It wasn’t a secret that I felt closer to my dad growing up than I did my mom. Growing up dad and I used to take road trips back and forth between Calgary and Spokane for various doctor appointments as strange as that may seem I loved the time we spent together and bonding during our travels. He would sit with me after the various operations I went through and…

  I must have written this entry of my blog a half a dozen times and ripped it apart about 100 times. It’s been well over a year since my last posting which to be honest was never my intension whatsoever, but here we are a year and some months later. If it hadn’t been for our pastor and dear friend, who reminded me of my love of writing and…

 We’ve all been there at one point or another, when that cute little person who stolen your heart when they were  a newborn up to the age of middle school (pushing the envelope at middle school). I’m talking about that right of passage stage of teenage hormones. Lets face it our parents were lucky to survive our own teen years the extra grey hairs on their head as we tested…

So many things have happened over the summer compared to last, first the neighbourhood drama queen no longer makes her presence known around our home anymore. Theres been a sense of peace and calmness since I made it perfectly clear to her mom that it would be best if our kids didn’t play together considering it’s like the Wild West of all friendships and the toxic environment that developed over…

Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins. Erma…

If there’s anything I’ve learned over years as first a foster parent and now an adoptive one, is that it helps to be a little crazy. For several years now I’ve wanted to hunt down the kid’s birth mom or better yet had wished for an open adoption. As Jayson gets older though the urgency of wanting to talk to her gets stronger, it’s weird I know but I have…

“And unto him a child is born” I must have written and deleted this post at least a thousand times in my head over the past several months. On the last week of January I received a call from the Dept of Children Services, this has been a call I’ve been waiting for nearly 9 years. The case worker wanted to inform me that our children’s bio mom had given…

Since the beginning of the year I had written two blog entries only to cut them before I tried for a third attempt on this one. It wasn’t because they weren’t any good there’s just so much going on in our life now that I wanted to keep some things on the down low. As a parent of a 13-year-old boy and a soon to be 10-year-old girl there’s only…

If there was any issues I had about the foster care system was the amount of social workers we went through in the years we fostered. We went through so many  in the span of 8 years that I have seriously lost count. I guess you could say that I’m pretty leery where social workers are, just because our track record hasn’t been the greatest and have gotten some pretty questionable…

I was surfing through Facebook when one of my school mates (who is the same age as me) announced that she will become a grandma in the new year. To be honest at 48 years old I never really thought of myself to be in this stage of life, I still consider myself as young, my body however tells me different. Maybe because we started later than my peers although…

  Since my last post in August, things have slowly gotten better with Jayson. My constant writing has been my saving grace along with the support of my husband, family and of course my friends. I don’t regret writing what I did, after all I’ve absorbed and pushing down how Jay’s been expressing himself the only way he knew how through anger and hurt for 10 yrs. It’s no wonder…

  I never thought I’d ever find myself wanting to runaway from home before but that’s exactly where I found myself doing last month. My stress level was so high I could no longer function. Simple everyday decisions were impossible to make, both kid’s behaviour were getting way out of control where I’d find myself crying in the bathroom with the taps running  or the shower to dull the sound…

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn,if I settle on the far side of the sea,even there your hand will guide me your right hand will hold me fast.” Psalm 139 9 – 10 The above scripture is a reading about trust, trust really doesn’t come easy for me it’s something I have struggled with for many years now. As I have mentioned before the word mom had…

I don’t want to be an adult today, just the thought of everything I have to do sometimes leaves me wanting to regress to an uncooperative 5-year-old refusing to eat their veggies. As I’m writing here, I have my sturdy monster slippers on and drinking out of a Tinker-bell coffee mug avoiding all the paperwork my Spark’s unit has me doing as well as my monthly departmental paperwork that has…

We are now in the month of January, 4 months into the school year and 5 more to go. To be honest with you I haven’t had the real desire to write lately. It was never my idea to turn this blog into “A Dear Diary ” moment so on my really bad or blah days the last thing I want to do is turn my blog into a negative…

My son came home last week acting kinda weird (you know that feeling a parent gets when something happened). Ten minutes of poking and I discovered that Jay had a slight disagreement with his friends at recess on the playground. First of all Jay is a very fast runner and enjoys a good game of tag, however on this day there was some disagreement about who was it. From what…

It is said that God never gives us more than we can handle and perhaps theres some truth to that as I am learning all too well. I haven’t had as much time really to do much writing as I would have liked to this past while. Last year I put Grace in Sparks, the youngest members of The Girl Guides of Canada and this year I was asked to…

It’s just the start of Christmas break and already I feel that I’m failing as a parent. In the seven and a half years since parenting a child with RAD,  I’d thought wouldn’t get as frustrated by him as much as I do but these past few months alone have been a challenge in itself. It seems that the minute I’m making some progress things just have a way to…

