The quiet, daily work of healing the past by loving the present. My life has been insane as I focus on finishing a draft of my book, The Choice Was Love: Book One – The Child Who Raised Me, while already drafting parts of Book Two—which I still have no idea how to title. BUT…
When I first shared my story with other grandparents raising their grandchildren, I expected criticism. However, as my story went broader, the comment that cut deepest was, “If you had raised your child right, you would not be raising your grandchild.” It stung because it reduced a complex reality to a simplistic blame game, ignoring…
I have been retired for about three and a half years, but the life I once imagined looks nothing like the one I am living. Raising my grandchild was not part of the plan, and balancing my expectations with reality has been a challenge. As a single parent to a young child, my dreams of…
Raising grandchildren can be challenging, particularly because they have experienced trauma. As a survivor of abuse, foster parenting, adopting 2 children with trauma, raising those children, and now as a grandparent raising my grandchild, I have faced struggles that others could never comprehend. I have learned that understanding how trauma affects us is key to…