A Musing Maralee

3 min read 2022-06-01 21:50:59

We Are Living in Adoption Purgatory

A letter arrived in the mail today. It was unexpected. It had a return address I’ve seen many times before and when it’s expected, it just feels

4 min read 2022-04-28 01:03:55

The question caught me off-guard, although I’m not sure why. We’ve done a lot of adoption homestudies over the years. We’ve had to answer

4 min read 2022-04-15 02:26:56

I read this summary of a podcast interview with Thomas Rhett about the adoption of his daughter and I’m not okay with it. I don’t want to pretend

3 min read 2022-03-30 01:44:34

I should definitely be cleaning right now. In less than two hours a woman will be coming to judge my home (very literally) and I’m sure I should go

3 min read 2022-03-19 03:17:24

My beautiful boy is running in his first track meet today. I dropped him off and watched him walk across a high school parking lot to his waiting

3 min read 2022-02-16 03:22:37

Dear Ms. Campbell, While the two of us couldn’t seem to have more vastly different lives (you’re a famous model and mom of one, I’m a mom of 8

3 min read 2022-02-16 03:22:37

Dear Ms. Campbell, While the two of us couldn’t seem to have more vastly different lives (you’re a famous model and mom of one, I’m a mom of 8

3 min read 2022-02-12 02:28:01

I was smoothing down my seven-year-old’s hair the other night while we sat next to each other on the couch. He was snuggled up next to me and it

3 min read 2022-01-27 02:34:05

I can’t tell you how many of the same headline I’ve seen over the past few weeks. “Pandemic Parents are on the Brink”, “Parents are Losing

4 min read 2022-01-21 03:11:32

I had an awkward interaction with someone the other day. It wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. When people see a large

4 min read 2022-01-13 00:36:17

Our family is going through an unexpected loss. Our pediatrician passed away. When I told my kids, my daughter said, “And wasn’t she your friend

3 min read 2021-12-17 02:29:15

Sometimes I lay in bed at the end of the day and ask myself the inevitable Question of The Night: What did you do today? What did you accomplish?

3 min read 2021-12-03 03:00:52

*These were my remarks to honor the Nebraska Governor’s proclamation of National Adoption Awareness Month at our state capital.* When we first

1 min read 2021-09-11 02:01:11

Today marks fourteen years that I’ve been a mother (plus the four before that where I was a house mom in a group home, but I digress). 7 kids: 5

1 min read 2021-09-09 02:35:37

I told my son yesterday that my biggest goal in parenting is not for him to have the best childhood, but for him to grow into the best adult.