From Foster to Forever

Just a quick message of thanks and gratitude for supporting the show and an update on what's next.

We're currently working on a Season 2. I am also finishing up an offering that I hope to have out in early summer:

Two new books:

From Foster to Forever: Surviving the Journey (A handbook for Parents) and

From Foster to Forever: A workbook to help you decide if foster-to-adopt is for you.

I'll have a pre-order link up as soon as it's available.

In the meantime, if you have already left a rating/review wherever you listen to the show, thanks so much! If you haven't yet, I know we're all busy but it really helps get the show out to others and I would really appreciate it - plus, it's good karma! :)

Finally, if you know any folks with awesome foster to adopt stories who might like to be on the pod, please send them my way.

That's all for now. Bye!

I couldn't think of a better way to close out Season One than by sharing Stacey and Demi's unique story. It begins when Stacey was a new teacher in her first job. Demi was a pre-teen with a challenging family life. At school she was "always in trouble", but Stacey found a way to connect with her. When Demi ended up needing a foster home, the only person she could think of to call was Stacey. And so began their life together.

This is such a great conversation because we have both Stacey and Demi, able to share their story from both sides, foster mom and adoptee, with the gift of perspective and hindsight. They have such a beautiful relationship and they're both so strong and wise.

In the episode we delve into their twisty and often tumultuous road to forever. We talk about the difficulties on both sides of the relationship, growth and bonding out of chaos, and learning how to trust and feel safe. The "honeymoon" period vs. the reality of day to day living.

Demi dispels myths of all foster teens being into drugs and drinking and also discusses why she and her sister weren't placed together and what their active relationship with her birth family looks like today.

We touch on defiance, counseling, challenges, baggage, establishing a rhythm, routine and boundaries, and unconditional love, as well as healing, recovery and Demi's own journey into motherhood - and the many insights that is bringing.

It's such a rich exchange, and I'm so grateful for their openness and vulnerability in sharing their story on our show. I can't wait for you to listen.

This is a very special episode because it features our first nanny, Morgan, who we met when she first arrived in LA from the East Coast. Morgan found out about foster care and foster-to-adopt through working for us and decided it was something she felt called to do. Her husband agreed and shortly after becoming certified, they received Ventura County's 13th ever Safe Surrender baby. They went through the process and adopted him and have since gone on to foster multiple children, providing a safe and happy home for them, and attempting to adopt when possible.

Morgan and I both love talking and could have gone on forever! Some of the topics we cover are:

-Safe Surrender Babies

-Life-books, and how to talk to your adopted children about their story, history and birth family.

-Traumatic injuries and supporting children who have sustained abuse and have special needs.

-Visits, reunifications and attempting to create relationship with birth families.

-Integrating siblings and explaining foster carer to other kids in the family.

-What it takes to be a foster parent.

-Talking with extended families and friends about your choices and why they are right for you.

It's a wonderful episode chock full of information, wisdom and lived experience.

This episode tells the story of Amy and Tiger, two creatives who "met old" and wanted to start a family. With money constraints, they found their way to foster-to-adopt, and after an arduous fostering process, were able to adopt their daughter.

We discuss so many topics on this episode:

-The feeling of "otherness" that can sometime occur as an adoptive family.

-Transracial adoption and as white people, some ways to support an African American child.

-Tokenism and representation in the media.

-Their long journey through the difficult foster care system. The stress and trauma, and how they fought through it.

-Visitations, overnight visits and the delicate and sometimes confusing relationship with their daughter's birth family.

-"Bird-nesting" and co-parenting amicably through divorce

Since recording this episode, I wanted to share some resources on the topic of transracial adoption. As a transracial adoptive family ourselves, my husband and I are committed to continuing education on this topic, including listening to adult adoptees.

-The family camp I refer to in the episode:

Pact Family Camp

https://pactadopt.org/pact-camp/

I have since learned there are many of these types of camp. This one was recommended by our Foster Family Agency, Extraordinary Families.

-An excellent resource regarding hair care and maintenance for white parents with black children is Ms. Terria Roushun Epting. She has a book, a workbook and a course (that I'll be taking soon!). For all her offerings, visit her website https://terriaroushun.com/ and follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/terriaroushun

-To learn about the life and experience of a black woman adopted by white parents, her search to find her biological parents and why white people need to be educated on the transracial adoptive experience, read "You Should Be Grateful" by Angela Tucker . I listened to the audiobook, which she does a great job of narrating! She also has many other offerings, including a podcast, which are discoverable here:

https://www.angelatucker.com/

Follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/angieadoptee/

I'm sure there are many more valuable resources out there, so please don't hesitate to share them with me and our listeners. It is a lifelong education process. If you feel we've gotten anything wrong in this episode, please call us "in" and let us know how we can do better.

I'm committed to learning and growing in this space, as well as educating others. Thanks!

