Episodes

Just a quick message of thanks and gratitude for supporting the show and an update on what's next. We're currently working on a Season 2. I am also finishing up an offering that I hope to have out in early summer: Two new books: From Foster to Forever: Surviving the Journey (A handbook for Parents) and From Foster to Forever: A workbook to help you decide if foster-to-adopt is for you. I'll have a pre-order link up as soon as it's available. In the meantime, if you have already left a rati...

I couldn't think of a better way to close out Season One than by sharing Stacey and Demi's unique story. It begins when Stacey was a new teacher in her first job. Demi was a pre-teen with a challenging family life. At school she was "always in trouble", but Stacey found a way to connect with her. When Demi ended up needing a foster home, the only person she could think of to call was Stacey. And so began their life together. This is such a great conversation because we have both Stacey and Demi...

This is a very special episode because it features our first nanny, Morgan, who we met when she first arrived in LA from the East Coast. Morgan found out about foster care and foster-to-adopt through working for us and decided it was something she felt called to do. Her husband agreed and shortly after becoming certified, they received Ventura County's 13th ever Safe Surrender baby. They went through the process and adopted him and have since gone on to foster multiple children, providing a safe...

This episode tells the story of Amy and Tiger, two creatives who "met old" and wanted to start a family. With money constraints, they found their way to foster-to-adopt, and after an arduous fostering process, were able to adopt their daughter. We discuss so many topics on this episode: -The feeling of "otherness" that can sometime occur as an adoptive family. -Transracial adoption and as white people, some ways to support an African American child. -Tokenism and representation in the media....

Jay Shindell found fostering by "accident". The single dad was only originally going to do emergency placements but soon after welcoming the first baby into his home, he was in love and wanted to adopt. He survived multiple placements, supporting many birth families and helping them get on their feet before finally finding his son (who you can hear cooing sweetly in the background throughout the interview!). Jay talks about how he dealt with loss, how he remembers and honors the children that h...

Jesse and Hope have been foster family advocates for years, helping others to navigate the foster-to-adopt journey, after adopting two children of their own through the Los Angeles foster care system. Indeed, they also helped my husband and I when we were embarking on ours, sharing strategies for everything from what questions to ask when considering a placement, to interfacing with the County and more. It was wonderful to meet again after so many years and discuss the foster-to-adoption process...

Kira Cook always knew she wanted to adopt. She decided to foster-to-adopt soon after having a biological child. In this episode she details the difficult reunification of her first foster daughter and how she subsequently found the child that would become a part of her forever family. She talks about the challenges of working with the foster care system, maintaining the birth order between children, her pre-conceived notions about drug exposure and gives advice about how to move forward if someo...

Ted and Carlos adopted Daniel when he was eight through the foster care system. His parental rights had already been terminated and he'd been through multiple failed placements before arriving in their home. On this special episode, we get to hear from Daniel, himself, about his experiences, as well as chat with Ted and Carlos about the joys and challenges of adopting an older child who has been in the system longer and how they surmounted difficulties through love, patience and perseverance. T...

In part two of my initial two "mini-sodes" to kick off this podcast, I interview my husband and best friend, Joe Fulginiti. Joe and I already knew we hit the lottery with our relationship. When we began to struggle with fertility challenges, health issues and carrying a pregnancy, we wondered if we could just be happy being child-free. We did a lot of soul-searching and figured out we still wanted kids. That set us off on a quest for how to do that. We researched many different avenues for star...

In this inaugural episode, I introduce who I am, why I decided to start the show and how my family came to foster-to-adopt. I give a brief background on my career as an actor and then a voice actor and audiobook narrator as well as my relationship with my husband and our surprise struggles to have children. I go on to detail how the intentional building of our forever family unfolded over the past decade. I share other options we explored for starting a family, such as IVF, "straight adoption" ...