A powerfully moving collection of miracles on the road to adoption. One minister’s faith journey through doubt and fear to abundant and surprising motherhood. If she can do it, so can you.

Adopted as a newborn, Sam’s parents, Ken and Janie Brown have a vision of the life they want to create for their son. Their hopes are dashed when Sam turns thirteen and no longer wants to be a part of the family. Like getting hit by a tornado, the Browns are blindsided when Sam drops everything that used to be important to him—friends, family, sports, and hobbies. Feeling hopeless and frustrated, Ken remembers the promise he made to Sam’s birth mother—to raise him right. But as Sam’s unpredictable behavior escalates, it gets harder for Ken to keep his promise. Sam’s moods are unpredictable: He runs away in the middle of the night, gets in trouble, and has to face the consequences that include getting expelled from school, going to treatment, being sent to a county home school, and landing in jail. Unfortunately, Sam’s problems become his father’s problems too! In the beginning of the story Ken (in recovery) behaves co-dependently. By working the 12 steps of AA, Ken learns to press the pause button when life becomes unmanageable. He finds going for long rides on his motorcycle provides relief from the constant pain in his heart. Unexplainably, the wind on his face, talking to strangers, and connecting with nature, all help him to cool-down and regroup. By the end of the story, Ken has acquired new tools that help change his behavior when Sam acts out. The tools include setting boundaries, conflict resolution, and letting go. Ken learns to let “life” teach Sam the lessons he needs to learn. The Forever Dad is a true rite of passage story told straight from the heart. Read how Ken shares his experience, strength, and hope about the challenges he faces with Sam, and learns how to keep moving forward, one day at a time.

From the Publisher: John Houghton and his wife—middle-class, highly educated, well-traveled—learned that they could not have children of their own. Instead they adopted three siblings, two boys and a girl, who were looking for “a forever family,” as the adoption agencies put it. What followed is all too common in adoptive families, but it is rarely talked about in public and has never been described with such transparent honesty as it is in the pages of this remarkable book.

From the start, the children were difficult, but the scale of their problems only gradually became clear as the years went by. Strange fears and tantrums were accompanied by much more disturbing kinds of behaviour; the violence and rejection that the children had suffered were visited on their adoptive parents unpredictably and explosively.

This is a story of desperate wanting, of anger and frustrated love. It is written with a kind of plain clarity that is both restrained and emotionally powerful. There is no triumphant victory over pain and loss, but there is, in the end, something like hope—a testament to the difference that two decent people can make by sustaining their commitment to an impossible situation.

---

About the Author: John Houghton is the pseudonym of a distinguished writer.

From the Back Cover: When Beth Nonte Russell travels to China to help her friend Alex adopt a baby girl from an orphanage there, she thinks it will be an adventure, a chance to see the world. But her friend, who had prepared for the adoption for many months, panics soon after being presented with the frail baby, and the situation develops into one of the greatest challenges of Russell’s life.

Russell, watching in disbelief as Alex distances herself from the child, cares for the baby—clothing, bathing, and feeding her—and makes her feel secure in the unfamiliar surroundings. Russell is overwhelmed and disoriented by the unfolding drama and all that she sees in China, and yet amid the emotional turmoil finds herself deeply bonding with the child. She begins to have dreams of an ancient past—dreams of a young woman who is plucked from the countryside and chosen to be empress, and of the child who is ultimately taken from her. As it becomes clear that her friend—whose indecisiveness about the adoption has become a torment—won’t be bringing the baby home, Russell is amazed to realize that she cannot leave the baby behind and that her dreams have been telling her something significant, giving her the courage to open her heart and bring the child home against all odds.

Steeped in Chinese culture, Forever Lily is an extraordinary account of a life-changing, wholly unexpected love.

---

About the Author: Beth Nonte Russell received a master’s degree in psychology from Marymount University and provided counseling services at a community mental health center. She lives with her husband and two daughters, Lily and Jaden, outside Washington, D.C.

