Trauma is something that is common to all humans. But trauma and abuse are not a part of everyone’s story, but it is for this week’s guest. Monica was put into foster care as a baby, and was soon adopted by an abusive family. She was actually put back into foster care a few years later, but then returned to the previous adoptive family. Talk about a traumatic childhood!

You Are Not Trauma and Abuse

But Monica is not defined by her trauma and abuse, and she encourages others to get over their pain to fully heal, and fully understand how to receive love and give it away as an adult. 

She attributes her relationship with Jesus to truly teaching her what unconditional love looks like, and learning how to accept love. Monica is in intense therapy, and has been for the last few years. She has made massive strides in overcoming the pain of her past. Monica is such a great example of seeing beautiful fruit from hard work!

Tune in to hear how she rose above her difficult past, and how she is pressing forward with great love, and great hope and joy for the future.

The Good Word of the Day:

Honestly – we had too many good words! Monica dropped so many great nuggets of truth and wisdom on us! Our favorites are:

“Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

– John 13:7

“It’s not about perfection, it’s progression.” Author Unknown. BUT Joyce Meyers did say “Strive for excellence, not perfection, because we don’t live in a perfect world.” And Meyers is one of Monica’s favorite authors.

“Look how far you have come.”

– Bob Goff

We are SO thankful for Monica and her heart! She is going through therapy and doing SO MUCH hard work to get herself to a place of healing and peace. All of us need help and healing, so we just want to encourage everyone to get the help that they need!

We love Showit!

We are especially thankful for Showit – the sponsors of our podcast. Monica and I also happen to work there! We are a small team of 32, but SO MANY people have been interviewed on our podcast as their lives have been touched by either foster care, adoption, or both!

You can check out Todd and Elisa Watson’s foster care journey here. And Parker’s journey about being adopted, here. Kara Lackey was on the podcast and we talked about how she created the Know and Love Quiz to help parents to know and love their kids – especially their foster kids! JT and Ashley Pals share about their journey with adoption. Reggie Sheffield, an Amazing DCS worker for over a decade deserves a medal, but instead just got to be on our podcast. Shamesha, my coworker and Reggie’s wife, was kind enough to make a video on our YouTube channel about caring for ethnic hair.

And just this week, our other coworker, Eddie, adopted his son through the state. And Nathan and Heather Griffy, have been foster and adoptive parents for a few years now, and we need to get these two families on the podcast soon! So from our staff of 32, 9 families are in this foster and adoption space! How amazing is that?!?!?

Want to Connect?

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Jihae on Instagram and Chris on Facebook

You can also email us at hello@fosteringvoices.com 

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Go do great things with great love, and we will be back with a brand new episode next week!