Foster Parent Well
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.
🎧 Subscribe now and let’s do this together!
Foster Parent Well
Can You Really Help a Child If You Haven't Healed?
We explore the critical importance of healing for foster and adoptive parents, emphasizing how past experiences shape our parenting. Understanding ourselves allows us to nurture our children effectively while providing the love they need.
• Exploring the concept of healing and being a steady presence
• The impact of past traumas on parenting styles
• The significance of understanding how childhood shapes our view of God
• Strategies for prioritizing health and emotional well-being
• Insights on creating a nurturing environment for children with trauma
• Encouragement for listeners to start their healing journey
If you found this episode helpful at all, I'd love for you to leave a review. It helps so much for this podcast to be found by other foster and adoptive parents.
Wellness IG Account: https://www.instagram.com/fosterwellnesscoach/
6 Week Challenge: https://stan.store/nicoletbarlow/p/6-week-coaching-group
I'd love to hear from you! Send me a text!
Connect with me on Instagram: @Fosterparentwell
@nicoletbarlow https://www.instagram.com/nicoletbarlow/
Website: https://nicoletbarlow.com/
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 so glad you're here today. Before we dive in, I have to share something fun. It is one of my kids' birthdays today in. I have to share something fun. It is one of my kids' birthdays today.
Speaker 1:Birthdays in our home look a little different than the typical party scene, so we don't usually do big parties because I mean, as most of you probably know, parties can be overwhelming and sometimes dysregulating for our kids. So pretty early on, we started a special tradition where the birthday kid gets one-on-one time with both mom and dad. And let me tell you, in a big family like ours, that is rare and it's a treasured gift both for the child and for us as parents. It's such a sweet time where we get to focus on them, to really see them and celebrate who they are. But I would love to know what you guys do. What do you do to celebrate birthdays in your home? Dm me or tag me on Instagram, because I always love how other families do things. How do you celebrate birthdays? How do you really help that child feel special, especially if you have, you know, multiple kids in the household?
Speaker 1:All right, let's get into today's topic. We're going to be talking about doing the work inside of us first. Karen Purvis, who many of you know as a leader in trauma-informed parenting, has this quote that sticks with me. She says a parent cannot lead a child to healing that they have not experienced themselves. Phew, y'all, that's a big one, right, but what does that actually mean? What does it mean to do the healing work inside of us, and how do we make sure we aren't carrying our own unprocessed wounds into our parenting? Because this world, you guys, we're going to have hurts, we're going to have wounds that happen along the way. So how do we make sure we're not showing up to parent out of those wounds? Well, right now I'm going through a class in my church called the Emotionally and Spiritually Healthy Woman and let's just say it's shining some really big cracks that I didn't even realize were there. I had a lot of trauma as a child and, honestly, I thought I had worked through most of it before stepping into foster care. But parenting kids with trauma has this way of exposing those places in us that still need healing. It's humbling and sometimes it's exhausting, but it also is necessary. It is a gift that the Lord gives us in exposing some of those wounds so that they can be healed.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you in class this week we have been going through several different processes and there was something that happened like a year ago I had done an attachment interview as part of my TBRI practitioner training. As part of my TBRI practitioner training, and I went through this attachment interview and afterwards we were talking about so my attachment style is dismissive, but I'm moving towards secure right. So secure attachment is the place where we all want to be, but I grew up in a dismissive household, so that was like my primary attachment style, but I am moving towards secure attachment. Well, I asked her at the end of the interview. She asked if I had any questions and I asked her. Well, you know, do kids, when kids come into our home and they have a different attachment style from their previous experience or whatever, or they have attachment struggles, attachment issues, does that change our attachment style? Or in situations where, if you have a parent that has gone through abuse as an adult or something of the sort, does that change their attachment style? Because I felt like I parented one way you know our first child and then you know our foster kids that came in. But then when we had some kids that came in that had a higher level of attachment needs, I noticed my parenting changing a little bit and I noticed that I was more easily triggered into some things.
Speaker 1:And she said something to me that has always stuck but I never really understood it. She said no, if you are having a secure attachment style, if you have moved into that secure space and you have fully worked through all of your past trauma, then a child coming in doesn't affect your attachment style. It doesn't move you out of that secure space. Once you are secure, you are always secure. And I was like wow, okay, but I didn't really know how to make sense of that in my own story. But it was very interesting In class this week I was sitting there and I was listening as they were talking about trauma and processing and healing.