From the Back Cover:  What to do when you’ve been called to adopt and practical advice to make it work. 

Mary Ostyn married her sweetheart at nineteen, and the pair had four kids by their eighth anniversary. When their youngest was three, God opened their eyes to the needs of orphans all over the world—and answered Mary’s longing for another baby. Over the next nine years the couple adopted two boys from Korea and four girls from Ethiopia.

Ostyn, a beloved adoption writer and blogger, shares—alongside stories from other adoptive families—the practical tools and resources she uses to thrive as an adoptive mom. In Forever Mom, she reveals how to:

• build heart connections

• prepare your other children for new siblings

• help babies, toddlers, and older children settle in

• implement attachment parenting

• address misbehavior while remaining connected

• nurture your marriage in the midst of it all

Whether you’re the parent of an adopted child or interested in pursuing adoption, Ostyn’s warm advice and fresh perspective will inspire, inform, and affirm. You’ll walk away confident you will be the perfect mom for whatever child God brings into your life.

---

About the Author: Mary Ostyn encourages moms through her books, speaking engagements, and her blog at www.owlhaven.net. She lives with her high school sweetheart in Nampa, Idaho, where she homeschools the youngest six of their ten children, including four daughters born in Ethiopia and two sons born in South Korea.

What is it like to adopt an older child, a child who can remember birth parents, earlier life experiences and former home(s)? This book is the personal story of one family and their four children, ranging in age from four to nine at the time of adoption. Despite the parents’ preparation and good intentions, the children’s first months at home were far worse than expected. At times the parents wondered whether it would work out. But it did. Forever Parents is the story of people learning to live with and love one another through the creation of a family.

From the Back Cover: Jennifer dropped to her knees, trying to make sense of the doctor’s diagnosis: “Your daughter has fetal alcohol syndrome.”

Her adopted daughter, Ashley, the blond, blue-eyed angel she longed and prayed for since she was a teenager, would forever be affected by her birthmother’s decision to drink during pregnancy. Ashley would suffer all her life from mental and physical birth defects that were completely preventable, and she would have less than a 10 percent chance of ever being able to live on her own.

In Forfeiting All Sanity: A Mother’s Story of Raising a Child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Jennifer Poss Taylor shares her family’s experience with FAS and the perseverance, sense of humor, and love that daily overcome its effects. Taylor’s honesty and personal insight will capture readers as she describes the daily challenges of raising a child with special needs. Every parent will be touched by this story.

---

About the Author: Jennifer Poss Taylor is the mother of three adopted children, two of which have special needs. She graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies and then continued on in the field of educational diagnostics, while working with special needs children. She currently lives in Lubbock, Texas, with her husband, David, and three children.

This journey is one of expectation, disappointment, determination, and at all times, despair. But most of all, this story is a chronicle of faith, hope, and a desire to fulfill Sandra’s deepest need. As you take this journey with her and her husband, Mike, you will experience the hurt, disappointment, and joy of their search for a child to fulfill their desire for a family. If you or someone you know cannot have a biological family of their own, this book would be a perfect gift for them.

When it comes to adoption, you have to realize that it is more than just one person giving another one a child. Adoption is a legal way to allow a child to have permanent residency with another person other than their biological parents. There are also to reasons why someone will put their children up for adoption, but there are also many other reasons why someone wishes to adopt. With an open adoption you will be able to still keep the biological parents in the child’s life. They are able to write letters to contact the child, and the child is able to contact them. In time, an understanding can form, but it is very important that you consider your options when it comes to giving a child up for adoption. All the arrangements can vary and it all depends on how both parties feel about having an open adoption. There are many issues that may contribute to a child going into an adoption situation. Sometimes they are abandoned, but often it is the mother who decides that it is best for her baby. Often babies are born to mothers and fathers who are unable to take care of themselves let alone a child. Sometimes a child is removed from the family because of government interfering. There are many reasons why a child is placed in an adoption agency.

