Adoption og plejefamilier

"Becoming a Family" by Tetiana Kurylo is an invaluable journal written to provide unwavering support and guidance throughout the remarkable journey of adoption. Drawing from two decades of experience working with orphans, Tetiana has carefully gathered her extensive knowledge to help families navigate the complexities of embracing their new lives. With a deep understanding of the profound differences that can arise in the adoption process, especially with foreign adoptions, this journal serves as a trusted resource, offering practical insights, heartfelt advice, and compassionate encouragement.Through personal anecdotes, she compassionately conveys the realities and challenges that can arise during the adoption experience. She also shares her wealth of expertise, from the initial decision-making process to post-adoption adjustments, each step is thoughtfully addressed. She has a strong sense of compassion for adoptive parents and has seen personally the transforming power of love and resiliency in their experiences. These serve as the foundation for the advice she provides. Her insightful suggestions on family dynamics, cultural differences, and the emotional challenges during the process are informed by her experience dealing with orphans.This journal encourages self-reflection, providing prompts for meaningful conversations, and offering space for personal notes and reflections. Tetiana's authentic voice and compassionate approach create a safe space for adoptive families to navigate their unique paths, fostering a sense of community and empowerment."Becoming a Family" is an essential tool for anyone embarking on the adoption journey. Whether you are in the early stages of considering adoption or have already begun the process, this journal will equip you with the knowledge, support, and inspiration needed to navigate the challenges and celebrate the profound joys of building a loving family through adoption. Let Tetiana Kurylo's wisdom and expertise guide you as you embark on this journey, creating a foundation of love, kindness, and resilience that will shape your family's story for a lifetime.

A Child's Journey from Foster Care to AdoptionMy life tells the parable of a child who finds the ultimate adoption through being fostered. At the tender age of five, I was taken from the custody of my natural parents and turned over as a ward of the state. After years of searching for my identity, I was able to find it through my beautiful foster mother Jimmie. She showed me the way to an adoption that supersedes natural logic. Many that travel the road of foster care are lost and suffer from identity crisis. Unfortunately, some give up in their youth and commit suicide. Some remain lost and follow the same path as their biological parents. Others struggle until they come to a place of reckoning and die to their old life and morph into a beautiful butterfly. This is the journey to freedom I took in foster care. Unbeknownst to me, I traveled the same path as my biological mother. I came to the same fork in the road as she and had to decide whether to let the old man die or keep him alive. The decision was not easy, but it was doable. There were so many distractions and enticing worldly privileges that had to be denounced. My biological mother ran from her opportunity of new roots, but I decided to stick to mine. My new roots provided lessons and instructions that helped me become the improved woman and mother I am today. I have been adopted into a family larger than life itself, and I would have it no other way!

"A National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first nonfiction work: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her birth mother and learning the power of self-knowledge"--

You CAN Foster Parent Long-Term and Stay Sane! "A lot of ordinary days serving in your own home can actually add up to an extraordinary life." Part memoir, part call to action, and all practical guidebook, Simply Available invites you into a great adventure where you offer up your life and family to positively impact a child's future. The choice to offer generous hospitality by becoming a foster parent is a life-altering choice. You'll never see the world the same again. Parenting a child who has experienced trauma isn't simple. Lessons drawn from Abby's experiences in foster care and her mindset for fostering takes the guesswork out of how to build trusting and positive relationships with traumatized children, caseworkers, and biological families. With a direct frankness you're not likely to hear at any formal training, Abby helps parents: Consider the expectations they may have for working with foster children, biological families, and child welfare agencies.Evaluate the impact of foster care on their personal lives and family structure.Discuss foster care fears and contemplate the positive outcomes of fostering.Strategize about how they can show up fully for children who've been wounded.

From authors and speakers, Steven and Courtney Cohen, this companion Guide for Loved As You Are is designed for parents, teachers, counselors, family, and friends of children who have been adopted from hard places. This guide is designed to help give common language, empathy, compassion, and understanding for adopted or adoptive children, while equipping the reader with questions, background information of the illustrations, a scavenger hunt on every page, as well as ways to challenge the readers own precepts, beliefs, and understandings.Join Gif, the giraffe, on his perilous and providential journey to find his forever home - to discover what it means to be loved as you are.Family comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Adoption through foster care is one wonderful path a family can walk to come together. Even the storms and steep mountains of life your child has faced are part of the larger, colorful portrait God is painting of their life. Though God may not have brought the challenges their way, He can always make use of them for your child's good.Gif the giraffe, pronounced Jif, was first painted on our nursery room wall as we prepared for our first adopted daughter. He gained his name almost three years later when she would say goodnight to the animals and she called him peanut butter. Like that creamy substance on the roof of your mouth, the name just stuck.In Loved As You Are we are invited into Gif's journey of adoption through foster care. For kiddos who experience these unimaginable challenges and hardships it can become hard to see God's love for them or His bigger picture, sometimes making them feel hopeless or unloveable.But as we travel through this journey we find that not only is God with us in the most difficult of times, but He redeems them to be a part of His beautiful portrait and our testimony.Loved As You Are is also available on BookBaby.com

Born in Taiwan, Grace Loh Prasad was two years old when the threat of political persecution under Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship drove her family to the United States, setting her up to become an accidental immigrant. The family did not know when they would be able to go home again; this exile lasted long enough for Prasad to forget her native Taiwanese language and grow up American. Having multilingual parents-including a father who worked as a translator-meant she never had to develop the fluency to navigate Taiwan on visits. But when her parents moved back to Taiwan permanently when she was in college and her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she recognized the urgency of forging a stronger connection with her birthplace before it was too late. As she recounts her journey to reclaim her heritage in The Translator's Daughter, Prasad unfurls themes of memory, dislocation, and loss in all their rich complexity. The result is a unique immigration story about the loneliness of living in a diaspora, the search for belonging, and the meaning of home.

