Severely disabled, non-responsive, and unknown life expectancy. These are some of the technical words that define children many of my friends have adopted. These are the hard cold facts that fill the endless pages of their medical histories and that would have condemned them to limited lives in hospitals and other such institutions, except that […]

Sometimes I forget when I am talking with people about transracial adoption (or parenting in general) to share the happy quiet moments as well as the hard ones. When I stop and watch, I see that my family has them every day. Sandwiched in between the training and the conflicts, the school work and the […]

As the mom to 6 adopted kids I try hard not to be afraid when I need to research Attachment Disorders and all of the psychologically disruptive things that this diagnosis can indicate. Rather than reacting out of fear, I have learned to process what I learn with a sober mind and a prayerful heart. […]

Who would have thought that figuring out how to verbally identify our children’s racial identity would be another one of the hard things about adoption? It seemed simple at first, they are African American and we are Caucasian. Then it got tougher, two of our children are also Cherokee Indian and two have unidentified fathers […]

On November 28, 2007, Dan Cruver interviewed Anthony Mathenia about trans-racial adoption and about Anthony and his wife Amber's own Ethiopian adoption journey. Three days ago, January 22, Amber's life was taken in a car accident. Our prayers are with Anthony and his children. We commend Amber's life to our readers as a model of […]

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For some time Carolina Hope has been part of the Amazon Affiliates program. That means that whenever anyone buys from Amazon using the link we provide, a small percentage of the sale is set aside for Carolina Hope. There's no additional charge to the buyer. If you're not already using an affiliate link to shop […]

“Why am I in this family anyway?” Words casually thrown to me over the shoulder of my 8 year old as he disappeared up the basement stairs with the umpteenth load of clean laundry.  This is the child that God is using to sharpen me and break down the self-sufficiency that I suffer so dreadfully […]

I have to confess a personal and deep-seated desire to get rid of the ‘Purple Jesus’ print that hangs on my living room wall. I acquired it accidentally when we rebuilt a portion of our church and I became the caretaker for some of the more obscure art we found stashed in various corners of […]

In an earlier post I wrote that we become a ‘city on the hill' when we adopt trans-racially. Simply put, we look different from most families and we stand out almost anywhere in our culture. But I have encountered another way that people view our family that I never would have guessed in my naiveté. […]