Fostering Voices Podcast

This is the last episode of Season 3!

We do a brief book review on 'Garbage Bag Suitcase' by Shenandoah Chefalo. It's a memoir of Shenandoah's life - filled with difficult years with her mother and a man she thought was her father, and difficult years in foster care, and aging out of the system. This book is Heavy, and made Jihae feel a bit depressed for a day or two. BUT, it's not all depressing.

Shenandoah shares her thoughts on how to improve the lives of kids in care, and they include boarding schools (like the Milton Hershey School and The Crossnore School), and fostering the whole family - mostly moms who are losing their kids to the system.

Another highlight of reading this memoir was seeing a successful woman who overcame the odds. The children in care are not doomed to be like their parents. Mental illness is not a definitive life sentence for the next generation, neither is drug addiction, or abuse, or any of the things that we are afraid that kids are 'definitely' going to be like.

Chris mentioned this teen, Hunter Beaton, from Texas who has started this company that provides great bags for children in foster care.

There are so many companies that you can support if you google 'garbage bags for foster kids' or look on social media.

The (Good) Word of the Day

Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Proverbs 16:24

Shenandoah had SO FEW people who spoke any words of hope or love to her in her first 20 years of life. We all need to speak words of kindness and hope to those around us - whether they are adults or children, whether they are foster kids, or kids you have borne.

Lightbulb moments:

Yay for the Toronto Raptors making it to the NBA Finals for the first time in history!

Foster care and adoption are HARD! Waiting, not knowing, caring, saying bye - IT'S ALL HARD! But it's all worth it! So, keep on keeping on fellow foster and adoptive friends.

Thanks SO MUCH for your support this season, friends! We will be back at the end of July with season 4!

If you want to connect on Social Media:

Jihae Watson on Facebook

Chris Watson on Facebook

Fostering Voices on Instagram

Jihae Watson on Instagram

AND we would LOVE it if you would leave us a review on iTunes! This helps others to find our podcast so we can share these voices from the foster care and adoption community with more people!

We are so thankful to be able to welcome Dr. Ray Branton back to the podcast this week. If you missed it - we talked about marriage and relationships in Episode 97. You are definitely going to want to listen to that one as well!

This week we are talking about ANXIETY. Does that give you anxiety to just see the word? Well, something that you need to know is that anxiety is NORMAL. And it's beneficial. As long as it doesn't paralyze you and cause you to not be able to function properly. But we have overpathologized fear and worry, and that's why it seems like everyone is struggling with anxiety.

What many of us need is more balance in our lives. We don't need to be lawnmower parents - paving the way for our kids to have no trials or tribulation. We also shouldn't spend all of our time on social media, since that has been proven to cause users to feel less satisfied with their lives due to comparison analysis.

Instead, Dr. Branton encourages us to replace the word 'anxiety' with 'curiosity'. You may be anxious about the future, or you are curious about it. You may feel anxious about a relationship, or you are curious as to how you can improve it. Curiosity has many more positive connotations, and anxiety is negative, but the sentiments are similar.

Dr. Branton also sees anxiety as the beast we try to cage up, but that we keep on feeding. If we can find people that we trust - even if it's a licensed counselor - we will be able to keep anxiety at bay. In fact, the #1 change agent is RELATIONSHIP. This is true when someone who needs help goes to a counselor, and they trust their counselor, and the advice they are receiving. It's not the advice. It's the relationship. And so when we are in community with people that we love, trust, and are able to be vulnerable with - we will grow, we will change, we will thrive!

The Good Word of the Day

"Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed."

Proverbs 15:22

So find your community! You may have to be the person who reaches out and starts to build it! And that's great. You can hand pick the people you want to have in your inner circle. We are so thankful that people have let us into their worlds, and we are thankful for the people that we have in ours.

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, we would love for you to leave us a 5 star review on iTunes, and to subscribe! You can reach us at [email protected] or on Instagram.

Have a great week and join us again next week for episode 99!

Technology is great and terrible for our families. Millions upon millions of families have come before us with little to no technology. And they did pretty well for themselves. But here we are with too much technology and what are we supposed to do now?

Todd Watson, CEO of Showit (the sponsor of our podcast!) and Chris' cousin, is on the podcast! This interview is packed with so much incredible info on how to keep our families safe in this technological world.

Where to start

We cannot expect to protect our kids from everything. That is a truth pill we have to swallow, right off the bat. But let's also remember that as adults, a lot of us need this info, whether we have kids or not. A lot of us grown ups are just as bad, if not worse, than kids with their devices!

