Showing titles in Adoption & Fostering

So, you want to help your child by therapeutic parenting, but how are YOU? This easy-to-follow, dip-in dip-out resource addresses common challenges and feelings experienced by therapeutic parents and offers 80 practical strategies to help you cope and survive. Best-selling parenting author Sarah Naish writes with humour and compassion, sharing her personal and professional experiences covering all of the essentials: self-maintenance, coping with isolation and rejection, scheduling holidays and, of course, the therapeutic importance of cake!

Born in 1938 and adopted soon after, Kate Foley grew up in London during WWII. The Don't Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions.

Ray Studevent grew up between two worlds. Born to a white, heroin-addicted mother and Black, violently alcoholic father, the odds were stacked against him from day one. When his parents abandoned him at the age of five, after living in a world no child should experience, he was saved from the foster-care system by his father's uncle Calvin, who offered him stability and a loving home. When Calvin tragically died two years later, it was up to his widow, Lemell, to raise Ray. But this was no easy task.

Baby Rosemary - born to an Italian teen and a married black man in Detroit in 1946 - is adopted from an agency by a black couple in Saginaw, Michigan. The adoptive mother's abuse instills in the girl, whom they name Marylin Elnora, ambition to achieve great things on her own. At age 19, Marylin sparks a racial and religious scandal by marrying former Roman Catholic priest Thomas Lee Atkins, who is white and 25 years older.

Adopted as an infant from Colombia and raised in the United States, Mariela Andersen has always been curious about her biological roots. She wants to know about her birth family and wonders if they ever think about her. When a search agent helps her locate her birth family and the mystery of her past is revealed, she discovers more than she could have ever imagined.

Belonging Matters is meant to support the adoption community, while creating a conversation with those not directly touched by adoption.

Faith to Foster is a candid look into the life of ordinary foster parents T.J. and Jenn Menn. It is a journey chronicling their decision-making process, how the children arrived, the birth parents struggle to rehabilitate, help from friends and family, emotional goodbyes, and how faith in Jesus empowered them through it all. TJ and Jenn share their experiences and feelings in a way that encourages any listener to serve their neighbors, not just foster parents. Faith to Foster reminds Christians how God can use them to make a difference in their community.

In this practical guide, adoptive parent Helen Oakwater helps you to understand the ins and outs of adoption. Using Helen’s insights and tips, you will become better at understanding what makes you tick, and learn how to become calmer, kinder to yourself, and identify what helps or hinders. Only when you have learned how to look after yourself can you nurture a hurt child.

From the sterile isolation of infertility and its treatments to the emotional rollercoaster of adoption and foster care, Rachel McCracken gets it! She gets the heartache and the sorrow of the desolate valley called Infertility. She gets the dedication and work that it takes to blend a family. She gets the commitment and purpose one needs to help children rise from the ashes of abandonment and fear. Rachel's new book, Chasing Kites: One Mother's Unexpected Journey Through Infertility, Adoption, and Foster Care weaves her real-life experiences of struggle, heartache, and loss into a wonderful narrative of faith, hope, and the joy that can come through it all.

Now a mother, Amelia takes her listeners on an emotional journey, of what motherhood means to her and how she used her own past as an example of "How not to parent". Amelia shares her journey in her well-known, candid manner. After suffering two great losses in recent times, Amelia weaves her emotions like never before, revealing her deepest, emotion-filled feelings of grief. The loss of two great people in her life came unexpectedly close together and tested Amelia's strength once more.

Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants—until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look at Keri Vellis's struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Listeners get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen.

Written as a narrative to my daughter, I wanted her to have the whole story. Where she came from. Why I placed her for adoption. And how, for the next 18 years, I hovered on the edges of her family, granted access by her generous parents, but always wanting more. More for her, and more for me.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis is used to looking after children from difficult home situations, but she finds herself struggling when she agrees to take in Taylor and her younger brother, Reece, for a short while. Taylor tries desperately not to fit in, to be the tough young teen that she has had to become, making it clear that she cares about nothing and no one, while Reece is just desperate for someone to love him.

A deeply personal and heart-breaking memoir that explores the troubled relationship between Mary Garden and her younger sister, Anna, who died in 2023 after a short illness. Mary unpacks her life of growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and ’60s, before making Australia home. She reveals complex layers of intergenerational trauma, including the baggage of her eccentric, deeply flawed father and the secret her mother kept from all of them, revealed only after her death. Mary deals movingly with her sister’s long battle with mental illness and how she once saved Anna’s life.

Harrowing, heart-breaking and often horrific were the challenges that confronted Marvin after his birth in prison. Born in distress, Marvin was wrenched from his drug-addicted parents and deposited into an orphanage. In this inspirational memoir, Marvin searches for his birth parents and battles his crack addiction with the help of the woman he loves, determined to start a family and to live his life crime and drug free.

While most people meet their child for the first time in a delivery room, some parents have to meet their child in the reception area of an administrative building. Not Always Happy is a humorous and sharp chronicle about adopting and raising a son with Down syndrome from the Maine foster care system. The author quickly learns that life is best lived by expecting the unplanned when she makes the decision to become a parent in her late forties.

This novel is a raw and vulnerable narrative of one's journey to become a mother. The author explores the peaks and valleys in building her family through adoption and biology. Each chapter provides insight into topics such as adoption, race, love, parenthood, spirituality, sisterhood, and loss. The overarching theme of resilience and perseverance amongst hardship, leaves the reader with hope that miracles are not only possible, but real.

Lessons in Gratitude tells the story of Aaron Dworkin, a MacArthur Fellow, social entrepreneur, and spoken word artist who has dedicated his life’s work to changing the face of classical arts in the world. The themes of persistence, passion, and loyalty shine through stories of an unhappy childhood, a lifelong search for identity, and the obstacles of race, culture, and class. Listeners will learn how the author greets these challenges and how they drove him to make a difference for people who are shut out of opportunity.

How does a woman go from a normal Midwestern mom to sitting across the table from a bounty hunter? That's what Kathleen English Cadmus wondered as she took one more surreal step in her quest to find and save her teenage daughter, Laura. The beautiful baby Kathleen had adopted from Korea was on the run again, fueled by another manic episode brought on by her bipolar disorder. Having already lost her son Shawn to a tragic accident, Kathleen couldn't bear the thought that she had failed to protect another one of her children.

Disruptors, entrepreneurs, and unconventional do-gooders, Drs. Jodi and Garry Vermaas are not the people you would expect to parent 12 children. From the child-trafficking slums of Manila to the barren corners of China to the baggage compartment of a long-distance train to Mumbai, each of their children has a tale to tell - if only they could find the words.