Along with blessings, adoption and foster care bring strenuous challenges. Whether you are an adoptive, foster, or even biological mom, Strengthening the Adoptive Mom offers help grounded on Scripture. Each short meditation highlights a key principle, bases it on a Bible passage, and helps you flesh it out in reflection questions and implementation ideas, making the book practical as well as thought-provoking. While intended for moms, counselors and pastors will find it useful in counseling.

Doris Howe is a missionary with Youth with A Mission. Her mission field is in Tyler, Texas at Loving Alternative Adoption Agency. She has been an adoption caseworker for over 24 years. Her main task is to minister to young women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. She is to love them, educate them, and pray with them. God's ultimate call for Doris is to introduce these young women to Jesus Christ who is there to help change their lives. An adoption may or may not be part of that relationship. Doris has two books published. One is called Adoption Joys they expected a miracle. The other is a family book called The Shaws Multiplied.

Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted. Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily. In You Should Be Grateful, Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees to share deeply personal stories, well-researched history, and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption, giving way to a fuller story that explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.

"Little one, I fell in love with you without even a glace. I'm so glad to be your mommy and to have this chance. This chance to raise you, and love you every day. I'm so happy you're here, in every single way."This is a story of a mother telling her child just how much she loved them before she met them.

When Michael Mewshaw receives a call from a stranger who says she has reason to believe he is her biological father, Mewshaw realizes he has been half dreading, half hoping for this to happen for over thirty years. Just like the young woman who wants to find the last piece to the puzzle of her life, he thinks its possible that in the same process he will discover the answer to questions that have plagued him for decades. But first he has to make sure that she is who she claims to be.In this fascinating memoir, Mewhsaw confronts his own past, the chaos of his family, and complicated memories of the woman he once loved who went on to success as an ambassador, Under Secretary of State and a member of one of Americas most influential families. His unusual role in the babys birth, her adoption and, now, her search for her biological parents sets the stage for a revealing personal odyssey that offers a quest for identity and a journey of discovery, an obsession with recapturing the past and righting old wrongs, the constant potential for disappointment balanced against the possibility of redemption. As he finds his old flame and her old lover, rediscovering who he was and who he has become, he finds his life enriched in the process.

Parenting is challenging in the best of circumstances. Adopted and foster children with early childhood trauma require a level of parenting that often feels impossible to attain. A diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder may feel like there is no hope. At times your child may seem unlovable, unteachable and unreachable. And creating a family with these damaged children so often feels like it will never happen.This book isn't designed to have all the answers to making a perfect family with your RAD child. It is one mom's journey with her son and trying to learn, love and heal both her child and her family. Through her story you will gain insights into:How to navigate through getting your RAD child the educational environment they need to be successful.How to deal with therapists who may not have even heard of reactive attachment disorder and be a champion for your child.And while it hopefully won't ever be necessary, how to work with law enforcement, attorneys, judges and the rest of the criminal justice system.Shannon Giles gives you a first-hand account of her life with a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder. To let other parents know they are not alone in the struggles and how she has advocated for her child for over 20 years. You will see clearly how it feels to love a child with RAD and why even at the worst moments, a parent never stops fighting for their child.

Though Kaity has only lived thirty-three years, she has already experienced so much life resulting in this book of encouragement! Life can get very dark and sad, but there is still beauty to be found. Despite the ups and downs she has experienced in life, the author has seen a path forward. From losing her dad at a young age to the struggles of adulthood, this book covers the extremely hard times and the best times.Kaity's story has many tough twists and turns, but also a lot of humor. Laughing through the craziness and watching the resulting miracles best describes life so far. The author hopes to leave you encouraged and uplifted!

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Duke family was a well-respected family on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Dr Mansergh Duke was a pillar of the local church. During the First World War his eldest sons fought in the army and navy. Then in December 1917 his eldest daughter fell pregnant. The family had to act fast to preserve its good name.

