the tiny human in the middle who changed
our lives forever just a few days after
becoming foster parents my husband and I
got a call from placement asking if we
would take a newborn little girl
straight from the hospital at only two
days old prior to that the only kids
that we had in her home were the
four-legged furry kind so nervously but
excitedly we said yes and just two hours
later the case manager arrived at our
house with the newborn little baby in
the outfit she had on from the hospital
with samples of diapers and formula
throughout that 6 months that she was
with us it changed me to the core I’m
here today to tell you about how my
journey as a foster and adoptive parent
led me to figure out what my passion and
promise is to change the world
now the foster system is a really
complicated thing so I’m going to give
you a brief overview of how it actually
works typically kids are put into foster
care because of seriously unsafe choices
that their parents have made and that
can be anything from the parents had
been incarcerated they aren’t able to
provide a safe living environment for
the kids it could be domestic violence
or abuse as well so typically when that
happens the state then intervenes and
they place these children with another
adult who could be a family member a
friend this could be a group home or it
could be a licensed foster parent just
to give you some impact of how many kids
this actually involves in the United
States right now there’s over 400,000
kids currently in the foster system
in Hillsborough County where we are
right now there’s over 4,000 just next
door in Pasco and Pinellas there’s
almost 3,000 so that’s 7,000 kids in the
Tampa Bay area who currently are not
able to live at home with their parents
and then so you can also see the number
of licensed foster homes in Hillsborough
County
there’s 422 homes with 771 beds and 427
homes with 800
9 beds so those beds are the spots
available for those 7,000 kids who are
currently in foster care so you can see
the difference between how many beds are
available and how many kids actually
need safe homes to live in so what
happens is a lot of the older kids
teenagers you know are more
self-sufficient so they end up living in
group homes where a lot of them live
together because they’re more
self-sufficient and then the state will
find any possible family or friend that
they can to have a safe place for these
kids to live the purpose of the foster
system is to be a temporary environment
until the parents can eliminate the
problems that they’re having and become
a safe home again for their kids to live
in and sometimes that happens but
sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes kids
spend years in foster care and sometimes
they end up being adopted by a foster
parent or that friend or relative that
they’ve been living with and then
sometimes kids turn 18 and they are
still in foster care and they haven’t
been adopted and that’s called aging out
so in Tampa Bay over the last 12 months
there’s a hundred sixty-four kids that
have aged out of the system
can you imagine turning 18 and not
having parents or a family to go home to
that is what these kids are facing so
also when you get licensed as a foster
parent there’s a pretty big process you
have to go through and there’s a series
of classes you take you get background
check they come and look at your home to
make sure that you have a safe
environment for these kids to come into
and during that time you also create the
profile of the kids that you will have
in your home and that can be age race
gender how many kids you have space for
so that brings you back to my story and
the little foster baby that we had I’m
also a photographer so this is a picture
of each of the months that she was with
us I took many pictures of her of course
and from the minute she came through our
door there was this in
describable love for someone that we had
no connection to you at all and didn’t
even know and throughout the six months
that she was with us we learned how
completely difficult the system is and
all of the moving parts that go into it
there’s meetings with the case manager
there’s all different types of visits
that have to occur as well as court
hearings and those kinds of things as
well so as a foster parent you’re there
also to provide a safe and loving home
but I learned that most importantly you
are the one that is there to fight for
the best interests of this child and
sometimes you fight for that by yourself
because nobody else is so after she left
our home after that six month timeframe
the loss and anger that I had was just
overwhelming I literally spent sleepless
nights
night after night thinking about and
trying to figure out what I could
possibly do to help these kids who don’t
have a voice for themselves so after
that our journey ended up taking a
little detour as we decided we
definitely wanted to adopt and so what
we did is we signed on with a small
local adoption agency in the hopes that
we could adopt a sibling group from the
foster system just a few short weeks
after we had signed on with them my
