I just had an amazing day. One of my favorite things ever is to speak to parents. And today nearly 300 people listened to me as I shared survival tips for foster and adoptive parents in a keynote speech and then presented two seminars. It was a long, full day, but I was energized because the people were so amazingly receptive. I love it when connections are made, when there is a lot of laughter, and when there are tears. Being a foster parent is a VERY HARD THING. Sometimes it's even harder than being an adoptive parent. And so having intimate conversations about important things that matter with a large group of people all at the same time is so very cool. The Indiana Foster Care and Adoption Association is a great organization full of good people who are having to fight some pretty tough battles.
So even though I am COMPLETELY bummed about not being in church tomorrow -- it's been SO GOOD lately -- it's been worth it.
And in honor of the great foster and adoptive parents of Indiana, if you go to our store to order our book and type in the word indiana as your coupon, you can save $3.00.
Not a bad deal eh?
2 comments:
Unfortunately, my experience in Indiana was rather poor. When we called and begged our local children's services organization for respite, help, wrap-around, family preservation services, etc., they told us flat-out there was nothing they could do to help us. Ditto when our post-adopt support worker from Texas called them.
In fact, their only "offer" of "support" was that we could turn our child over to them, they would prosecute us for abandonment, they would decide what was best for her without any input from us, and then they would bill us for whatever they had decided to do. Nice, huh? And I'm sure disrupting would have been SUCH a good solution for our daughter. Not.
Well, you will notice that my comments were not about the system in Indiana, locally or state-wide, but about the foster parents.
And one of the reasons is that they have to deal with the kind of system you just mentioned... It takes very hard work to care for children in that kind of environment.
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