A real life story of American couple returning to Ukraine in an attempt to finalize the adoption of three orphaned children. To do so, they must traverse a bizarre labyrinth of government bureaucracy, confront obstacles man made and otherwise and contend with the all peculiarities of living in a strange land. Served up as a travelogue, tragedy meets comedy in a head-on collision. A heartwarming tale, best enjoyed from safety and comfort of your own couch.

In Foster Care: How to Fix this Corrupted System, author Janet Solander presents stories of how Child Protective Services (CPS), Department of Family Services (DFS), and the foster system have failed the very children they are mandated to protect and hold safe. Solander shares heartbreaking incidents taken from the daily news as well as her own firsthand experiences as a foster parent. Only through public awareness is there any chance that the children in the system have any hope of being protected the way they should be. Every child has the right to a safe and secure home, but foster children sometimes find that being in the system brings them to a worse place than the home from which they were taken. Only through public involvement pressuring lawmakers to correct the shortcomings in the system will the innocent victims, the children, have the chance the system promises them. Foster Care explains what is happening with these children and what we can do to help correct this dire situation. When foster parents and children gain a stronger voice to advocate for them, only then will the system be able to take care of those who are most vulnerable.

A self-help guide intended to prepare the reader to become a foster parent.

Acclaimed across three previous editions, this handbook covers British practice aspects of foster care for care providers of children up to 11 years old, including children with special needs. Primarily for foster carers, but also useful in residential care, the book is packed with detailed guidance about looking after children, being looked after, being a foster carer, and living in a fostering household. It is designed to:
• encourage carer providers to work in partnership with the children and their families
• enable children to return to their families when appropriate
• enable carer providers to meet the full range of a child’s needs
• explain the fostering roles and responsibilities.
Although there are differences in detail, the governments of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all make similar requirements of carers. The Foster Carer’s Handbook will help all carer providers achieve the expectations placed on them and assist them to maintain standards. This fourth edition underlines and encourages the use of relevant government standards and gives examples of good practice. A comprehensive guide that can be called on when just about anything arises, the book has been developed for carer providers to read themselves along with the children they are caring for as well as their own children; to help carers make appropriate decisions and answer the many questions children may ask about their time “being looked after”; for use as a “talking tool,” including activities to help children understand the present, face the future with confidence, and, in time, make their own decisions about their life; for use in supervision and training.

There was no love in the home where the children lived. The natural parents gave the three youngest to wealthy strangers to adopt. The Hamptons were elated, but ... it was only temporary. Now, eleven years later, Ezra and Elsie want them back. The children were promised to a very dangerous man when they became twelve. After all, he had more money. The Hamptons loved these children dearly and fought feverishly to keep them. They would never give them up. These children were theirs! They didn’t realize the difficulty it would become until they met the big Colombian.

The Foster Factory deals with the experiences of David Learmont and his wife Marsha once they retired and started working again as Foster Carers. David claims that if he had written this book as a novel, the characters in it would have been considered “too outlandish to be credible.” How the elderly couple dealt with egomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, tractor-maniacs, and children who stabbed him and burned down their house are just some of the tales that David recounts with “what is left” of his sense of humour and his “diminishing stock” of faith in mankind. Read it and weep. Or laugh. Possibly both.

From the Preface: May God forever bless each and every foster parent. Of course, there are some who should not consider being foster parents, but in this book I am speaking for the ones who have a heart similar to mine. No matter how many children came through my door, I always made room for one more child.

I have seen my foster kids cry, felt their pain, even watched them lie ... yet my love for them did not change. Some wrote on my walls to try and destroy my home. In the midst of these events, my friends would shake their heads and say, “You’re so strong. You handle these problems so well.”

Allegations and investigations assaulted our family peace, but as the truth prevailed, it was always shown that those allegations were lies.

Ultimately, if you are considering being a potential foster parent, you must realize that it takes a deep something within your soul to find the fortitude to keep a child in your home.