  As a mother going on 11 years now I was always put up to a higher standard than most, not to say that I’m special or anything but when I was a foster parent we were expected to be absolutely flawless. Being a mom isn’t easy on the best of days for anyone but when you are under a microscope we are expected to be perfect. In my case…

I’m not going to write about how RAD affects our lives today because then I’m only telling you about a fraction of our life. When Kevin and I were fostering we used to spend many endless nights staying up comforting little ones who had multiple nightmares in the night. Like I’ve said before I love to bake so I came up with a concept to help kids have a restful…

 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future Jeremiah 29:11 This is just one of my favourite bible passages, because it reminds me that God has a plan for us there’s always a reason for everything. If there’s one thing all parents have to remember regardless if we have…

A child with RAD can and will test any marriage no matter how strong the bond between husband and wife is. Considering everything Kevin and I have gone through over the years it’s no wonder we haven’t parted ways. I believe that our faith in God has made us stronger for it. Don’t get me wrong I can tell you that we’ve had many conflicts over the years on how we…

Whoever is patient has great understanding. but one who is quick-tempered displays folly Proverbs:29 As a mother of a child with RAD and ADHD my patience has been challenged many times. It’s a challenge I am up for and welcome, little did I know 6 years ago just how challenging it would be. It was 6 years ago on March 23 2009 that both Jayson and now Grace were apprehended…

“And he took the children in his arms,put his hands on them and blessed them.” Mark 10:16   Grace The first time the case worker put her in my arms I knew she was mine. At 9 months old she weighed no more than maybe 10 – 12 lbs the size of most 3 month olds. I knew from the many years of fostering not to mention bio mom’s background, that…

During the adoption process Jayson made it pretty clear that he did not want to be adopted and honestly this concerned me. How was I ever going to get through to him when all I wanted was to be the type of mom he really deserved and he was making it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. I admit over the course of several years I felt resentful…

It was kinda hard for me to fully realize we had full control of what parents have done since the day of their children’s birth. We were now responsible for every decision medical, dental, where we can take the kids when we traveled without having to ask permission or get approval from a case worker or their superior at head office. Case in point four months after our adoption was…

Children are our heritage from the Lord,offspring a reward to him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children born in one’s youth. Psalm 127 3:4   After Baby T left, things started to calm down and both Kevin and I were able to get some much-needed sleep,Jayson’s night terrors were tapering off somewhat and soon visits with bio mom resumed. I had no ill will towards…

” For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me. Mathew 25: 35-36 In January 2009 we put ourselves back on the availability list, I thought that if I kept busy with another child my…

“A future awaits for those that seek peace”  Psalm 37:37  “For I know the plans I have for you….. plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future ”        Jeremiah 29:11   That night  I didn’t sleep, all I could think about was how we left him standing outside b.m”s apt, seeing him waving good-bye and smiling that wide smile of…

Life in the Bergen household continued after our trip back from BC, visits resumed, meetings with our support workers once a month continued and Jayson was about to begin his second year at Scott Roberts Preschool. Then things started to change, Jayson was getting settled in his class routine, monthly meetings with caseworkers showed that mom hadn’t done much change to improve her situation I had helped her as much…

  On June 28 2008 our daughter Grace made her  grand entrance into the world. I got a call that afternoon from bm as we had made plans to meet that day to talk about Jay. I had given her all our contact numbers if she ever wanted or needed to get a hold of me, we talked often on the phone since April with the understanding that whatever we…

“He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;he gently leads those that have young” Isaiah 40:11   Our son Jayson first came into our hearts in March of 2006 at the young age of 2 years. We got a call from our support worker saying that there was a little boy in care that needed respite. His…

April 1 2004 we got a call from Teresa asking wether or not we would  consider a sib group? Kinda ironic that today of all days to get a call. There was a 3-year-old  boy and his 9 month old baby sister available for adoption and our profile looked very promising. We began meeting with the children’s case worker to talk about their background and some of the potential needs they…

We got our first placement on July 19 2004, 3 months after we switched to straight foster care.I got the call from Brenda saying there was a newborn infant getting discharged from the hospital the following morning. So this was it finally after 8 years a baby would be here. I rushed to the store to get anything and everything we could need, I was beyond excited. I called Kevin about the…

” But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take in hand. The victims commit themselves to you ; you are the helper of the fatherless” Psalm 10:14   After our fertility treatments I took some time to self reflect,do I want to be pregnant ….. or did I want to be a mother?  In November 2002 we started researching our adoption options we…

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.  “ Psalm 46 1-3″ We spent most of 2001 2002 in a fertility clinic recommended by my family doctor there we were both tested and advised on the procedure we would take. I first heard about the drug…

“The lord will vindicate me; your love Lord, endures forever do not abandon the works of your hands” Psalm 138:8 My husband and I have been married for 16 years now we were married in a beautiful church in Cour D’ Alene Idaho on August 5 1997. Our journey to start a family came 2 years later, by that time we were ready but little did we know just how…