“I have met my child’s birth mom and held her. I have cried with her and prayed for her. My heart is wide open. It has grown to love not only this child, but also her biological mother. I’m rooting for her and wanting desperately to help her break this cycle of life she is trapped in.”

‘In these 45 days, I have held my 2-year old while she was throwing up, during blood draws and X-rays. I have watched her learn to trust. I know what blanket she needs to fall asleep.’

‘This might sound like a weird question, but is he your son?,’ asked the gas station attendant, gesturing to my 24-year-old. We were in a town 3 hours away from where we live.
“I was surprised by her question, wondering how she would have been able to guess that. ‘Yes he is,’ I answered the young woman. ‘How did you know?’”

‘I was 11-years-old when I woke up in a haze from surgery. My doctor said, ‘You can always make love, but you will never have children.’
“There was never any indication of the ticking time-bomb hiding in my body. My parents whispered words of encouragement into my ears, even though I had one foot on Earth and one in Heaven.”

‘She handed him over to me, barely looking up. She knew I was coming, aware she would leave the hospital empty handed.’
“When I walked in, she began to cry. The cry of a child, just 18, who was losing something she wanted.”

‘Thank you for taking care of my baby’: Birth mother and foster mom ‘build lifelong friendship’ over love for ‘their’ child
“She insists Bradley will always have two mamas. She is confident enough in who she is to not feel threatened by another woman caring for and loving her child.”

‘Today was Mommy day and she didn’t come’: Foster mom recounts heartbreaking moment ‘little one’ feels ‘broken’ over bio mom’s addiction
“My Mama heart ached. I cannot take away the meth exposure, the scary memories or the bitter parts of this reality. I asked him what I could do to help. With the clarity and wisdom of a much older soul he said, ‘a hug Mama, you make it better.’”

‘Are you OK with this?’: Mom’s tearful goodbye to her foster son
“He was only supposed to be mine for four months. But then things changed.”

The call came at midnight, ‘We have a 3-year-old girl at the hospital. Her mom was shot, Her dad has been arrested. Can you come pick her up?’
“Calls from DHS are like a Create-Your-Own-Adventure Game. Each ‘yes’ takes your family on a wild new adventure you never expected.”

A love letter to single foster & adoptive moms
“What kind of woman chooses to upturn her life for someone else’s children?”

‘I said no to adopting my foster son, because I’m just a foster mom’
“The thought of saying good-bye to him breaks my heart, the idea of him not being in our family hurts deeply, but still, I said no.”