Author * Speaker
Today’s adoption question is from Beth: How do you deal with the fear and/or reality of the kids not loving/attaching to you, and you to them? *** Before The Cherubs moved in with us, when we were in the transition phase with visits on Wednesday nights & weekends, our kids declared that they were not […]
Read MoreToday’s adoption question: What have you learned about yourself through this process? That I hate conflict. This is not new information. But it feels newish, because sometimes the term parenting just feels like a code word for “being mad at someone ALL THE TIME.” I just don’t like being angry. My Dad is like this. He honestly […]
Read MoreBefore we adopted, I couldn’t have told you what I’d like about having children. I had hopes, of course. But they were more a sense of what life might feel like rather than specific dreams I could articulate. Once we were IN it, it wasn’t at all as I’d imagined. Some things were harder than […]
Read MoreToday’s adoption question is from Sarah: How do you handle questions your kids have about WHY? *** We had a really good plan for this. It fell apart immediately upon impact with reality, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. OUR PLAN was to focus on the positives. Not in a Pollyanna-ish way, but to […]
Read MoreTODAY’S ADOPTION QUESTION! Steve & I are often asked what advice we’d give someone considering adoption from foster care. It can be hard to answer, because I want to tell everyone all the things, yet I’m aware that each experience is really unique and not everything will apply. But yesterday afternoon I realized one thing that is […]
Read MoreWe put up our Christmas tree last night. It’s lovely and crooked, decorated by two Cherubs who are fighting mightily with their fear that we’ll disappoint them this Christmas. Fear that the presents won’t be right, or we won’t have traditions, or that this won’t be like they dreamed of when they heard they were […]
Read MoreLet me interrupt our adoption narrative for a check-in with present reality. When reading stories about justice, redemption, people helping people and good things coming out of bad, it’s easy to get romantic about it and imagine that things are PERFECT. By PERFECT, I mean that as you read, you are quite certain that none […]
Read MoreOnce Steve & I met The Cherubs, we began thinking about how to teach them about faith. About Jesus, specifically, and the Bible, and why these things matter so much to us that we’ve built our lives around them. The first step, we thought, was to find a church, one that would (hopefully) become a […]
Read MoreI am SO FRUSTRATED. This is going to sound like a rant, but really, it’s a cry for help. Or sympathy. Or knowing looks across the internet. Something. Okay, no…it’s a rant. I should just own that. Here we go. What the #$%^$ is the deal with school? Let me tell you about this week. […]
Read MoreI’m listening to a series of talks right now on “Effortful Growth.” It’s by my friend Jordan, and he’s arguing (in a nutshell) that we need to put some elbow grease into life if we want to be fruitful. Healthy things grow, as the saying goes, so we should want to do that. I’m in […]
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Trish Ryan 