Relationships & Family

Reunited

batch — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:22:47 -0500

Dreams were not something I usually remembered in the morning, but recently I'd started having vivid ones about my son. One Saturday morning I woke from yet another, rubbing my eyes in confusion. What did the dreams mean?

It wasn't surprising that my son Chad would be on my mind. He had recently undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor. Doctors were optimistic, but a mother can't help but worry. Chad was married, with two beautiful children. They needed him. We all needed him.

5 Things You'll Be Asked When Adopting a Dog

jbloustein — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:35:54 -0500

About six years ago, I was scrolling through the adorable photos on Petfinder when I came across a reddish-brown spaniel, about 9 months old, with silky ears and soulful brown eyes.

I had to have that dog! You guessed it; that was Kelly.

Before I could adopt Kelly, however, I had to pass an interview conducted by Kelly's Rescue Mom. I anxiously sat on the couch as she scrutinized my home and examined my daily routine.

Co-Workers Discover They Are Brothers

jbloustein — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:11:35 -0500

Two furniture movers who worked together in Waldoboro, Maine are enjoying an unexpected family reunion after discovering they are long-lost brothers.

Coworkers and customers at Dow's Sleep Center told Gary Nisbet and Randy Joubert they looked so similar they could have been related. It turns out they were right.

Both men knew they had been adopted more than three decades ago, but they didn't know the whereabouts of any siblings.

Mother and Daughter Reunite After 38 Years

batch — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:05:08 -0500

A German mother was reunited with her long-lost daughter last week, seeing the child for the first time since the Communist secret police had taken her baby away in 1971.

Petra Hoffmann, who is now 55, gave birth to a daughter when she was only 16. Because the child's father was considered a dissident who had been jailed for speaking out against the hardline government, the Stasi secret police came to claim the child.

Matthew’s Hero

jnalewicki — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:22:27 -0600

I was driving to my parents’ house, and I was nervous. The reason was right behind me, nestled in a car seat. My adopted baby son Matthew had come home with us just a few days before. Now we were taking him to meet his grandparents.

"Take Me Home"

admin — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:51:00 -0500

I brushed the bangs from my forehead and clicked "send" on an e-mail, answering a question from a fan about a character in one of my novels.

A child from Haiti. The words popped into my head like an e-mail popping into my inbox. It had been a really long day: working on my new book in the morning, taking care of family and household stuff in the afternoon, then back to my study to answer fan mail in the evening. I tried to dismiss the thought. But it wouldn't be dismissed.

Little Camper on the Prairie

jbloustein — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:03:51 -0500

Our family, all 10 of us, walking the same streets writer Laura Ingalls Wilder did when she was a girl in Walnut Grove, Minnesota...I’d pictured this scene in my head for months, and now 50 days into our summer road trip, we were doing just that.

We went inside an early settlers’ house and saw the long dresses and high-button shoes girls wore back then. What a contrast to my 10-year-old daughter Liza, who was decked out in the red shorts and dirty purple tank top she’d insisted on that morning.

Siblings Reunited

batch — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:05:11 -0500

Sometimes, a twist of fate can keep family members separated for years—and it takes a small miracle to reunite them.

Candace Eloph of Shreveport, Louisiana spent years looking for her half-brother, knowing that her mother had given him up for adoption thirty years ago, CNN reports.

Eloph's mother, Joellen Cottrell, was only 16 at the time of the boy's birth and spent several years engaged in her own search for her son, with no success.

Captain Southworth's Decision

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:57:00 -0500

Christmas 2003. An orphanage in the middle of war-torn Baghdad. I was standing by a courtyard play area, talking to one of the nuns who cared for the children about a nine-year-old boy named Ala'a I'd gotten to know—okay, come to love—since my National Guard unit had started visiting the orphanage a few months before.

Out of the blue, the nun said matter-of-factly, "A year from now we will have to move Ala'a to a government-run orphanage. He will be too big for us to care for him."

A Drop of Hope

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:49:00 -0500

It was just like any other hectic evening. I was on the air, broadcasting my radio show, taking requests, chatting with listeners, playing dedications and scrolling through e-mails—when you're on air 35 hours a week and you've got eight kids, you've got to multitask, like it or not.