My husband and I have been adopting transracially for 9 years and have almost forgotten that our large multi-racial family is still an anomaly in the United States. On Christmas Day, our local paper ran an interview and published an internet slideshow about who we are and how we are living. I was amazed at [...]

Tree, gifts, spiral ham and sparkling cider – we are not talking about gross excess here, but the simple things that are a traditional part of our culture. It’s the question of spending money that does not absolutely have to be spent while we are facing the inevitable reality of significant bills related to adoption.

Our homestudy is done, we have a referral with photos and medicals safe in our file and we are simply waiting for the God-ordained time between today and the moment we either hold baby J as our own precious child or release him into a destiny outside of us. He is currently in a legal [...]

After six adoptions, I have a stronger empathy with the pain that birth families experience than I have ever had before. With the pleasure of a new child I now have a larger reserve to experience the suffering their placement brings. I pray for the families more and I cry over their realities. I see that but for grace, it could be me releasing a child into a future without me — and my heart crumbles.

‘Am I making a terrible mistake by adopting transracially?” This is one of the hardest questions that adoptive parents ask me. It is layers deep and generations long. (more…)

Teaching our transracially adopted children to embrace their racial identities is a daily, intentional and God focused part of our parenting (more…)

Transracial adoption didn’t need to change my life. But I am a better parent and my family is stronger because it has. (more…)

Yesterday I had the opportunity of participating in the webinar that Carolina Hope’s director Laura Beauvais-Godwin did for families who are considering transracial/transcultural adoption. It was a good experience for me, and I hope that those who participated gained a little insight into the world of parenting children who don’t look like us. Personally, I wish [...]

When we began adopting transracially, our families were very alarmed, and they didn’t hesitate to tell us. They were concerned about us being naive and unrealistic. About our ‘perfect’ one-boy-one-girl family being rocked so hard that it would be destroyed. They pointed out that with college expenses rising we couldn’t educate more than two — [...]

There are many countries and adoption programs that are closed to our family due to our income, age, family size and ethnicity. It is probably good that they are closed, as I have been accused of a tendency toward ‘adoption addiction’ — and it just makes it easier to find the specific paths that God [...]

It’s been a long week, with more than the usual adoption issues to deal with and more than the expected number of stares and comments from strangers. I sat down on Tuesday to have the ‘Where Babies Come From,’ discussion with my three oldest kids and realized that even there I have to think through [...]

Severely disabled, non-responsive, and unknown life expectancy. These are some of the technical words that define children many of my friends have adopted. These are the hard cold facts that fill the endless pages of their medical histories and that would have condemned them to limited lives in hospitals and other such institutions, except that [...]

Why would I, living in landlocked and frozen MN, buy 6 tickets to the Carolina Hope – Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb concert this Friday? Maybe I hatched a wild plan to fly out to the coast for the weekend with 5 of my closest girl friends. Sounds fun, but it doesn’t fall within [...]

Sometimes I forget when I am talking with people about transracial adoption (or parenting in general) to share the happy quiet moments as well as the hard ones. When I stop and watch, I see that my family has them every day. Sandwiched in between the training and the conflicts, the school work and the [...]

As the mom to 6 adopted kids I try hard not to be afraid when I need to research Attachment Disorders and all of the psychologically disruptive things that this diagnosis can indicate. Rather than reacting out of fear, I have learned to process what I learn with a sober mind and a [...]

Who would have thought that figuring out how to verbally identify our children’s racial identity would be another one of the hard things about adoption? It seemed simple at first, they are African American and we are Caucasian. Then it got tougher, two of our children are also Cherokee Indian and two have unidentified fathers [...]

I couldn’t endure this parenting journey for very long if all I had were the Monday realities to look forward to. I thank God that for every Monday of transracial parenting there is an opposite and hope-filled Friday calling to me. Fridays are the promises fulfilled, the dreams unfolding and the needed rest from what [...]

This is my ‘Monday list,’ todays top 10 tough realities of transethnic adoption that affect my daily life and weigh the heaviest on Monday. I know that all of them are manageable through Christ, but sometimes (especially on these long winter Mondays) they are seem a little overwhelming.
I will share my ‘Friday List’ [...]

One of the questions I hear all the time as a transracially adoptive mom is, “But what about their hair – can you do it yourself?” Our 6 adopted children all have variations of kinky, curly, African hair. The color ranges from dark brown to deepest black and the texture ranges from very soft to [...]

“Why am I in this family anyway?” Words casually thrown to me over the shoulder of my 8 year old as he disappeared up the basement stairs with the umpteenth load of clean laundry.  This is the child that God is using to sharpen me and break down the self-sufficiency that I suffer so dreadfully [...]