Foster Parenting: A Simple Guide to Understanding What It’s All About is a non-fiction book describing the process a person must go through to be a foster parent. It guides the reader, by using facts and personal experience, through the entire process from making the first phone call to becoming certified as a foster parent. It goes on to explain what happens when the first placement comes through the eventful journey of their stay with you and onto the emotional departure when the child leaves. The author guides the reader through the adoption process and provides many resources available to foster parents. This book also includes an index of abuse hotlines and a glossary of terms commonly used in the foster care system. A must read for anyone desiring to be a foster parent, who wishes to learn more about foster parenting or who works with foster parents.

From the Back Cover: The Foster Parenting Manual is a comprehensive guide offering proven, friendly advice for novice and experienced parents alike.

Distilling many years’ experience into one book, John DeGarmo combines his own wisdom with that of fellow foster parents. He describes what to expect from the process, how to access help and how to ensure the best care for your child. He tackles thorny issues such as children’s use of the Internet and social media, managing contact with birth parents and how to support your child at school. Most importantly, he provides advice designed to help your child feel safe, secure and loved.

The Foster Parenting Manual offers seasoned, sympathetic advice that will be valued by foster parents and the professionals who support them.

---

About the Author: John DeGarmo is a proud foster and adoptive parent who has fostered over 30 children. He regularly speaks on his experiences at conferences and training sessions, and is dedicated to improving and promoting successful foster and adoptive care systems. John lives with his family in Georgia, USA. He is also the author of a memoir, Fostering Love: One Foster Parent’s Journey, writes for a number of magazines, newsletters, and publications, both in the United States and in Europe.

---

By the Same Author: Keeping Foster Children Safe Online: Positive Strategies to Prevent Cyberbullying, Inappropriate Contact and Other Digital Dangers (2014); Love and Mayhem: One Big Family’s Uplifting Story of Fostering and Adoption (2014); A Different Home: A New Foster Child’s Story (2014) (with Kelly DeGarmo); and Fostering Love: One Foster Parent’s Journey (2015).

From the Publisher: When parents decide to foster, they are faced with many difficult decisions, dilemmas and questions. How do you navigate the daily struggles of foster parenting? How can you nurture bonds with your foster child who is angry, sad, and defiant? How can you prepare to step back when it’s time to let go? Foster Parenting Step-by-Step is a concise realistic how-to guide to fostering that summarizes what to expect as a foster parent, gives hope and immediate hands-on solutions to real life issues. It guides you through the different stages of a fostering relationship, including common issues encountered at each age and how to tackle them. It provides guidance on understanding the impact of trauma on your child and their severe behaviours, and offers tips and strategies on how to offer the best support and develop the parent-child bond. This is a book that strives to empower fostering parents with the skills and knowledge to be more successful in their parenting and to give the children they care for the best possible opportunities in life. This book will be invaluable not just to foster parents but anyone working in the area of foster care.

---

About the Author: Dr. Kalyani Gopal is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years’ experience specialising in working with foster parents. She regularly contributes to Foster Focus magazine offering expert advice. She is on the Lake County Child Protection and Child Fatality Team and is an international speaker on foster care and child abuse. She is President and Clinical Director of Mid-America Psychological and Counselling Services in Merrillville, Indiana and supervises five outpatient clinics in Indiana and Illinois. She is President, Clinical Psychology of Women, APA, Division 12, Section IV and lives in Merrillville, Indiana, USA.

From the Back Cover: How do you meet the needs of the children who come to you from less than optimal situations?

For those caring tor children who have come to them from broken and battered families through the child welfare system, the rewards can seem small and the challenges more intense than anything you have ever experienced. Raising children from tough beginnings, working with the child welfare system, and advocating for the children in your care can be difficult with a steep learning curve. But now, foster and resource parents have a place to turn to for answers, comfort, and a deep community connection.