Speaker 1:You know different parts of our stories. I think I understood, like I understood what she was talking about when she was saying if we have a secure attachment style, we're going to face the world differently and so people aren't going to have the effect on us internally, at our core, because we have processed who we are, who God is, who our parents were. We've processed our stories in a way that is a little more secure. So it may not make sense to any of you guys, but I'm telling you it was just so eye-opening for me and it really got me thinking about doing the work that needs to be done inside of us that sometimes we think that work is done but we don't really know what needs to be done. We don't really know all of the spaces that need to be touched. So what does it actually mean to do the work inside of us?
Speaker 1:I think there are four key questions that we need to ask ourselves. The first one is have we made sense of our past? So this doesn't mean we feel great about everything that's happened to us, but have we taken the time to of our past? So this doesn't mean we feel great about everything that's happened to us, but have we taken the time to process our emotions and have we made sense of our experiences? Studies in attachment and neuroscience show that when we haven't processed our own stories, we're much more likely to react to our children's behaviors out of our own unhealed wounds. That's why understanding our own past matters so much. It helps us to respond to our kids with wisdom rather than reacting out of our pain.
Speaker 1:Think of it like carrying a backpack filled with heavy rocks. So every unresolved trauma, every hurt that we haven't worked through, is another rock weighing us down. Or in class this week they talked about a suitcase, right? Every unhealed trauma is like the suitcase and you keep packing stuff in the suitcase as things happen and it gets to the point where it's about to explode, right? So then the problem is is when our kids bump up against that suitcase, that suitcase is going to pop open and everything's going to fly out, right? So maybe it's like snapping at them when they trigger an old wound, or maybe it's shutting down emotionally because we don't want to feel that kind of a pain again. But when we take the time to unpack that suitcase, to process our past with honesty and with care and y'all, a lot of times it means counseling, right? But we lighten that load and we create more space to respond to our kids with love rather than reacting from those old wounds.
Speaker 1:Another thing that can be impacted by our childhood and the things that we have experienced is how we see God. So number two, the second question I want us to ask ourselves is do we have a distorted view of God? Our childhoods often shape how we see God. So if we grew up in a home where love was conditional or trust was broken, it can be really hard to believe in a God who is unchanging, who is always good, who is fully loving you guys I don't even know really what that looks like and I don't know that any of us do fully right, but when you have childhood wounds, when you have experiences with your parents where your parents haven't been that to you specifically your dad parents haven't been that to you, specifically your dad it can be really hard to look at God as your heavenly father. I don't even really know what that would look like. I have a hard time really understanding what fatherly love like true fatherly love looks like. But the truth is, our view of God must be rooted in His Word, not in our past experiences, not in our own parents.
Speaker 1:Romans 12 says be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So we have to constantly renew our minds with truth so we don't pass on this distorted view of God that we have onto our children. Healing here means we're leading into scripture, we're leading into prayer and sometimes we're even going to counseling to help reshape how we see ourselves and how we see God. I've heard it said that the way we view our earthly father often influences how we see our heavenly father. So if we grew up with a father who was distant or harsh, we may struggle to trust in a God that is always near, that is always full of grace. But here's the thing Our earthly experiences do not define God's character. So we have to be in this space where we are actively working to replace lies with truth. We have truth, you guys. The Lord has given us truth. He has given us His Word that we can stand on.
Speaker 1:One practice that has been so helpful for me is journaling out my thoughts about God and comparing them to Scripture. If I find a belief that doesn't line up with his word, I ask him to reframe it. The other thing that I've done is I have given myself daily affirmations that remind me who God is and how he sees me. Right that I can trust God, that he is for me, that I can trust God that he is for me sorry, that he is not against me, that he loves me, right Like I. Go through these daily affirmations every single day as a way to renew my mind to what Scripture says is true, because when we see God clearly, we can lead our children to know God for who he truly is, and not through the lens of our wounds or what we have known, or even what our kids know, but helping them see His truth, helping them know what is true about God. All right.
Speaker 1:The third question I think that we need to ask ourselves is how do we relate to others? This one is big, so do we avoid conflict? Do we hold people to impossibly high standards? Are we overly concerned with what other people think? A lot of these patterns stem from our own wounds, and if we don't work through them, we're going to bring them into our parenting and y'all. All of our wounds don't necessarily come from our young childhood or the way that our parents treated us. Sometimes we may have experienced bullying in school, or we may have experienced things even in young adulthood. That affects how we relate to others. So when our kids push back, when they reject our love or when they struggle to connect, our own unresolved issues will make it harder to show up for them consistently. We have to learn how to handle relationships in a way that is healthy and grace-filled if we want to teach our children to do the same. One of the other things that I have realized is I try to step in and save or fix people, and that can be really really dangerous when we're talking about kids that come from previous trauma. So I have to be able to relate to people in a healthy way in order to be at my best for my kids.
