviously have a lot of fun together.
Charlie is also a pastor who makes it his mission to break down stereotypes of what pastors can do and say and fight for. He and Bryan talked about how to forge community among adoptive dads and make it genuine and real and not just a place where guys feel like they have to be buttoned-up and only share the good things or their wive’s struggles.
I hope y’all love these dads episode and that they are great to share with your guys and for you to gain insight on the guys’ side of this adoption thing!
You know those people that you follow online that aren’t like, famous or anything, but they are to you because you’re so familiar with and inspired by their story? So when you meet them after YEARS of online stalking, it’s like meeting an actual celebrity? That’s me with Marissa Ruper.
Marissa and her husband Abe have been adopting older kids from Ethiopia since long before our journey started. She wrote about it on her blog which I found randomly and followed religiously. She didn’t write on it often, so when she did, you knew she had a major update on the roller-coaster of international adoption.
I think that for a lot of us, “the need” feels so overwhelming, right? Like sure, we could do a small part of whatever, but what difference does it even make? Does our small donation really help? Does our sharing of all the articles that float around social media have all that much reach? Haley Coon believes it does. They are an adoptive family, but that just wasn’t enough for her. She felt the pull to do more to raise awareness and CASH MONEY for foster care and adoption. Enter: Restoration Threads. Haley started her t-shirt company in 2018 and has grown it like crazy over the past year and a half. Designing and creating and selling t-shirts with messages of hope written on them and then donating LIKE A TON of the proceeds to different nonprofits is her game. They have been able to help so many companies doing the absolute most and in turn, countless kids in need.
I love to laugh, and I follow several comedy pages on Facebook and Instagram, one of which is Dry-Bar Comedy, a page dedicated to promoting stand-up sets that are more on the clean side. So there I was, scrolling through Facebook as I do, and I see a stand-up routine with adoption in the title. I tapped it to turn the sound on and I sat through the whole set talking about hilarious and inappropriate responses to incredibly inappropriate questions that we as adoptive families get all. the. time. SO FREAKING FUNNY.
I reached out asking for an interview and Lucas himself responded, which was so cool! We got to talk about their adoption story and how important it is to highlight the ups and downs of the adoption world in different ways that people can understand. His is through comedy, which I just love.
Every week over on Patreon, I do a bonus show for Team AMP - the AMAZING listeners and supporters who choose to invest their cash money in helping to produce the podcast starting at just $5 a month. Today, I wanted to give all of you guys a preview of what these shows are like! They are always a deep-dive on the topic discussed in the regular show, and always chock-full of research, practical tips, and my heart for the issue. They usually run about 10 minutes long and go along with the Bible Study Guide for the week that Team AMP receives every Monday morning.
In this AMP Plus episode, we’re deep-diving on the topic of fear and how it affects us as the adoption community. When you glance over what we do every day, fear makes total sense, right? I mean, we do really hard things day-in and day-out. It’s what we signed up for, but that doesn’t mean it’s not scary as crap. We invite evil itself into our homes in the form of brokenness and pain and destruction. We ask for hard times and hard questions and hard circumstances. That’s so scary, you guys. There are ALL THE WHAT-IFS wrapped up in that.
So how do we keep from allowing that fear to cripple us? Let’s find out together!
www.TheAdoptiveMom.com Do you ever get yourself into just a pit of fear and frustration and paranoia that the worst is bound to happen any moment now? That’s how Scarlet Hiltibidal has lived most of her life as well. It was such a deeply-ingrained part of her being that she continually has to overcome that she wrote a whole book about it. Not just about her fears, but about how she has learned to hold the gospel up against them.
One of my favorite things about Scarlet is that she’s afraid, but she’s a fighter. Even through her fears, she does such hard things and fights through them. In her episode, she talks to us about these fears specifically with adoption, and how she shows up to overcome them and be a warrior for her kids every single day.
