Five years ago today… Five years ago, at 7:30 a.m., I hugged my daughter and told her to drive safely. “Ok Mom. See you at lunch time!” Five years ago, at 11:00 a.m., two DPS officers came to my work with “something important to talk to me about, regarding my daughter.” Five years ago, at …
Tag Archive: child
Mar 06
Another mother grieves
Our little town – and the world – has suffered the loss of another remarkable young lady, and another mother has joined the most horrible club on earth: the club of grieving parents. I am so very sorry for this woman whom I have never met. She lives in my town. Her daughter was friends …
Oct 07
Raw grief and the struggle to accept
Two months you’ve been gone from this world. … The anger that everyone talks about, that all the books and counselors say is “normal” after a loss, has nowhere to go in me. I have no place to focus this anger, so it stays inside, winding me ever tighter. I find myself short-tempered, waspish, mean-spirited. …
Apr 07
Adoption immanent and worth the wait
For those who have been following my ‘adoption adventure,’ I finally have good news. I will be soon be adopting a nearly-9-year-old girl – exactly the child I had hoped for when I began this adventure. As a recap, I began this journey more than a year ago as a direct response to the loss …
Mar 09
Adoption wait too long: ‘System’ should be called ‘Chaos’
“How is the adoption going?” I hear the question nearly everywhere I go. My response is… “sigh.” I haven’t updated the saga for several months in hope I that I would have a definitive answer – a child to announce! But alas, no… not yet. The obstacles are many, and all are out of my …
Mar 01
‘The waiting is the hardest part’
I am in a holding pattern. After spending months going through interviews, training classes, home visits, paperwork nightmares, background checks and so much more, I am finally both licensed for foster care and certified for adoption. Those designations came within a couple of weeks of each other about a month ago. I celebrated, thinking I …
Feb 24
A 10-year-old plus two teens equal a happier me
And suddenly, everything is different. Ok, maybe not everything, but significant changes have occurred. My small house (1,400 square feet) is now home to two additional people. Three women and a girl are now sharing one and a half baths (the “half” has only a sink and toilet – we are limited to one bath …
Feb 22
Make a difference, mentor a teenager
What can a person do in four hours a month? Wash the car? Sweep the front porch? Take out the trash? Read a few chapters? Watch some television? How about change a life? Volunteering to mentor a high school kid takes a commitment of at least four hours a month over the span of a …
Feb 17
“Shopping” for a child – the system is flawed
How does one choose a child? I have been writing about my journey toward adopting a child since last August. It has been a long and sometimes tedious road, but I’m nearly at its end, or rather, at the beginning of my second adventure in parenting. Having lost my own daughter to a tragic car …
Feb 02
Get over grief, have a ‘replacement child’! I don’t think so….
I know they mean well. Their hearts are certainly in the right place; it’s their misunderstanding of the situation that leads them to make the comments they do. Some background is probably necessary. My eldest daughter was killed in a car accident in May of 2008. Several months after that, I began the process of …
