When I looked at my own expectations for our family. I honestly thought that I didn’t really have them.  I thought that I could take what came and roll with it.  Our agency and therapist didn’t really push us to do the work to paint any picture that we did have.  In the end, I [...]

At the end of May, I put out a call to my friends asking about cheap vacation rentals. M-, who we had met through our agencies trainings hooked us up with two people that were willing to loan us their vacation houses(!). So last week, we spent up in Groveland with the dogs on retreat. [...]

On New Year’s Eve, four very different people journey to the top of a famous suicide jumping spot. Each of their lives is overshadowed by lost promise, emotional isolation and few coping skills. None of them have a path ahead that looks any good and they join together, not admitting that they are there to [...]

My friend K- has been doing some intensive Nonviolent Communication (NVC) work and invited me to this workshop.  Not knowing anything about NVC, but knowing that I need all the tools that I can get to improve my parenting skills, I decided to go for it.  The workshop consisted mostly of introducing participants to the [...]

One of our big lessons from our experience as foster parents is that reading book after book, using imagination and planning how to handle different circumstances did very little to prepare us for the reality of parenting or foster parenting.  We continued to experience the reality of “the system,” which is not truly set up [...]

By J-
Imagine a child, 4 or 7 years old, who has moved over a dozen times in her short life, often without any prior notice or explanation (such as once, after living in a home for 9 months, going on a “respite” visit for two weeks and, a week into the stay, having a social [...]

Another guest blog by J-

After giving notice, I felt as bad as I can remember.  D- and I had talked about the feeling of betrayal we would experience (which had been one of the reasons we had not pursued disruption before, along with the inability to be sure that the girls’ difficulties weren’t [...]