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com Beating what many said were impossible odds in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, Laura, starting in eighth place and with a broken foot, came from behind to win the 2000 Olympic platform gold medal. Laura has also won the 2004 World Cup and the 2005 World Championships, becoming the first woman in history to win all three coveted world titles in platform diving. Along the way, she has won 19 US National Titles, been voted by the American public the 2000 US Olympic Spirit Award winner and was nominated for an ESPY award. Laura has also been inducted into five different Halls of Fame including the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Laura and I got to talk about her story and how she makes it all work with being an adoptive mom and dealing with the unique circumstances that come with that and training for the freaking Olympics (No big deal, right?). I love her heart for blending the aspects of her life together and including her children every step of the way.
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com If foster and adoptive parents are like the regular superheroes of this world, then single foster and adoptive parents are like actual Superman himself…the ultimate superhero. (Don’t @ me with Thor, they’re in different universes and that’s not the point.) Single parents not only step up for battle…they do it with even less support. Add in a lifetime of trauma, and you have Peter freaking Habyarimana.
Sometimes in adoption we are handed really hard circumstances. There’s unknown trauma, abuse history, really unsettling diagnoses like RAD or ODD, the list goes on. But what happens when you get a hard diagnosis that is completely separate for adoption circumstances? Like cancer? Or Autism? Or a genetic condition?
In this week’s episode of The Adoptive Mom Podcast, we’re discussing just such circumstances. Between my experience with my son’s Marfan’s Syndrome diagnosis and my guest Ann Meythaler’s daughter’s cancer battle, we had a lot to talk about.
https://www.patreon.com/theadoptivemom This is a BONUS episode following my conversation with Heather McFadyen(S5E1) about " How to Talk to Your Spouse About Adoption." This is a weekly show I'm doing for my Patreon supporters and you can join in! I have a study guide that we will launch weekly a well to help you make the most of the topics we cover. This is all for YOU! Thanks for supporting what we do here at AMP!
I want to welcome you guys to the fifth season of The Adoptive Mom Podcast and give you the sincerest THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for the support, encouragement, and partnership that you guys have gifted to me these past two years. I can’t wait for you guys to see what we have in store for this season and I’m thrilled to death that I get to take you along for the ride! Heather and I got to chat about her family connections with adoption and then her personal story of trusting God and letting go of a desire to adopt when it wasn’t what her husband wanted. She beautifully paints a picture for us of the sadness that comes with a broken dream and the relentless love of Christ to walk us through pain.
For those of you less in the know: Dubbed a “warrior princess” by author Michael Lewis in his best-selling book The Blind Side, Leigh Anne is the inspirational matriarch of the Tuohy family. Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy are the proud parents of daughter Collins and sons Michael Oher and Sean, Jr. In February 2013, Leigh Anne and the whole Tuohy family were on the sidelines cheering Michael and the Baltimore Ravens on to his first Super bowl victory.
https://theadoptivemompodcast.com/blog/leighanntuohy
Ok you guys. I’ve covered all of the other major therapy disciplines, but I’ll be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where PT fit it. My son is in PT, but it still seemed like more of an outward issue, not a trauma issue (with the exception of some physical abuse stuff of course). When I talked to Kristi Harris a few months ago, I asked her what her thoughts were. I knew she was a PT and I knew she had an amazing adoption story, but I just wanted to make sure this topic would be applicable for you guys. Kristi was like “Girl. Let me just tell you how applicable this is.”
Today I am excited to introduce you you Casey Douglas! Casey is a data analyst and a wedding photographer - two things that obviously go hand in hand. She and her husband are also therapeutic foster and adoptive parents to teenagers. Yes! That ripe old 27 year old up there!Her heart for kids from hard places that are what many would and do call “Unadoptable” is profound, and I can’t wait for you guys to hear about how she and her husband care for “the least of these.”
HAPPY BIRTH MOTHERS DAY!
This coming Saturday, we get to honor, either directly or in our thoughts and prayers, the women who brought our children into this world. No matter what our experience with her is, she deserves our love and respect for giving our children life. Today I have a couple of different guest interviews for y’all. The first is with that guy up there. Josh Bryant is an attorney, adoption ethicist, and adoption reform advocate in Northwest Arkansas. He spent several years practicing family law in which he did adoptions on behalf of adoptive parents. He is also an adoptive father of two children, so he has experienced adoption from that perspective as well. He also has one biological son, and he and his wife Megan live in Northwest Arkansas. My next interview with with Andrea (my mom) and Michaela from Shared Beginnings. Mom and Michaela are no rookies to the podcast, but since their episodes, they have partnered up to launch Shared Beginnings, a nonprofit whose goal is to support birth mothers with legal help, life skills help, and more.
