When Awakening Feels Like Betrayal

After a hard conversation with their child—one of those moments that lands like a quiet earthquake—a parent found themselves haunted by a single phrase:

“You’re not the villain… but you’re definitely not the victim.”

That sentence rang through their heart li...

Adoption doesn’t begin with love.

It begins with loss.
And sometimes, even earlier, it begins with violence.

Not every baby is conceived in safety.
Not every pregnancy is chosen.
Some children begin their lives in the aftermath of rape, coercion, addiction, abandonment.
Some grow in wombs heavy wi...

What if privilege isn’t what we think it is?

What if it’s not just about wealth or power or even access—but about what we haven’t had to see?

I’ve been sitting with this idea lately:
Maybe privilege is just a blind spot.

Not something to feel ashamed of. Not something to feel superior about. But ...

You love your children deeply. You're doing your best to raise them with care, intention and heart. And yes - adopting or raising children of color has changed you in profound ways. But love alone doesn't erase the deeper patterns we've inherited. And when we parent with unexamined bias, our childre...

Melvin Hawkins Is Our Rock

There are some people who change your life just by showing up. Melvin is one of those people—for my son, and by extension, for me.

My son needed something I could never give him. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because I didn’t try. But because some things can’t be ta...

We often hear about adoption as a story of rescue. A hopeful solution for families who can’t have children of their own. A win-win. A happy ending.

But that version of the story is missing entire chapters — and the most important voice of all: the adoptee.

Organizations like Adoption Mosaic have b...

Adoption, Fear, and Loving Through the Unknown

When the phone rang, I said yes.

The adoption agency told me the birth mother had used “some drugs, not much.”
I had just turned down another situation where the expectant mother had used substances daily. So when they said “not much,” I believed them...

Parenting is hard. Transracial parenting? It’s a whole different level of navigating love, loss, and learning. White Awake Parenting was born out of my own humbling, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-expanding experience of raising Black children in a world that wasn’t built for them—and of waking ...

When my beautiful, Black children came to me through adoption, I thought love was enough. But very quickly, I realized it wasn’t. Not in a country still deeply scarred by racism, systemic injustice, and unequal power.

If we white parents don’t do the work — if we don’t face our own whiteness, unlea...

Let’s be honest: the world is full of coaches. Life coaches. Parent coaches. Trauma coaches. Mindset coaches. Nervous system coaches. (Guilty—I’ve worked with several.)

So how do you know who’s right for you—especially when your life includes adoption, trauma, grief, race, identity, and the messy j...

Even thinking of yourself as a “rescuer” assumes someone else needed saving.

That someone else had misfortune. That you’re offering them something they didn’t have.

And the heartbreaking part is - your children feel that imbalance, even if they don't yet have the words for it.

They life in a worl...

When my twins were toddlers, I remember being called out about their hair.

Strangers—Black strangers—would approach me in the grocery store or at the park with comments that, at the time, I interpreted as criticism.

“You’ve got to moisturize their hair.”
“Whew, they’re dry, mama.”

In my head, I w...