An eye-opening account of life in China s orphanages. Kay Bratt vividly details the conditions and realities faced by Chinese orphans in an easy-to-read manner that draws the reader in to the heart-wrenching moments she has experienced in her work to bring hope to these children. Dan Cruver, cofounder and director of Together for Adoption When her family relocated to rural China in 2003, Kay Bratt was thrust into a new world, one where boys were considered more valuable than girls and poverty and the one-child policy had created an epidemic of abandoned infants. As a volunteer at a local orphanage, Bratt witnessed conditions that were unfathomable to a middle-class mother of two from South Carolina.Based on Bratt s diary of her four years working at the orphanage, "Silent Tears" offers a searing account of young lives rendered disposable. In the face of an implacable system, Bratt found ways to work within (and around) the rules to make a better future for the children, whom she came to love. Her story balances the sadness and struggles of life in the orphanage with moments of joy, optimism, faith, and victory. It is the story of hundreds of children and one woman who never planned on becoming a hero but became one anyway. Kay Bratt continues to raise awareness and advocate for at-risk children. In China, she was honored with the 2006 Pride of the City award for her humanitarian work. She is the founder of the Mifan Mommy Club, an online organization that provides rice for children in China s orphanages, and is also an active volunteer for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for abused and neglected children. Kay currently resides in Georgia with her husband and daughter. "

"Dr. Jessica Pryce knows the child welfare system firsthand and ... breaks it down from the inside out, sharing her professional journey and offering the crucial perspectives of caseworkers and Black women impacted by the system. It is a ... confrontation of [what she believes is] the inherent and systemic racism deeply entrenched within the child welfare system. Pryce started her social work career with an internship where she was committed to helping keep children safe. In the book, she walks alongside her close friends and even her family as they navigate the system, while sharing her own reckoning with the requirements of her job and her role in the systemic harm. Through poignant narratives and introspection, readers witness the harrowing effects of a well-intentioned workforce that has lost its way, demonstrating how separations are often not in a child's best interests"--

A compelling account of two lifelong friends and adoptees using social media and DNA to find their birth families - and the struggle of dealing with what they found.

One person's drama is another person's life. Daphne Rae Meyers didn't ask for a life of pain and suffering. She is the definition of a victim. She was born into an extremely dysfunctional family. By age 7, Daphnes' mother relinquished her. Daphnes' father didn't fight for her. When she needed someone, no one was there. The result was adoption. Daphnes' entire family moved on without her. In an adoption, the child does not speak. Adults choose, claiming what is in the best interest of the child. In Daphnes' case, adoption was not the right fit. It was the only fit. Her adoptive family ended up worse than her family. Daphne paid for everyone's mistakes, every day of her life. She paid until one day she decided not to pay anymore. Everything comes out in the wash. Daphne spent a lifetime trying to repair what was not hers to repair. September's Child; Unlocked Memories, is a rewrite of September's Child; A Remarkably True Story. Years of counseling, with a diagnosis of PTSD, led to the rewrite of the original September's Child. There was too much left out of Daphnes' original story. It was imperative that the entire story be told. Every painful roller coaster twist, turn, and dip had to be told. Though she never returned home, she created her own home. A home full of love, acceptance, and loyalty. Everything she did not have as a child.

An inspiring adoption memoir for those who have loved, lost and laughed along the way to making a family.After her third miscarriage, Anna Maria knew that adoption was the only way to realize the family of her dreams.Precocious six-year-old Priscilla, brought to an orphanage in the hills of Mexico as a baby, said she wanted a home of her own. Could this be the family that they both have been looking for? Not so fast.To lose her biological mother and the women who raised her was a devastating blow. At the same time, her language, culture, food and friends vanished in a blink. Priscilla learns what it means to be a daughter and a sister. Anna Maria's skills as a mother are tested in a profound way.In this deeply personal and moving memoir spanning fifteen years, Anna Maria reveals her struggles in breaking down barriers to give and receive love.Love at the Border shares intimate family moments with candor and honesty - a powerful testament to faith, family, and our need to belong.

Voiceless Child. True story. Voiceless literally.Without pioneering surgery, little Heather could never talk. She had no family. A must-read! Compelling! Page-turner.When I met Heather: "Only abandoned." The words stung. Didn't the woman envision what they meant?>Heather's silent sobs puzzled me. I touched her pale fingers. In a fleeting moment, our eyes met, and her soul captured mine. Once home, I woke my husband and said we should adopt her. He protested. He thought the idea was absurd. Once he met her, he changed his mind. Little Heather was destined for an institution. Some staff thought she was deaf and blind and mentally damaged. She breathed through a trach tube in her neck. She did not even know how to move her fingers. Some dreams come true better than imagined. Heather not only survives; she thrives and grows up to have a family of her own. The book is about our struggle to adopt little Heather, and how we searched for a surgeon to restore her voice. Miraculous airway reconstructive surgery gives Heather the gifts of voice and swimming. Without it, she never could have talked, or swam with the dolphins. The story takes place in Florida. One chance meeting, and we transformed the life path of a forsaken child. More surprising is how she changed everything in our lives for the better as well. Despair, laughter, joy, bullies, and the best sorts of people paved our journey to restore Heather's health. The book is about love: that of an ordinary couple, family, friends, and one special surgeon. --Ann Giganti, author and Heather's adoptive mother Review by Janet Kortright: It was amazing!I could NOT put this book down. I read it in one night. Start to finish. I felt like I was a part of the journey, the family. I will read again and recommend to others. A feel good story that shows there are good people in the world. To advocate for children. To stand your ground to get the care needed for your children.