I am so honored that you’re here. There is so much to read and so little time to read it, so I know that the time you spend here is precious.
I grew up a small town, Western Canadian farmer’s daughter. I met my husband, Shawn, the summer I graduated high school, and we got married at the ripe ages of 20 and 25. We spent the first few years of marriage with Shawn in full-time ministry, before we ended up in our now-home-city and amazing church family. Through our involvement in our church, the Holy Spirit drew us further into an amazing life of following God in every aspect of our lives. We have in no way arrived at any of these areas, but God has led us into a passionate life of simplicity, generosity, service and adoption. It is exciting, tiring, rewarding and, at times, isolating.
Through God’s pull on us to live more outside ourselves and reject the standards our society dictates to us, we chose to grow our family solely through adoption. We have two sweet daughters who joined our family through international adoption and who make our life completely exhausting and very much worth living. Adoption makes our family a whole lot more beautiful, and brings unique challenges to the table. We are honored to have the privilege of parenting our girls’ through the highs and lows of adoption’s complexities.
I have the privilege of being a mostly stay-at-home parent, but get to work a little as hairdresser as a sanity break. I love my girls to death, but my calling is not for childcare! I will, however, hang out with teenagers any day. I I love the idea of attachment parenting, but it goes against my natural grain. I am a recovering control freak. I am a sucker for a good rom com and any sweet treat. I love to shop, even if it’s just for groceries. I yearn for heaven. I love organizing but hate cleaning. I have painted almost every single vertical surface in the three homes we’ve owned. I like crafts but only if I know they’ll turn out. I am passionate about leveraging my privilege to elevate voices we hear way too seldom, specifically in the adoption triad.
In 2018 I started the instagram account @adoption.books to share my honest, detailed book reviews- not just recommendations. I believe that the complexities of adoption really need to be reflected in Children’s books, and that adoptees need appropriate representation in literature. Look for book reviews on this site for children’s literature, biographies, and adoptive parenting books.
I would love to hear from you- where are you and what is your connection to the adoption triad? Are you considering adoption? Are you just a deeply empathetic soul learning about others? We all need each other on life’s journey, and I think it’s wonderful that the World Wide Web can offer us a beautiful, deep well of connectedness. So let’s connect!
Lanaya
