I had a long and crazy road to parenting, involving several miscarriages, two scary full-term pregnancies, and two very difficult adoption journeys. When we adopted our oldest from the fostercare system, I thought that I couldn’t imagine a more stressful and heart-wrenching experience. But I said that before we tried adopting from Haiti. It took two years and a devastating earthquake before we could bring Kembe home. On my last visit to Haiti, Kembe, Karis, and I survived the earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, and he was able to come home the following week.
Here’s a little timeline of when my kids joined our family:
June, 2005: Jafta joined my family at 6 months old as a foster child
October, 2006: I gave birth to India
April, 2007: I was matched to adopt Kembe from Haiti. He and India were six months old at the time.
May, 2008: I adopted Jafta at age 3.
April, 2009 I gave birth to Karis
January, 2010 Kembe joined our family at age 3.
© Lovisa Photo 2018 | www.LovisaPhoto.com
I grew up in Florida, where it was my life mission to be in as many high school clubs as possible. After a busy senior year of multitasking in my roles on student council, drama club, steering committee, show choir, swim team, and newspaper staff, I decided I wanted to go to college in the midwest to experience life where the seasons change beyond “humid” and “sweltering heat”. I packed up my Chevy Cavalier and headed to Cincinnati Christian University, where I met a cute boy named Mark. He was from California. We shared a love of James Taylor, and a hatred of cold weather. We got married and moved out of that frozen tundra as soon as the ink on our diplomas dried. We settled in Orange County, where we both attended graduate school.
I was a psychotherapist for about a decade. My husband was in the ministry for a long time, but later decided to go into full-time private practice, too. So we were both marriage and family therapists, and because of that we never argued, had a perfect relationship, and feel completely confident in every parenting decision we make. Just kidding. We divorced in 2016.
I am still trying to adjust to life as a single mom. I have my hands full (and least that’s what everyone in Target tells me).
This blog is about my family life. It’s also about the frenetic and unrealistic expectations of modern motherhood, and how I learned to opt out of the “extra” to learn to focus on what matters. It’s about being an imperfect mom, and learning to be okay with that. It’s also about adoption and infertility and faith and race and divorce and an earthquake, and letting go of trying to look like I have it all together. It’s about Christian code-speak and hating Elf on the Shelf and having a hard time making friends my 40’s. It’s non-linear, imperfect, and confusing at times . . . because my life so far has non-linear, imperfect, and confusing. My brain has too many tabs open.