Jay Shindell found fostering by "accident". The single dad was only originally going to do emergency placements but soon after welcoming the first baby into his home, he was in love and wanted to adopt. He survived multiple placements, supporting many birth families and helping them get on their feet before finally finding his son (who you can hear cooing sweetly in the background throughout the interview!).

Jay talks about how he dealt with loss, how he remembers and honors the children that have been in his home and how he has found a passion for fostering and foster-to-adopt. He also discusses being an older parent, and being open and honest with his employers, who have been very supportive of his journey and needing time off.

Jay is still in the last stages of finalization with his son. We're looking forward to celebrating with him soon!

Jesse and Hope have been foster family advocates for years, helping others to navigate the foster-to-adopt journey, after adopting two children of their own through the Los Angeles foster care system. Indeed, they also helped my husband and I when we were embarking on ours, sharing strategies for everything from what questions to ask when considering a placement, to interfacing with the County and more. It was wonderful to meet again after so many years and discuss the foster-to-adoption process.

In this episode, we hear their story and talk about going through the county vs. a foster family agency, being older parents, the difficulty of reunification and the loss of a child in your life, in utero drug exposure and special needs, meant-to-be-coincidences and synchronicities that helped them trust and know they were on the right path to adoption and how they knew that their second and third placements would be permanent.

They also share about their short film "Family: A Love Story", about their foster to adopt process, directed by Sarah Prikryl.

Kira Cook always knew she wanted to adopt. She decided to foster-to-adopt soon after having a biological child. In this episode she details the difficult reunification of her first foster daughter and how she subsequently found the child that would become a part of her forever family. She talks about the challenges of working with the foster care system, maintaining the birth order between children, her pre-conceived notions about drug exposure and gives advice about how to move forward if someone is interested in pursuing this path.

Ted and Carlos adopted Daniel when he was eight through the foster care system. His parental rights had already been terminated and he'd been through multiple failed placements before arriving in their home.

On this special episode, we get to hear from Daniel, himself, about his experiences, as well as chat with Ted and Carlos about the joys and challenges of adopting an older child who has been in the system longer and how they surmounted difficulties through love, patience and perseverance. They talk about the "honeymoon period", behavioral challenges and helping Daniel get off lots of medication. They discuss how they bonded as a family during the pandemic, and "family fun day", a family tradition they developed when they were getting to know each other that they still try to continue today. They also touch on homophobia and how they deal with it, as a family with two dads.

Ted is an old friend of mine from my college days of studying in London. I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to interview him and his beautiful family.

In part two of my initial two "mini-sodes" to kick off this podcast, I interview my husband and best friend, Joe Fulginiti.

Joe and I already knew we hit the lottery with our relationship. When we began to struggle with fertility challenges, health issues and carrying a pregnancy, we wondered if we could just be happy being child-free. We did a lot of soul-searching and figured out we still wanted kids. That set us off on a quest for how to do that. We researched many different avenues for starting a family and eventually arrived at the one thing we didn't want to do originally: foster-to-adopt. After so much loss, we were very afraid of getting hurt more, putting all our love, attention and energy into a relationship that could be "taken away". Eventually we figured out the mindset we needed to cultivate and maintain to successfully take the journey, regardless of whatever happened in the end. We learned that what we wanted was secondary, and that our job was to support the child

In this episode, we share our story, we talk about mindset and how it evolved, challenges and coping strategies within the foster-to-adopt paradigm, and how lucky and grateful we are to have two amazing children. We briefly discuss neurodiversity, as our daughter is on the Autism spectrum.

In this inaugural episode, I introduce who I am, why I decided to start the show and how my family came to foster-to-adopt. I give a brief background on my career as an actor and then a voice actor and audiobook narrator as well as my relationship with my husband and our surprise struggles to have children. I go on to detail how the intentional building of our forever family unfolded over the past decade.

I share other options we explored for starting a family, such as IVF, "straight adoption" through a lawyer, open adoption and surrogacy, and how we vacillated but finally arrived at the tough decision to foster-to-adopt. Other topics include how we prepared for the journey and why we chose to work with a foster family agency, as opposed to going directly through the County. I discuss my fears about saying "yes" to a placement and why I said "no" five times before saying yes, employing some wise advice I received with regards to that. I then talk about what it was like to be in the process of fostering, including some of the challenges and ups and downs as well as the mindset I learned to cultivate. I describe the magic, signs and synchronicities from the universe all along the way that let us know we were on the right track to finding the children meant to join our family, and how it felt to finally arrive at adoption.

I also discuss safe surrenders, as my second son was safely surrendered by his birth mom, something we were told never to expect and that rarely ever happens.

I am so grateful to be able to bring this show to you, to share my family's story as well as the stories of seven other amazing, happy families in Season One of this podcast. My hope is that it will be informative, inspiring, and educational for all who are interested in this subject, which is very dear to my heart.