Stable Moments Podcast

I had the privilege of sitting down with Keia Jones Baldwin from Raising Cultures. She offers a safe space for foster and adoptive families to discuss race along with any other traditional parenting issues. 

Take Aways:

1. Start having tough conversations. Find a space where you can ask what you need to ask about tough issues like racism so we can work toward being a more understanding and unified community.
2. Be Proud of who you are. It's not about all being the same, it's about honoring everyone's individuality and identity. People should be able to promote their heritage and ethnicity without people being offended. Stop taking someone else's self love as a personal attack on you. Just because someone promotes their identity doesn’t take anything away from your identity. 
3. Representation Matters. If you foster or adopt a child from a different race be prepared to make sure your kids see themselves in the world around them. Switch up your routine, child care, church family to better represent the family you now have. 
4. Love comes first. If you accept a child of a different race in your home, focus on loving them and building an attachment first! Take some time to have them acclimate to your family. Then be prepared to handle the racial issues that come up. 

Check out Raising Cultures on Facebook!

Hear Kenisha Anthony's story of how the multiple ways the system failed her, inspired her to make change. 

Kenisha is a first-generation college graduate, award-winning foster care advocate, and author. Known for being resilient and bold, she’s an outspoken activist utilizing her experiences to empower others. As a foster care visionary, she starred in the documentary, Foster Shock and has been featured on NPR and in the Miami Herald. Her eye-opening memoir, Labeled, is her debut.

She graduated from Florida International University with a master’s degree in Public Administration and Florida State University with a Bachelor of Social Work, and since she's been driving change. She has courageously taken her perspective as a foster kid and professional to show up to make the change I hope to see in the world.

On the podcast she talks about her journey, her book and her future plans to inform policy!

Today we sit down with Robyn Gobbel to discuss how parenting kids who have experienced trauma and kids who haven't the same. It doesn't matter if they are bio, foster or adopted, they all still need safety, securing and connection.

Here are some take aways.

The best thing we can do when triggered by our kid is to stop and assess what is going on with ourselves. Working on yourself will free you up to be more available for a child whether it is your child or just one you interact with.

Rather than focus on parenting a trauma kid or a biological kid, focus on knowing your individual child’s bar. What can you expect from them? What sends them over the edge? Where can you push them? And where do you need to accommodate them? These are pertinent questions to ask about any and all children.

Do you tend to be more structured or more nurturing. Understand how you tend to be naturally and understand where you can stand to be more nurturing or more structured. Nurture tends to be more easy for people so where can we build in more structure, boundaries while we make space for any emotions that come up so our children can feel safe and connected.

Visit Robyn on social @GobbelCounseling

Visits Robyns Site

In this episode hear from Melissa and Lisa from the Adoption Connection. The Adoption Connection provides post adoption resources and friends who understand. You will gain confidence in your parenting and hope for your family's future.

They offer hope, share wisdom, and mentor you foster and adoptive parents.

In this episode there are three major take aways:

1. Go Big or Go Home, but know when to go home
Foster and adoptive families typically go big or go home by accepting many, many children into their homes. It is okay to say no, or set boundaries for your family. If you have a current foster or adopted child, or if you have had one in your home in the past, you have ALREADY followed your calling. It's okay to focus on the family you have now, whatever that may look like. 

2. Peer to Peer support works!
It's difficult for or may not feel safe for parents to reach out to the agency for support when they fought so hard to get a child placed in their home. Real moms have a greater capacity for empathy and real life experiences that inform practical advice.

3. Parents have to be helped first. 
All the therapeutic, trauma-informed tools in the world aren't helpful, if the parent's needs aren't met. Parents need empathy and people to advocate for them before they are given or can be open to tools and teachings.

Lisa and her husband Russ are parents of twelve by birth and adoption (ages 11-31), and more through foster care. As a Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI®) Practitioner, she walks alongside families with kids from “hard places.” Lisa also co-wrote the book The Connected Parent with Dr. Karyn Purvis being released this July. This will be Dr. Karyn Purvis' last published works.
Visit Lisa's Website
Pre-order The Connected Parent

Melissa and her husband Patrick are parents to six by both birth and adoption (ages 11-20). Our open door policy has blessed us with lots of honorary family members along the way. They are Empowered to Connect Parent Trainers, but we mess up more than we get it right.
Visit Melissa's Website

In this episode we talk to Jason and Amanda Palmer who are both foster and adoptive parents. They also have their own podcast Foster Care: An Unparalleled Journey.