Christie Erwin’s deep love for children led her and husband, Jeff, to become foster parents in 1993, for a private, non-profit adoption agency. It was there that the foundation for Christie’s passion and driving concern for children in foster care was laid. After fostering for eleven years with the private agency, the Erwin’s became foster parents for the Arkansas Department of Children and Family Services in 2004. They fostered over fifty children during their twenty years of fostering.
It’s time yet again for our seasonal Dads Episode! Y’all went crazy over this last time, so guess who’s back? Back Again…Bryan’s back…with a friend.
Sorry. But you guys! get excited to meet C.R. Braniff. You guys met (or already knew) his wife Angela back in season 3, and now you get to meet the other 1/2 of the This Gathered Nest power couple.
We are finishing up the Trauma Series this week!
Y’all, I don’t know about you but it has been so good for my heart to talk to professionals about the things our kids go through, learn that we’re not alone, and get tips and tricks for walking alongside them as they go through these hard struggles.
This week, we’re getting to hear from Megan Taylor about Oppositional Defiance Disorder.
ODD is something that I do not personally deal with in my home, but I know a lot of listeners who do, so I am so excited to hear what you guys gain from this episode!
As for my amazing guest:
Megan has worked as a Licensed Professional Counselor and Marriage and Family Therapist for several years. Her experience includes time in ministry, various roles in the non-profit sector, the local education system, and private counseling practice. Megan has a heart for “kids from hard places” and is trained as a designated TBRI (Trust-Based Relational Intervention) Educator, focusing much of her counseling practice walking alongside foster and adoptive families as well as those recovering from the impact of trauma.
She has also served as a volunteer trainer for the CALL and also has experience training various sectors of the community both domestically and internationally with trauma-informed models of care that seek to mitigate the effects of pain, stress, and trauma that often threaten our ability to thrive personally and professionally. She also currently serves as a member of the advisory board for the Children’s Advocacy Center of Benton County.
Our girl has been married to her husband, Nic, for 11 years and has 2 boys- Jack (6) and Chase (3). She loves new adventures and spending time outside with her kiddos, running, mountain biking, and travel.
www.theadoptivemompodcast.com Trauma is stupid. There, I said it. I think we can all agree that trauma can just eff off, right?
The worst part of trauma is that it actually rewires our brains to react and live our lives in a way that is shaped by, you guessed, trauma. This dumb thing can present itself in different ways, too. So there’s no like “Oh, you have trauma? Well I know exactly how to handle that.” None.
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com Do you deal with trauma in your home?
If you’re an adoptive mom, the answer is yes. I know, you’re probably thinking “I got my kid as a newborn, we’re all they’ve ever known.” but the body remembers, and there will still be trauma there. As we learn more and more about our brains and how trauma affects them and when it affects them, we begin to realize how aware we should be to our kids’ needs in this area and how best to meet those needs.
This episode will be the first of 3 episodes fully and completely on different types of trauma disorders that our kids can struggle with. This episode in particular is discussing trauma disorders stemming from pre-natal dug exposer, alcohol use leading to fetal alcohol syndrome, and in-utero physical abuse. Who better to talk about these things than a neonatal expert?
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com Do you struggle with minor issues in your own mental health while also caring for the mental health for our kids from hard places?
That’s a lot of prepositions, I know. But that’s also what my friend Ashley Brettin and I are discussing today!
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com I want you guys to meet my new friend, Ashlee. She’s the coolest, seriously. In addition to being an open-to-adoption foster mom, she and her husband have 3 bio kids, 2 goats (yeah), and she runs an awesome business sharing online deals and steals to save us money on women’s fashion, kids clothes, home decor, gifts, and more!
Do you have adopted kids with needs that are just…more than “normal?” As adoptive mamas, we quickly become so familiar with kids who are not neuro-typical and just require a little bit extra. Extra therapy, extra patience, extra care, extra attention, extra caution…the list goes on.
