Foster Parent Well is the go-to podcast for foster and adoptive parents who are navigating the complexities of parenting children with trauma while trying to stay sane in the process. Hosted by Nicole T Barlow, a foster and adoptive mom of six, parent trainer, and wellness coach, this podcast is where faith, resilience, and practical strategies come together.
If you're feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, or just plain exhausted from the daily realities of foster care and adoption—you're not alone. Here, we have real conversations about the hard stuff: attachment struggles, secondary trauma, parenting beyond behaviors, and the deep emotional weight of loving kids from hard places. But we also talk about you—your health, your nervous system, your faith, and the small, sustainable ways you can care for yourself so you can keep showing up for your kids.
Expect practical tips, faith-based encouragement, expert insights, and zero sugarcoating—just real, honest talk about what it takes to foster well, adopt well, and most importantly, stay well in the process.
Because parenting kids with trauma is a marathon, not a sprint—and you were never meant to run it alone.
Foster Care Will Change You: A Journey of Restoration
•Nicole T Barlow •Season 2•Episode 18
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What if the very challenges you face in foster care and adoption could transform you into a stronger, more compassionate person? This week, join me, Nicole T. Barlow, on the Foster Parent Well podcast. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of how upheavals in our routines can open up new paths for self-care and growth. Drawing on insights from a recent marriage retreat and the biblical story of Job, I delve into the loss of self-identity many foster and adoptive parents feel and how God can use our struggles to restore us in unexpected, beautiful ways.
To wrap things up, we discuss the importance of shedding pride and self-reliance to deepen our relationship with God and embody Christ-like qualities. I share how these experiences have shifted my worldview and faith. Your support means the world to us; please like, review, and share the podcast to help us connect with more foster and adoptive families. Tune in next Tuesday for our regular episode, and join us in a heartfelt prayer that seeks divine guidance for restored health, energy, and the patience to lead and serve our children well.
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we have real candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption and trauma. I'm your host, nicole T Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach and an adoptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance and joy. I want you to, Nicole T Barlow. Let me just start off by apologizing. Usually, this podcast comes out on Tuesday mornings, but this week it was just not happening.
Speaker 1:
This week has been a real doozy at my house. My younger girls started a new school this week, so we have mostly homeschooled our crew. For those of you that don't know our story, we have six kids. We adopted a sibling set of five in 2017. And homeschooling has really allowed us to meet our kids where they are. But this year we felt like they needed a chance to branch out a little and there's a new hybrid school that opened up in our area. We thought it would be a great chance for our girls to kind of jump in. Well, they're going to school three days a week and then they're at home the other two, but we are not used to morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups and just all the rushing around that happens with school. It's really thrown me off my game this week, not to mention that we've had some behaviors pick up a little bit at home. As everybody adjusts to the new schedules and that includes me my regular self-care routine has been way off. My morning quiet time, my workouts, my daily walks have really all kind of gotten shaken up. Do you ever feel like that in back-to-school season? Like you haven't quite figured out where to fit it all in yet. It's a struggle. It is a struggle, for sure, but it's also a great time, since routines are likely changing anyway, to implement some new self-care habits. So I'm really thinking through those during this season. Stick around until the end of the show today and I'll give you a little treat to start your school season. That could help you kind of reset and create some new habits. But all right, enough about this wacky week, let's jump in with today's content.
Speaker 1:
So one of the things that I hear from foster and adoptive parents all the time is I just don't recognize myself anymore. Many times, as we are serving, we lose sight of our own identity outside of that service, outside of our families, outside of our kids, outside of our husbands or spouse, outside of the trauma, outside of all the therapies and all the things that we have to get done. We get weighed down by stress and our nervous systems become more fragile. We get tired and worn down and we change. This past weekend, my husband and I went to a four-day marriage retreat. By the way, I highly recommend this. I will link the one that we went to in the show notes, but it was one of the greatest things we've ever done.
Speaker 1:
But one of the therapists was talking about how God restores us and she said are you willing to be restored differently than before? I'll say that again. She said are you willing to be restored differently than before? This was such a profound question that I haven't been able to get it answered out-of-my-mind sense. When I think of being restored, I'd always had in my mind, in my prayers, that I wanted to go back to who I was before. But would I really want to go back to who I was before? The truth is no. There's so much beauty in the depth of who I have become and the depth of who I have become. You may have to wade through a whole lot of muck to get to the good parts of the depth, but I don't want to give up those deep lessons that I've learned along the way In the book of Job after he loses his family, his animals, his money, his health and he spends a whole lot of time with some friends that aren't very nice to him the Lord restores him and gives him twice as much as before.
