I have been part of the All About U Adoptions family for just over three years, and I am deeply proud of the work we do every day. My own journey to motherhood began when four extraordinary women chose life and chose my husband and me to be parents to their precious babies. Our family was built through the gift of adoption, and it has shaped every part of who I am.
Before joining AAU, I earned Bachelor’s Degrees in Elementary Education and Communication Disorders and a Master’s Degree in Communication Disorders. I served as a Speech-Language Pathologist in a hospital setting for more than 25 years. When our youngest two sons left for college, I felt called to begin a new chapter. Having followed Coleen and the growth of All About U for over two decades, the timing was perfect. She was looking for a social worker just as I was discerning my next step.
Though I’ve worked professionally in the adoption field for three years, I have personally lived the world of adoption for over thirty years. I believe that experience is the greatest teacher. My background has given me firsthand life experience in open adoption, birth parent and birth grandparent relationships, mental health and addiction struggles, homelessness and food insecurities, transracial adoption, racial stereotypes and micro-aggressions, newborn and toddler adoption, and the ever-present question of nature versus nurture. To which I believe the answer is both.
Adoption has blessed me beyond measure. I often say we don’t have a family tree, we have an orchard. Adoption is not one single story but a beautiful and heartbreaking collection of experiences, emotions, and lives intertwined. I am honored to support birth mothers, fathers, and families as they navigate both the grief and the joy that adoption can bring.
I believe love is the only force powerful enough to move a mother to break her own heart and place her child into another’s arms forever. I consider it a sacred privilege to walk beside birth mothers, helping them find healing, hope, and peace as they navigate their adoption journey because they matter, and I see them.