That’s what Jac Ernst has built her platform on.
www.TheAdoptiveMOM.com/email Look at Jolene - She just * looks * organized, right? That’s cause she is, friends. Jolene has this incredible talent to take a problem and find solutions to the chaos in order to survive crazy seasons and stay in the fight.
That’s a lot of words, sorry. I’m just so excited about this episode!
In her life before foster care, she was a CPA. Now, she parents 7 children in her home, plus a 23 year old foster who is launched and on her own. She also works for The CALL in NWA as their Database and Finance Coordinator, and does contract work for a CPA firm on the side.
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com Meet Leah Burry. She is an Occupational Therapy Assistant who has taken it upon herself to deep-dive into sensory education within her career. She and her husband are also licensed foster parents who specifically provide respite care for other foster families. She’s pretty awesome and I am so excited that she got to sit down and talk about respite care and sensory needs for kids from hard places.
I really wish there was a good way to type out that “in the club” airhorn noise. You know the one. If I could, I would put it right here because oh my goodness y’all SEASON 4 IS HERE!!!!
What better way to celebrate than by featuring Kara-Kae James??
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com Essentially the entire point of this podcast is to talk about families who do not share biology, this this episode will take it a step further. When they collectively adopted a large sibling group, the Meredeth, Crow, Hutson, and Baxter families combine to form one big, happy family.
In this episode, I got to sit down with the women of each of these families to talk about their dynamic, why it’s important to keep their kids together, and how they make that work.
www.TheAdoptiveMomPodcast.com This week, I had the incredible honor to interview Kamilah Bunn, the CEO of The Adoption Exchange Association which runs, among other things, the National Heart Gallery.
Kamilah and I got to discuss what adoption looks like on a larger scale and how the AEA helps bring awareness to the need and resources to those who step up for kids who need families. They work with The Dave Thomas Foundation and several other organizations to reach as many kids and parents as they can get their hands on to further this incredible initiative to which we have all said yes in some capacity.
I hope you love getting to hear from someone doing the work nationally to help us doing the work locally. Also, be sure to check below for links and resources on everything the AEA has their hands on!
Chuck and Amy have two biological and two adopted kids, and Amy recently shared about their disrupted adoption experience as well.
Chuck and Bryan chat about manhood and fatherhood and what those roles mean for this incredibly hard calling to which we’ve all said yes. They also answered some listener questions crowdsourced from social media, and, bonus, they’re both hilarious.
I have to tell you about my husband Bryan really quickly too. He is just my favorite person on earth (Shocker, right?). He is so smart and business-savvy, but he’s also cool and trendy and funny. He has his own podcast on photography and also owns and manages Go Rogue, a digital marketing consulting and production company. I’m pretty proud of this guy if you couldn’t tell.
I hope you love listening to these two chat about what it means to be a adoptive dad.
www.TheadoptiveMomPodcast.com On top of having two daughters, the issue of being able to protect yourself hits close to home for the Ivys. When Britt was raped in college, she thought she’d never get past her trauma. Even after she married her husband Z and was in an assuredly safe environment, there was still a gap in her life as a result of what happened years ago. It wasn’t until their family dove into Gracie Jiu Jitsu that she began to fully heal.
www.theadoptivemompodcast.com In part 2 of our series on disrupted adoption, we sit down with Randi Perkins. Randi and her husband Lloyd have 3 boys, none of whom are adopted, but not for lack of trying. Randi had a tough few years where she waited out a hard season of following the Lord that ended in 3 disrupted adoptions. From really hard behavioral problems to some spiritual warfare issues, Randi had to learn to follow God wherever He led her.
First up, a VIP of the show, Amy Butler. You guys fell in love with Amy back in season 1, and she’s here on this episode to tell you guys about a much harder part of their adoption journey, one in which they chose to disrupt a placement for the health of their family.
The finale interview of part 1 comes from Rachel Kirksey. Rachel and her husband Ben never opened as an adoptive home or even as a foster home officially, but they did say yes when God literally dropped a young boy on their doorstep and asked them to take care of him. Through a really tough seasons, Rachel learned that yes to God doesn’t always mean what you think it will.