friend Holly who’s also a foster parent
in conversation over the phone had told
me that her foster child’s birth mom was
pregnant and was going to place the baby
for private adoption and so she just
randomly said oh you know you guys could
probably adopt the baby and I was like
yeah right like there’s no way that’s
possibly gonna happen I mean that’s kind
of like random so I wish I could tell
you the entire story I don’t have time
today but ultimately it did happen and
on February 16th 2014
Madeleine joy was born you can see these
are the first pictures of my husband and
I with her at the hospital she was born
at
ugh so we got to feed her first bottle
and change her diaper it was truly truly
an amazing life-changing experience but
our story doesn’t end there there was
another surprise that we weren’t
expecting about a week or so after we
brought Maddie home this lady from our
church messaged my husband and said hey
congratulations on adopting Maddie I saw
you just brought her home but I was
hoping you would adopt my neighbor’s
baby would you meet with the birth mom
and again I said sure why not like we’ll
meet with her but no way like that’s
super super crazy but again
four months later everly hope was born
June 14th 2014 you can see this is our
first family photo of the four of us at
home and that’s her as a tiny little
five pound peanut in her little rock and
play so sometimes I still can’t even
believe it myself but these are our
forever twins
there are almost twins there they’re
only four months old so they’ll be in
the four months apart so they’ll be in
the same grade and everything so
throughout that process so many people
had said to me that they have always
wanted to be a foster parent or they’ve
always thought about adopting but so
many people never actually go through
with it because it’s too expensive it’s
too difficult we’re not sure what to do
or how to get started the cost of
private adoption whether it’s in the US
up through internationally can cost
anywhere from 20 to 60 thousand so
obviously cost is the number one
deterrent because it is really really
high and as I’m answering all these
questions and hearing these things I saw
it you know I I just did this and I have
the answers to all of these questions
that people are asking so I knew this is
the way that I could channel my energy
into something positive
to help other people so what we did is
together Holly and I decided to create a
foundation to help eliminate the
barriers to families becoming foster and
adopt
of parents so on July 22nd 2014 the
promise love Foundation officially got
our 501c3 status and we do those two
things the first is we partner with
families to tell their story and help
them raise the money that they need for
their adoption and then the second thing
that we do it doesn’t cost any money at
all we just provide information and help
people figure out what is the journey
that they are wanting to take whether
it’s becoming a foster parent an
adoptive parent or even just supporting
other people during the process and I
have to tell you from the beginning I
knew the name of it that it had to be
the promise love foundation because
promise love was the name of our foster
child that we initially had so it’s a
really really cool story so I’m going to
show you here also these are some of the
families that we’ve had the privilege of
walking with in their journey there’s
eight families here 13 kids represented
some of them are sibling sets that were
adopted from the foster system some of
them were adopted as a newborn the
family you see here in the bottom corner
that couple is the family we just
started working with and we’re helping
them raise 27,000 for their infant
adoption there waiting to be matched
with a birth mom and then the family
directly above that just last month we
were able to go to their house and
Surprise them with a check for $9,000
for their adoption of the little girl
that you see in that picture and it was
really just a amazing crazy experience
so overall over the last two years that
we have been doing this we’ve been able
to raise over $100,000 in both services
and money to help create more forever
families and when you put your passion
out there and you’ll be surprised how
many people will come and join you on
whatever that passion happens to be so
everyone in life has scars and you have
experiences that leave scars on you but
it’s up to you what you actually do with
them you can cover them up or you can
develop them into a passion and a
promise to help other people you don’t
have to have a lot of money you don’t
have to you know even start an
organization your most valuable asset is
the time and the talent you have towards
whatever your passion happens to be and
you can find it but you have to be
looking and when you find it run don’t
walk towards solving whatever that
problem is or whatever is keeping you up
at the night I’m gonna leave you here
with a really simple quote from Steve
Jobs the ones who think they’re crazy
enough to change the world are the ones
who do thank you so much for listening
to my story it was truly an honor to be
here [Applause]