Speaker 1:It's like being a thermostat versus being the thermometer, right? I love this analogy, you guys. A thermometer, think about it. A thermometer reacts to the temperature around it. It rises and it falls, based on its environment, but a thermostat sets the temperature. So if we are constantly reacting to people around us, whether it's our kids, our spouse, our extended family, whatever's going around, right, like whatever chaos is happening, if we're constantly reacting to those things, we're functioning like a thermometer. But when we do that work of understanding our relational tendencies, when we can set a steady, healthy temperature in our homes, even when behaviors around us are unpredictable, then we're being like the thermostat. I just love that picture of our ability to set the temperature instead of responding to the temperature constantly.
Speaker 1:Okay, the fourth one y'all, I talk about this one all the time but do we prioritize our health and well-being? In order to be that steady, in order to be that thermostat in our homes, then we have to be healthy. We have to prioritize our own well-being and this, yes, it includes working through our old wounds. It includes working through past traumas. It includes working past the way that we see God, we view God and the way we relate to others. But it is also about how we prioritize our own health and well-being. I talk about this on the podcast constantly.
Speaker 1:So are we taking care of our bodies in a way that allows us to show up well for our kids? Parenting kids with trauma? It requires a level of regulation and stability that we simply cannot maintain. If we're running on empty, so if we're skipping meals, if we're eating junk, if we're relying on caffeine or sugar to get us through the day, our bodies and our minds are going to struggle. We really need to fuel ourselves. Well, we need to be moving our bodies and ensuring we're getting enough rest so that we can be the stable, steady presence that our kids need. I mean, imagine trying to drive across country with your car has no gas, it's running on fumes. That's not going to work. You're not going to get very far before you break down on the side of the road, and the same is true for us. If we are constantly pouring out but we are never pouring back into ourselves, if we're constantly running on empty, if we're pushing through the exhaustion, we are not going to have the capacity to show up for our kids in the way that they need us. We need to make sure that we're giving ourselves permission to rest, to fuel our bodies with really good nutrition, you guys, and then to move in ways that support our health, because when we are well, we can offer so much more to those around us. We can actually have the ability to show up as that steady, stable presence for our kids.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, our kids need safe, healthy, reliable adults. Science tells us that felt safety, or our children's ability to truly believe that they're safe, comes from the stability of us, the caregivers. If we are constantly dysregulated. If we're anxious, if we're emotionally all over the place, they are going to struggle to find security. We set the temperature of our homes. You are a thermostat, not a thermometer. If we are constantly being swayed by our kids' behaviors, that's a sign that there's more work that needs to be done inside of us. And that's okay. We're all there, you guys.
Speaker 1:I told you just this week I'm seeing things all over the place that I need to heal, but let's not ignore it. Let's do the work that's necessary. If this resonates with you at all and you know that you need to start prioritizing your own health, I'd love to invite you to join my next wellness challenge. So I coach, foster and adoptive parents in their health, because I know the stress that we're all under. I use a platform called Faster Way to help set up sustainable, healthy habits, but I tailor the program specifically to the needs of parents that are navigating trauma. So I teach on how stress impacts your body. I give you tools to support your nervous system. In the midst of it all, some of my clients are seeing amazing, amazing results, not just physically and they are seeing results physically, you guys but emotionally too and in the ability to show up for their kids well. So my next challenge starts March 24th.
Speaker 1:You can find the link in the show notes if you're interested. Also, if you're just looking for more content specifically around health and not just physical health, but mental health, spiritual health you guys, you can find me. I have a special social media account just for that. You can follow me at Foster Wellness Coach. Or if you just want to connect on my regular Instagram account, I'd love that too. You can find me at my regular Instagram account at Nicole T Barlow. If you found this episode helpful at all, I'd love for you to leave a review. It helps so much for this podcast to be found by other foster and adoptive parents.
Speaker 1:And before we go, let me pray for you, father. I lift up every parent listening today. You see the struggles, the exhaustion and the places where healing is still needed. The exhaustion and the places where healing is still needed. Give them the courage to do the work in themselves so that they can be the steady, loving presence their children need. Fill them with your strength, lord. Give them your wisdom and your peace. Thank you, father, for calling them to this work and for walking with them in it. We love you. We trust you In Jesus' name amen.