Covering topics both timely and practical, The Foster Parenting Toolbox offers you the help you need whether you’re just starting out on your foster parenting journey or you’ve already welcomed hundreds of children to your home. This book provides words of wisdom, connections to others who’ve walked in the same shoes, and advice for the most difficult situations you might encounter.

More than 100 contributors have created this useful resource specifically tor foster parents and the professionals who work with them: caseworkers, social workers, judges, CASA’s, GAL’s and others who are a part of the foster child’s team, This is a top of the nightstand resource that offers you access to a wealth of useful information from professionals in the field and successful resource and foster parents in the trenches. You may not read this book all at once, but you will come back to it again and again.

---

About the Author: Kim Phagan-Hansel is the editor of Fostering Families Today and Adoption Today magazines, as well as freelance writer for several other publications. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English-Journalism from Chadron State College and has worked in the publishing industry for 13 years. She is also a wife and mother.

From the Publisher: Can you claim Income Support if you are fostering a child for the local authority? Or should you be claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance? Does fostering count as “work” and, if so, when? This authoritative and easy-to-use guide explores the types of financial help available to foster carers. Packed with relevant information, this is an important tool for anyone advising foster carers on their eligibility for benefits, tax credits, and other available financial support. The benefits system can be complicated and confusing. For busy foster carers, working out entitlements for themselves, birth children, and children they are looking after, can present added pressures. The clarity of the information and the user-friendly structure of this handbook will help readers to easily find what they are looking for, Rather than focus on each benefit or payment, this guide instead focuses on the different types of fostering, e.g. of looked after children, informal kinship placements, mother and baby placements and others, and then looks at the effects of fostering on all means-tested and other earning replacement benefits, including:

• Whether extra benefit can be paid for the child

• Whether the fostering allowance will affect payment of the benefit

• Where fostering counts as work or not

• Other miscellaneous effects.

Each chapter has a “Benefits Snapshot” which presents the information at a glance.

This guide covers the following benefits, allowances, tax credits and other support: Income Support, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit, Incapacity Benefit, Child Benefit, Guardian’s Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, Child Trust Fund, Education Maintenance Allowance, Disabled Facilities Grant, Exemption from Road Tax, Motability Scheme, Extra tax relief, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, Council Tax carer’s discount, Council Tax disability reduction; and much more. Case scenarios are also presented which help to further illustrate entitlements to available financial help. The guide also has a comprehensive index which makes it easy to look up what you need.

Fostering: A Benefits Handbook will be useful to foster carers throughout the U.K., although the legislation referred to with regards to the different types of fostering placements is that of England and Wales. This is an essential reference guide for foster carers, welfare rights officers and others advising on benefits.

From the Back Cover: This is a touching journal of one widowed woman’s years as an emergency foster mother. Have you ever wondered what a real foster home is like? This is not a book about special needs children or disgruntled former foster kids. It is a true chronicle of the every day events in a foster home.

Why did the author become a foster parent? What did her biological children think of her decision? How does a family become a foster home? Why do children enter foster care? What are the various problems they arrive with? A few children spent only one night, some stayed weeks and four never left.

Not all the children were abused or abandoned. Not all their stories are sad. Some recollections will make the reader laugh and some are emotional and some will make the reader angry. This is an insightful book for teenager and adult alike.

---

About the Author: Nancy DiGirolamo was born Katherine Hackett in Machias, Maine. She was adopted at two years old in 1943 and her name was changed to Nancy Dickerman. She grew up in a small Massachusetts town with her adopted brother and moved to New York City in her twenties. There she met her husband Nicholas and was happily married when he died suddenly from a heart attack. While trying to cope with her loss she was inspired by her love of children to be come a foster mother. For twelve years she opened her heart and home to children in need. This is a testament of her love.

---

By the Same Author: Ninety-Seven Pictures of Kids on My Wall (2008, Outskirts Press).

From the Back Cover: This comprehensive, easy to use reference written by an experienced foster parent of seriously troubled boys and girls aged eight to seventeen is an authoritative resource for parents as well as seasoned childcare professionals. You will learn the very special dynamics and the unique issues of attachment, adjustment, and identity that will help you successfully nurture a displaced child.