Jason and Amanda Palmer have been together for the last 20 years. Altogether they have laid claim to 7 full-time children and fostered roughly 20 kids in their home. Right now, they have 4 and 6-year-old boys Turtle and Twitch, a 12-year-old daughter Jahnyia,  and 14 and 19-year-old boys Desean and Austin. Our 21-year-old son CJ is married and our daughter Arissa would have been 23 this year. Amanda has worked with older ladies with mental and physical disabilities for the last few years. Jason is a local truck driver and a hobbyist blacksmith who has been seen on the History Channel’s TV series Forged in Fire. 

Together they were interested in looking into adoption at one point and found foster care to be the route they were meant to take. The first sibling group of foster kids ended up being their first 2 adoptions and eventually 2 more kids were added to their family.

They have been involved in foster care and adoption for the last decade but took a few years off when their oldest daughter died from a disease known as HLH. They have just reopened their foster license and are ready for the next chapter of life.

Melissa came into care as mental illness and substance abuse rendered her biological parents unable to care for her properly. She was in 3 foster homes in 2 years until she was adopted at four years old. She recalls what it was like to be in care and how being adopted has impacted her life. 

She tells the complicated story of trying to build a relationship with her biological father and the heartbreaking story of finally finding her biological mother. 

Melisa lives in a suburb of Atlanta, with her husband and two children. She is an infertility nurse, which she also talks about. It was interesting for her to see people spend tens of thousands of dollars on infertility when she knew kids like her were available. 

We also talk about the struggles of motherhood in general and how difficult the journey can be when we try to live up to the "social media" standard. 

In this episode we sit down with Judge Ashley Willcott to learn about how the courts play a role in child welfare. Ashley has a heart for children in Foster Care and has spent her career fighting for their well being. Ashley Willcott is a Certified Child Welfare Law Specialist and an experienced trial attorney. She has practiced in various capacities in juvenile courts since 1992 including as a parents attorney; guardian ad litem; a Special Assistant Attorney General representing the Department of Human Resources, Division of Family and Children Services; and currently as a Juvenile Court Judge Pro Tem. She is a 1989 graduate of Newcomb College, Tulane University with a degree in Psychology and English,  earning a Juris Doctorate from Emory University School of Law in 1992. She has also worked in the government sector as the on-going and current Georgia Supreme Court Justice on Committee for Children Cold Case Project lead; and as a Governor Appointee Child Advocate for the State of Georgia. 

Ashley has her own child welfare consulting firm, where she serves as an anchor on Court TV and as a legal analyst on many media outlets She is a highly sought after guest lecturer and speaker for numerous organizations and universities, dedicating herself to raising public awareness and tirelessly advocating for children.

Follow her on Linked In 

In this episode I speak with Nicole Hartman an amazing adoptive and foster parent who has a unique perspective on how important loving on and supporting biological parents is.
She has fostered 19 children and talks about the real obstacles and also how rewarding fostering has been.
After losing three babies of her own, she started a nonprofit All Embrace, to support families who suffered a loss during pregnancy. It was her own infertitlity journey that lead her to adopt and then foster. She brings us through three losses, three failed adoptions, finally adopting her baby girl and the 19 foster children who have been in her home.
Nicole believes that the way to end the foster care crisis is getting the right people at the table. People who create policies and laws rarely, if ever, have been personally involved in the foster system and that shouldn't happen. 

Trauma and trauma-informed are buzzwords and depending the context you hear them in they can mean different things. In relation to this podcast trauma refers to developmental trauma. That means trauma that happened during core years of development, usually en utero through 8 years of age. In this episode we discuss the impact of trauma on human development and explore some trauma-informed approaches we can take while interacting with kids who are in foster care or have been adopted. 
This is non-clinical and meant for the everyday person. Hopefully this helps you understand these children more, while giving you some practical tools to use when you engage with children surviving with trauma. 

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In this episode we talk about what lead me to start the Stable Moments program and it's very rocky beginnings.

After suffering trauma as an adolescent I was on a path of destruction. Horses saved me and inspired me to learn about natural horsemanship. Later I became a social worker, to help unseen people like me. The only job hiring was a post-adoption case manager, and I got the job. I learned about kids with trauma and was blown away by the correlations between natural horsemanship and therapeutic techniques to approach children with trauma. Thus Stable Moments was born, but not without some mayhem and drama. We live and we learn!

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