The Adoptive Mom

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!

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!