Helping Kinship Families Untangle Memories

I will never forget the year my kids went to their great-grandma’s house for a long weekend, just before Christmas. And after the visit, fell apart just days before my most sacred and beloved holidays. Because I am a kinship adoptive mama, my oldest two children’s great-grandma is also my aunt, my dad’s sister. She […]

Every Move Leaves a Wound

Moving, even when planned, is considered one of life’s most stressful events. And for many children in foster care, multiple placements with foster parents and in group homes can be a common occurrence. Placement disruption occurs when foster, adoptive or kinship providers prematurely terminate care for a child, something that can be traumatic for everyone […]

Buffering the Effects of War, Community Violence

For children in the foster care system, the effects of stress, loss and violence are felt on an interpersonal level. Repetitive exposure to the images, sounds and stories of violence which play out in homes and the various media, can make it difficult for families to move through their daily routines, without experiencing feelings of […]

Falling into Place the Questions

Being a Black/biracial girl in a white adoptive family and living in a majority white community is difficult. Racial differences often meant I stuck out in a crowd and at the same time, I wondered if the people staring at me really saw me. As a transracially adopted person, I thought every family must have […]

Historic ‘Healing Tour’

Amid a thunderous beating of red animal-skin drums and powerful song, survivors of Indian boarding schools met in southern Oklahoma on a hot July day with the nation’s ranking official in charge of strengthening tribal self-determination in Indian Country and upholding the government’s treaty obligations to tribes. Hundreds of former students and their descendants had […]