Speaker 1:
Even though Job was given more than he started with, do you think he was the same person? The answer is no. He had experienced grief that most of us will never know and he saw God in a much clearer, much more majestic and powerful way. He was restored different. God used all of that struggle in order that Job might know him better, and you know what he's done. The same for me.
Speaker 1:
1 Peter 5.10 says After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm. Will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. Let's stand on that today. We may lose some of ourselves in the process, but maybe that's the point. Maybe there are parts that we need to leave behind. Maybe I might need to leave behind my pride for more humility. Okay, not maybe. I know that I do. Maybe we need to leave behind self-reliance and practice leaning into the Lord and trusting that he is enough for us.
Speaker 1:
On this journey, and as I parent kids that have experienced trauma, there are parts of me that have come to the surface that I do not like to see. I don't like them, but isn't that part of the point of a refining fire? It brings those impurities to the surface so that they can be pulled out. I don't like seeing those impurities. I don't like seeing those ugly parts of me, but they are in there, whether they're on the surface or not. Maybe God is using this refining fire and he is making us more beautiful and more like Christ.
Speaker 1:
I know for me, one of the things that has really shifted over the years is the way that I look at God and faith and even the world. My worldview has changed. Early on, I was so sure and so certain and I saw the world really in black and white. I probably had a lot of judgment for others because I was so certain of how things should be, but now just about everything I see is gray area. I no longer think that faith and worship has to look just one way, that faith and worship has to look just one way. Sometimes it looks like a mom crying out to Jesus in her closet. Sometimes it's that same mom praising Jesus in the streets, and you know what Both are worship. Both are holy ground.
Speaker 1:
Jesus isn't just in the happy, but he's in the struggle too, and with foster care and adoption, I used to think very black and white about what success looked like, right, but the truth is it looks different in every situation. Sometimes success is in the reunification and the grief that comes with it, sometimes it's in adoption, sometimes it's a kid graduating college and sometimes it's a kid getting into a residential facility that they really need. Whatever the case, it's a lot of gray. The way that I think now is a lot, messier Gray. Areas aren't clean cut, but the Lord is teaching me to walk by a spirit instead of a certain set of standards, right, instead of this black and white one-way thinking. As I do this, as I lean into him, he is restoring me to something and someone so much brighter than before, something and someone so much brighter than before.
Speaker 1:
I have known a lot of pain on this journey, and maybe you have too, but in that pain I have learned that my satisfaction comes from Him. It can only come from Him. He is teaching me about love and grace, and what a good God he is. Praise, and what a good God he is. Sure, there are some things that I'm working on getting back, like my energy or endurance and my health. I've really been working on my health the last couple of years and I believe that I am on the road to healing in many of those ways. I believe that, as God does some refining, I will get back some patience and I will get back some peace, but I don't want to be restored to the same person I was. I want to be restored differently, to the glory of God. How about you? How have you changed along your foster and adoption journey? Along your foster and adoption journey, what are the things that you've lost? What are the things that you've gained? It's my guess that your life, your love, your faith may be a whole lot messier. It may be a lot more gray area, but I also believe that it's probably also much, much richer than you could have imagined.
Speaker 1:
As we close out today, I want to share a discount code for my next six-week coaching group. I work with foster and adoptive parents to restore their health, to gain energy and endurance, as you do the important work of parenting. So we take six weeks to learn holistic tools to care for yourself so that you can care for others well. And right now, as we kick off the school year and new routines, it's the perfect time to jump in. The group starts on Monday and I'm offering everyone $50 off for this group only. The code for this group that starts on Monday is RESET50. You don't want to miss it. I'll put the link to register and the discount code in the show notes, as always.
Speaker 1:
Like and review the podcast. It helps us get seen by more foster and adoptive families, and be sure to share it with your friends. Next week we'll be back on our regular scheduled day, tuesday morning. Now let me pray us out as we wrap up. Lord, god, thank you for changing us. Thank you for not allowing us to stay the same. We are so blessed to have a heavenly father that loves us enough to lead us to change. God, thank you for our kids and the lessons that they teach us every day. They are a blessing from you. Help me lead them and serve them well. God, restore our health, our energy, our patience as you pull out all of those impurities in our hearts. Make us look more like you. Jesus, we love you. We trust you In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.
