I stretched uncomfortably, cramped from an uneasy night in the chair next to my foster daughter’s hospital bed. What had started as a stomachache had turned into immediate gallbladder surgery and an overnight stay. Everything seemed to go well, but we were still waiting to…
I went for a jog today. It was a fresh, misty, slightly-chilly day. My favorite! It always feels great to walk outside for fresh air and open space where the only sound I hear is the beautiful tone of music I have singing in my ears. Not today….
I once told one of my foster daughters something my grandmother had told me years earlier. She got quiet for a minute. Then she admitted that it had been so long since she’d seen her own grandmother that she’d forgotten what her face looked like….
None of us planned the path that led us into foster care, adoption, or a blended family. Many people call it a wrong turn. I call it Plan B parenting. There is an old aviation nickname that captures this better than any parenting book I…
Suppose one of your kids takes forty dollars from your purse and lies about it for a week. You forgive him quickly. What you shouldn’t do is leave your purse open on the counter again. Global Forgiveness Day fell last week on July 7, and every…
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, had no idea how it would go. They were committing to a revolution whose outcome was genuinely uncertain. They could see what they were fighting for. They could not see whether it would…
If you are my friend in Kansas and surrounding states, you get this…literally. Many, many days we see multitudes of continual rain engulfing much of the roads and fields we see each day. And, even though today glared the light called sunshine, overflowing rivers and newly…
Tom Rawlings and I recorded a six-part podcast series for YSO Academy, and all six episodes are now available. The series is called “Cultivating a Culture of Safety,” and it walks through the full arc of building a child protection program from the ground up….
I spent more time than I’d like to admit trying to figure out what my foster children were doing wrong, and what I was doing wrong, before I started asking a different question. The question wasn’t why they were behaving badly. It was why their…
Recent revelations that a Maine US Senate candidate had an account on Kik, described by NBC as a “notorious chat app,” once again highlight the need for adults to protect children from the very real dangers of social media. In particular, Kik —where users can chat anonymously…
Juneteenth is one of those holidays I am never quite sure how to honor. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and told the last remaining enslaved people that the war was over and they were free. It was a remarkable moment…
May I remind you—–it’s okay! Whatever it is that you are feeling, thinking, fearing, hating, or loving I want to offer you a reassurance in the fight towards resilience by saying–it is okay! We all need to hear this. May we all read it, speak it,…