If you happen to follow my YouTube channel, you may have seen last week’s episode entitled “5 Facts about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.” If you haven’t had a chance to watch that yet, I encourage you to check it out, because it will give you some of the background on the topic we’re going to be focusing on in this episode, which is FASD.    Natalie Vecchione is an FASD parent advocate, podcaster, author, and, most importantly, a wife and homeschool mom of two. Natalie and her husband, John, built their family through domestic adoption. Their son, who is 19, lives with a FASD (Fet ..read more

Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 24 In the non-adoptive world, where people only know of adoption but have not actually lived as part of an adoption story, there is often a romanticization of adoption. Adoption is often sentimentalized and treated as a “happily ever after” story. But anyone living inside of an adoption story knows that adoption is a really complex topic with multiple lifelong ramifications, and there is no single “Adoption Narrative.” And while there is a growing body of work that focuses on transracial adoption and amplifying adoptees’ voi ..read more

Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 23 When people think about foster care, we usually imagine children removed from situations where they are being severely abused or neglected by their natural parents. We hear stories in the news about examples of horrific abuse or neglect, and we celebrate that these children have been rescued and placed in a loving and safe foster home.  But this narrative, while certainly sometimes true, is an oversimplification of the circumstances that lead to children being removed from their parents. It might surprise you to know ..read more

Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 22 It’s June, the month when many families celebrate Father’s Day, and in today’s episode, we’re focusing specifically on the role of foster fathers. My guest Jason Johnson is a writer and speaker who encourages families and equips churches in their foster care and adoption journeys. Jason currently serves as the Director of Church Ministry Initiatives with Christian Alliance for Orphans, where he speaks and teaches at churches, conferences, forums and workshops, as well as encouraging families that are in the trenches and t ..read more

 Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 21 It’s June, which means that Father’s Day is upon us. For many children in foster care, Father’s Day is a loaded holiday. Some have never met their fathers, if their fathers have even been identified. Others have fathers who are completely “out of the picture,” meaning they are no longer involved or engaged with their children’s lives. But why is that so common? Do the dads just not care?  My guest today is going to challenge every preconceived notion you have of the men whose children are in foster care. Marvin ..read more

 Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 20 Anyone who is involved with the world of adoption knows that adoption has lifelong implications for everyone involved: birth parents, adoptive parents, and, of course, the people who are adopted from one family into another. Until very recently, adoption was almost always shrouded in secrecy. The link between the birth parent and the adopted person was held in file boxes on the shelves of adoption agencies, paperwork that connected the adopted child to the parent or parents they came from. In order to access that in ..read more

  Special Thanks to my Patrons for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 19 You don’t need me to tell you that we are living in unbelievable times. The world is, in many ways, at a stand-still while people are strongly encouraged and even mandated in some places to stay home in order to flatten the curve of the spread of COVID-19. While this time of social distancing is affecting every sector of our world, for children in foster care and their parents, this season of quarantine means the suspension of in-person visitation, which is an integral part of reunification efforts. In some areas ..read more

Like this podcast? Please rate it on iTunes and become a $1+ patron on Patreon! Click here to learn more. Special Thanks to my Patron for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 18 When most people think of foster parenting, we think children who are experiencing neglect or abuse being removed from their parents and placed with someone else—either a foster parent or a relative caregiver. But there is another type of foster care that many people don’t know about.  Every day, over 40,000 families around the world are forced to flee their homes due to community violence, war, fami ..read more

Like this podcast? Please rate it on iTunes and become a $1+ patron on Patreon! Click here to learn more. Special Thanks to my newest Patron, Maureen, for supporting A Fostered Life! Episode 17 I have lost count of the number of times someone has told me that they really want to be involved in foster care, and they really care about foster youth, but they are not in a season of life where they can be foster parents. They wonder how they can help. How can you make a difference in the life of a foster youth without being a foster parent? There are a number of ways to answer that question, and m ..read more

A listener shared some really important feedback on my interview with Kevin, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I thought what she shared was really important and wanted to pass it on. Recorded live at Chicago O’Hare Airport ..read more