Inside you will discover how to:

• Determine the qualities of a good agency

• Select the right child for you

• Help a child through grief and loss

• Recognize common disorders and medications

• Confidently use positive interventions

• Interact comfortably with birth families

• Finance foster or adoptive care

• Prepare a teen for independence

• Maintain your family’s well-being

• Form an effective treatment plan

Fostering or Adopting the Troubled Child addresses the needs of those who wish to bring, or have already brought, a troubled child into their homes. This is a vital sourcebook for maintaining stability in one of parenting’s most demanding, but often most rewarding, environments.

---

About the Author: Janet Clayton Glatz has worked with seriously troubled children for seven years. She and her husband Garry began their careers as surrogate parents in a group home for boys, then moved on to a special project house where they prepared troubled teens for independent living. They now have their own home in Durham, Maine, where they enjoy mini-farming with two foster children, Tammy (15) and Sandra (12).

During the past seven years, Ms. Glatz attended many trainings, workshops, and conferences to sharpen her parenting skills. She has spent the past two years researching the subject of this book.

Janet and Garry have between them four birth children ranging in age from fourteen to thirty-three, and five grandchildren.

Ms. Glatz has published numerous short stories and articles, and has written two novels which are currently being marketed to publishers.

Over the years, she has offered her ideas and experience to other foster parents and professionals in various seminars and workshops, and is always eager to share what she has learned with interested new or experienced parents.

When Matt and his foster mom showed up at the strawberry patch, the boys were excited, but at the same time, they were sad. I guess it brought back the memory of the day that they were taken. It must have been a horrible experience! The car door opened and out came this stick figure of a boy. I couldn’t believe how emaciated Matt looked! Suddenly, I understood what Beth, Matt’s foster mom, meant by Matt being way too skinny. This was something that you would see on TV when they ask for donations for the starving children. His arms looked like they belonged to a six-year-old child. His face was so pathetically sad looking. It seemed as though he had very little to smile about. We had been at the patch for over an hour when Beth said that she had to get going soon. After paying for the strawberries, it was time to say good-bye. It was then and there that I decided that Matt had to come live with us. If they love their brother that much, I had no choice but to bring them together again. Now, I was beginning to think about bringing all four kids together. Could I handle a total of seven kids? Would my own kids accept this? These were questions that had to be answered now that I have seen what it was like for a family to be ripped apart.

From the Back Cover: One night in 1997, four hungry, damaged young children arrive on the doorstep of foster carers Trisha and Mike Merry. They are covered in bruises, two have black eyes, and one has a broken arm. Starved, seriously neglected and abused, the four siblings have been let down by everyone who should have cared. The eldest scavenges for food by night and is exhausted from trying to protect the others from the attentions of frequent paedophile visitors.

From the start, these children challenge Trisha and Mike to extremes. Despite their experience over many years of fostering, they wonder if they have met their match. Yet this couple’s love and care and their unbelievable determination surmount the obstacles. The truth about the children’s home lives is beyond anything Trish and Mike have experienced, but through their efforts and their (almost) unfailing sense of humour, they are able to turn around four young lives from tragedy to hope.

---

By the Same Author: The Cast-Off Kids (2016).

From the Back Cover: Most new mothers go through a challenging transition during the Fourth Trimester—those first three months after the birth of their babies. During this time, a mother often feels fear and self-doubt that can detract from the joys of this very special time. Until this book there has been very little information available explaining this transition period and the choices available to the new mother. The authors, a professor of child care ad a psychotherapist, help the new mother come to terms with her own needs as well as those of her child. They discuss the experiences of new mothers they have counseled and their own experiences, as well. This book also serves as a resource to fathers, friends, and family members who wish to lend support in making the Fourth Trimester a happy and rewarding experience.