In episode 31, we talked with Robert Watson about porn and sex. One thing that he told us was that your kids are not always looking for porn, but porn is looking for them! So teach them that there are just so many things they should not click on. And talk to them about staying safe online.

Todd also mentioned that simply having a phone, and having texting capabilities is a form of social media. So even if your kids are not on social media (which we strongly recommend that they avoid it til they are at least 16, if not longer!), you still have to check up on them! If they can text, they are not getting a break from school life, or social life. When we were younger, when we left school for the day, that was it. We didn't bring the drama home with us. Make sure your kids are doing ok with who is texting them, and what people are texting them. Even deleted texts can haunt you forever - so be careful. And tell your kids to be careful.

Some tools

Here are some of the apps and tools that Todd mentioned in this episode

qustodio.com

bark.com

Griffin Wifi router

set pins on Netflix

Best parenting advice

As always, our biggest pieces of advice for having a healthy home are to eat meals together and build your relationships! If eating dinner every night together is out of the question, then eat bowls of cereal together in the morning. Just make sure you have time to look each other in the eyeballs and say "how was your day? how is your heart?"

Good Word of the Day

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

-Proverbs 22:6

Todd talked a lot about training our kids for character! SO GOOD! We can't control our kids and their actions. We can try to help them make better choices, and we can try to protect them from certain things. But if we train them to have good character, they will make a lot of those good choices for themselves!

We mentioned that Rules Without Relationship Lead to Rebellion. Work on your relationship with your kids and your loved ones. Help them to understand the rules, and even have ownership in them! Hopefully this will mitigate some of the rebellion! Friends, none of us are going to get this right 100% of the time. Our kids will slip up. And so will we! So let's have grace, AND wisdom!

Connect with Todd

You can hear more about Todd's journey as a foster family in episode 6!

You can connect with him on social media, even though he is rarely on it. (So, good luck!)

Connect with Us!

Fostering Voices on Instagram

You can also email us here!

AND we would LOVE it if you would SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on iTunes! This helps others to find our podcast so we can share these voices from the foster care and adoption community with more people!

If you want to see how to leave a review, check out this handy little video!

In this week's episode, we talk about how the imprints of love that our parents and family that we grew up with, affect us in our adulthood.

We talk about all of this through the lens of the book "How We Love" by Milan and Kay Yerkovich, which is EXCELLENT and we Highly recommend it.

You can find it here.

But if you aren't much of a book reader (and of course they have it on Audible.com, which is great since that's how we read it) you should at the very least go to their website. You can find their quiz HERE, and see what your love style is.

The five categories are: Pleaser, Controller, Avoider, Vacillator, and Victim.

Chris and I are both in the PLEASER love style, which you would think is amazing. But it has it's downfalls for sure. Like, some Pleasers do things for others - to make themselves feel better, not to make the person that they are serving feel better.

Soul Words are words that seem so obvious to some, and impossible to articulate for others. You can find a list here. Maybe it will help to have this up on your refrigerator, and to refer to it when having important discussions with your spouse and/or children.

The Good Word of the Day

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self,which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

-Ephesians 4:22-24

Even though we fall into certain categories of Love Styles, and they come with negative, and positive connotations, none of us are supposed to be STUCK in that forever. We are called to grow, change, evolve, and put on a new self. And we can help the children in our care, as well as our spouses and friends, to also grow in their minds, and be like our Creator, who is righteous and holy.

Summary:

In honor of Foster Care Awareness Month, join us for an inspiring episode featuring a heartfelt conversation with my sister-in-law, Tara Armstrong. Tara played a pivotal role in our family's foster care journey, guiding us as we transitioned from having two kids to seven. Now, she has embarked on her own remarkable path. As a single mom of two, Tara opened her heart and home, adopting two children from the foster care system who were searching for their forever family. This episode delves into the challenges and triumphs of fostering and adoption, offering real talk and personal insights that highlight the profound impact one person can make. Tune in to hear Tara's story of love, resilience, and the transformative power of family.

Resource Links:

Foster Arizona | Foster & Adobt

Foster Cooperative

Arizona Association for Foster and Adoptive Parents

ASA Now

Families | Arizona 1.27

Connect with us!

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: @FosteringVoicesPodcast

Instagram: @FosteringVoices

Web: www.fosterarizona.org