A couple of times, when the kids are in bed, I’ve seen the TV show Intervention and I think it is a searingly true-to-life horrifying look at addictions and what it does to the family.

In nearly every case, the interventionist will ask the parents, “Why do you think it is OK for you to allow a meth using adult child of yours to live rent free with you while shooting up?” Different scenarios, same age-old problem of the co-dependent... more

One of the hardest things that a parent, adoptive or birth, sometimes has to do is to appear to ‘turn one’s back’ on their law-breaking children. To do otherwise would simply enable said child to continue a life of crime.

Many of us that are involved in the adoption of older children find ourselves with the unenviable task of teaching rules and negative consequences to children who’ve come out of criminal backgrounds, often their birth parents are in jail or prison, or have been there more than once.

Several of my children grew up in... more

I was going to write about positive expectancy but I got waylaid by negativism this morning before church. I should be sitting in my Ladies Sunday School Class, absorbing the teachings of Miss Martha, always an uplifting and interesting experience.

Instead I dropped off all the other children and came back home to deal with a 12 year old rager who last split his bedroom door in half and who has punched holes in my walls. He’s again angry because I wouldn’t let him attack a ten year old who accidentally got a drop of water on him yesterday when they were... more

At one point in my life, before I had this many children, I contemplated reviewing books for a living, or at least a sideline job. I’d done so for a literary magazine at one point, non-fiction young adult books that I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve had other opportunities, also which evolved into different open doors to traverse and my life has taken me here as the mom of 39 children.

I used to read a great deal, not having a TV when my oldest daughter was a child, and of course no internet as it wasn’t invented then. I was a school library media specialist... more

Piggybacking once again on yesterday’s post, I often do so as my mind tends to ruminate on something for eons, always trying to figure out The Answer, seldom actually doing so.

I have a daughter, now 18, who has just graduated from high school. Like her older brother, having only lived in a stable family for seven years, somewhat reluctant to grow up, she's feeling gypped over such a short childhood.

I have a niece also graduating, full of college... more

My almost 17 year old daughter, the one who ran away last week and is now serving out her restrictions, fights against herself. Give her a taste of success and she’ll sabotage it, deeply convinced that it is undeserved. Left unsaid by her is, “If I deserved good things, my birth mother wouldn’t have left me,” simplistic yes but, more so, very primal and the root of my children’s inner pain.

Slowly she’s learning that good things can and do happen to her. She’d been taken out of school, by me, for excessive fist-fighting. I home schooled her for the... more

Almost 20 years ago I was 32 years old, excitedly heading down to Honduras to adopt my first sibling group of daughters. I had no idea they’d be the first of many brothers and sisters to join our family, I just knew that I was very certain, in my heart, that this was exactly what I wanted to do with my life.

I’d Xeroxed an article, July 1988, from Success magazine entitled, “The Myth of the Balanced Life: Happiness is a Hotly Pursued Obsession,” written in response to a New York Times writer who’d interviewed... more

I just read where The Hiccup Girl has run away apparently in a dispute with her stepfather who just discovered her My Space account. The parents took away her cell phone so she took off.

We had a similar situation where my 16 year old ran away for a week. She’d tried to sneak out one night, her consequence was losing her cell phone and a week later, with full blown PMS coursing through her veins, turning her into an unrecognizable teenage mutant drama queen, she slugged a younger sister... more

To say that I garden is an understatement. I have huge gardens and a houseful of hundreds of houseplants. I find this endeavor to be both soothing as well as therapeutic. Last night after playing lifeguard at the pool for several hours, something I do everyday with my children, I headed out back, clippers in one hand, seeds in another, searching for bare patches in which to squeeze in more cantaloupes or zucchini, my choice of this day.

This is my passion and I’m obsessed with it, I love scrambling in the dirt, hauling wood chips or manure, turning... more

I often fight cynicism, trying to replace it with optimism. After 20 years in the adoption world, particularly on the treacherous path I’ve chosen, that of the adoption of older children where the pains seem deeper but the rewards even greater, sometimes I encounter a story that knocks my socks right off my big feet.

There’s a couple, John and Libby Moritz, who lost their three young children in a car accident. They were coming home from school and instantly killed.

There... more