Spring announces itself with urgency. Trees leaf out. Lawns turn green overnight. The natural world signals renewal so loudly that the culture adopts the season as a metaphor for resilience—spring cleaning, fresh starts, new beginnings. For Plan B parents—foster, adoptive, and stepparents—this seasonal optimism can…
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson walked onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and became the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball. The Baseball Hall of Fame records that 26,623 fans watched him take the field that afternoon—more than 14,000 of them Black. Robinson…
National Siblings Day arrives on April 10, and social media will fill with childhood photos, inside jokes, and hashtags celebrating the people who grew up in the same house with the same parents. For Plan B families—foster, adoptive, kinship, and stepfamilies—the day carries a different…
Planting Seeds You May Never See Bloom Every spring, gardeners push seeds into soil and wait. They water ground that looks the same as yesterday. They protect plots from frost, pull weeds, and check drainage—all before anything green breaks the surface. Some seeds sprout in…
Spring invites us to open windows, clear out what we no longer need, and make room for what serves us better. Most people apply that impulse to closets and garages. Plan B parents—foster, adoptive, and stepparents —need to apply it somewhere deeper: to the invisible…
Starting tomorrow, the blue pinwheels will return to signal Child Abuse Prevention Month. Organizations share child abuse prevention statistics on social media. Lawmakers proclaim awareness. Schools distribute body safety coloring pages. And across the country, Plan B parents — those of us parenting foster, adoptive,…
I need a glass of water Most would think this is an easy statement with an easy answer. It should be. But, friends, it’s not! Recently I was on a flight to a work meeting. As usual the space was tight, the seats were hard and…
You probably didn’t expect parenting to feel like a siege. You opened your home, your life, and your heart. And then you waited — for connection, for trust, for the moment when something finally shifted. Maybe you’re still waiting to see your kids healing from…
Let's be honest. Some days our homes feel like a reality TV show nobody asked to audition for. The dog knocks over the laundry. Your child has a meltdown over the color of their cup. You realize — at 7:45 a.m. — that it's…
If you are a Plan B parent, you have probably had a version of this moment: you are watching your child struggle—with trust, with relationships, with behavior that seems to come out of nowhere—and a quiet fear settles in. What if the things that happened…
Every year on March 14th, people around the world observe National Write Your Story Day — a simple invitation to write about what’s on your mind. Founded in 2017, the day is a reminder to Plan B families that helping our children reclaim their stories…
As a full circle foster child, foster care worker and foster/adoptive parent, the life I have had has not been a walk-in-the-park. I lived many days as a child scrounging for food and facing shame in foster homes of other broken caregivers and youth. For…