Abby Hutchins is a freshman in college and still living at home with her EIGHT siblings, only one of whom is biologically related to her. She was old enough when her parents started their adoption journey to be fully aware of what was going on and how different her life was starting to look like.
www.theadoptivemompodcast.com www.theadoptivemompodcast.com/email Glen Koster has an incredible story, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. It’s incredible that one human could go through so much and come out alive, healthy, and loving Jesus in the end.
In her episode, Jeanette and I chat about her story and about how adoption has influenced her podcasting and how she shares her story with the world. This woman is doing really cool things, and I am so honored that she’s including me in some of them!
Today’s episode is all about kinship adoption and all of the intricate relationships that are affected as a result this unique type of adoption.
I am so excited that I got to sit down with Missy Worley. Missy is an adoptive mama through foster care and also, of course, by adopting her oldest daughter who is actually her biological niece. The kicker is, Missy and her husband took placement of their now daughter while they were still engaged. So crazy, right?
Missy was able to share with us what their story has looked like for her personally, for their marriage, and for her relationships with her biological family members who have feelings and opinions about their adoption journey.
I am in love with their story and faithfulness to God’s calling on their life and their marriage and am so thankful for all of her amazing wisdom that she was able to share in her episode.
I love that Christine is using her voice to share her experience and change the stigma that so many birth moms before her and even still now struggle with as they are making the hardest decisions of their lives. I can’t wait for y’all to join us for Christine’s story!
There is so much controversy surrounding our attitude toward birth moms, and it completely revolves around our own experiences. Whether we have an open adoption with our kids’ bio moms, an international adoption where we may never know what their situation is, a domestic adoption where the mama wanted to sever ties, a foster care adoption where rights were terminated, or anything in between, we as adoptive parents should strive to be always so grateful that these brave woman chose life for their children and brought them into this world.
Most of my interviews are happy ones. They come with beautiful adoption stories, practical tips and advice, and success stories. This episode has those things too, but it also has a story of great loss and heartache.
I say in the podcast intro that every adoption story looks different, and that is obviously very true, but some adoption stories look WAY different and come about in wild and crazy ways. That’s what this episode is all about! I got to interview 3 different adults who have 3 very different adoption stories.
First, I want to introduce you to Kanya Carlson. Kanya and her husband Ty are high school sweethearts have 4 kids of their own and are occasional respite parents for their foster parent friends. Kanya is also the Children’s Ministry Director at her church, so she gets to help raise lots of kids in that capacity as well.
Meet Sarah McGooden! Sarah is married to Nate and is a bio mom of 4, but she definitely has her share of difficulties in the parenting realm along with us adoptive mamas. Along with all of the regular mom stuff, she is also an SLP at an elementary school in an incredibly high risk district. She sees and treats kids from hard places all day every day.
My first guest for SEASON THREE (!!!) is Angela Braniff. Angie is a creator and vlogger over on Youtube, a lifestyle and beauty blogger, and an Instagram baller. Oh yeah, and an adoptive mom of course! She and her husband Chris are parents of two bio daughters and 5 adopted kiddos from all over. I’m pretty sure they entered some sort of contest to see how many different adoption avenues they could take. They have adopted internationally (and special needs, to boot), domestically, and also via embryo adoption, which was a first for me to learn about!
I love giving you guys episodes filled with stories from adoptive moms who are there with you in the ups and downs of this beautiful and messy adoption life, but it's important to remember that we aren't the only characters in this thing. There are lots of people who are affected by our decision to care of the least of these, and for this episode, we will focus on an important support system, friends.
One of the most important things I did for myself and my family along this journey was to seek out a woman to disciple me, a woman who has been through this crazy journey herself and could pass that wisdom along to me (please please pleeeease). Enter: Carole. I doubt she knew how important our coffee dates would become to me, but I'm so glad we made it work.
Episode three of this podcast is going to be a little bit different, but it contains a story that is so close to my heart. Often along this journey, we get caught up in one side of the picture: ours. We forget that with our joy comes brokenness for someone else. That's not to say that we are the bad guys by any means! But it is so important to remember the mamas who gave birth to the sweet babies we call ours.
What it's like when you keep getting life's curveballs in the midst of trying to do God's work of adoption. Cancer, marriage separation, community support, career drama...the works. We learn how Ann is leaning on Jesus through all of these trials.