---

About the Author: Brenda Krause Eheart is the director of the Developmental Child Care Program at the Institute for Child Behavior and Development-University of Illinois. She is a member of the National Council on Family Relations and the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Eheart lives in Champaign, Illinois with her husband and two children. Susan Karol Martel is a psychotherapist specializing in individual, marital, and divorce therapy. She is a clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists. She lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania with her husband and son.

---

Compiler’s Note: The authors include a final section dealing with five “atypical” means of motherhood, including adoption.

From the Back Cover: This book relates some of our experiences during 30 years as foster parents. The reality of what these children endured before and after placement in the foster care system is heartbreaking. After all these years, my husband Ron and I cling stubbornly to our belief that time and man can change, but God and truth will not.

My goal is to inform the public, about the foster care system. I hope to sound the alarm loud and clear, that the current foster care system is not working. I want to bring attention to the powerless children, within the system, being tossed about in the waves of loophole laws, uninformed policy makers, non-committed decision-makers, and non-motivated and often disinterested birth parents. Court mandated and enforced accountability must take place at all levels involved!

---

About the Author: Claudia Niemeyer was born in the late ’30s and raised in a small mid-western town. Her family was large, poor, hard working, and close knit. She married Ron in 1956, but due to an incompatible Rh factor, only two of their five babies survived. In 1969, their first foster child arrived. Their family lived the motto: “There is always room for one more.” They welcomed with open arms special needs children. Claudia states, “As a child, I was often treated as an underdog by society; thus developed and advocacy for anyone who needed a lift. I was quite young when I became aware that God lifted me.” Claudia and her husband live in Wisconsin and continue in their role as foster parents. She is writing her second book.

From the Publisher: In 1997, life was full for Lori, her husband Jeff, and their two young sons. As they moved through the process of adding to their family through adoption, Lori experienced a flood of different emotions, contemplations, and anxieties. Accepting “someone else’s child” as her own was one of the most personal and triumphant experiences of her adult life. She never shared her most intimate, private thoughts with anyone—until now. This book chronicles each stage of her incredible journey in becoming a mother in this special way. It is her true story. Lori is a professional vocalist, inspirational speaker, certified personal trainer, songwriter and author. She has been a favorite National Anthem soloist for the Detroit Tigers Baseball Club for over 20 years. She’s appeared in over 30 local and national radio and television commercials and thousands of telephone ads. Most importantly, she is the mother of eleven children: 2 biological and 9 adopted from 4 different Russian orphanages. Lori speaks to various groups and organizations about her adoption experiences and the needs of Russian orphans, sharing her personal testimony about deeply enriching experiences with her children. Through her stories and music, she can touch others on an intensely emotional level.

From the Publisher: Friendship is so complicated! The children of The Adoption Club think they are friends—they go to the same school and belong to The Adoption Club. But what does it mean? What is the difference between a casual and a close friend? How should you respond to teasing? It’s time for The Adoption Club to explore friendship. Written for counsellors and therapists working with children aged 5-11, as well as adoptive parents, this workbook is designed to help explore friendship, staying safe and social skills. It is one of a set of five interactive therapeutic workbooks featuring The Adoption Club written to address the key emotional and psychological challenges adopted children often experience. Together, they provide an approachable, interactive and playful way to help children to learn about themselves and have fun at the same time.

---

About the Author: Regina M. Kupecky, LSW, has worked in the adoption arena for more than thirty years as an adoption placement worker and therapist. She was named “Adoption Worker of the Year” in 1990 by the Ohio Department of Human Services. She is currently a therapist with Dr. Keck at the Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio, where she works with children who have attachment disorders. She trains nationally and internationally on adoption issues, sibling issues, and attachment. Ms. Kupecky authored a resource guide, Siblings Are Family Too, which is available through the Three Rivers Adoption Council in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has coauthored a curriculum with Dr. Keck and Arleta James called Abroad and Back: Parenting and International Adoption and has written a curriculum on sibling issues titled My Brother, My Sister: Sibling Relations in Adoption and Foster Care.