The bible talks about taking care of the widow and the orphan in the book of James. It does not cover how to do it or what the cost is. It also does not tell us that people will think you are “amazing” until you have to parent these broken young people differently than normal. Some of these children have to be parented backwards from the mainstream and if you can find help for them, you may be ostracized for even looking for the help.
I know that there are some mama’s out there who are in the struggle. You answered an adoption call and it is HARD! You don’t feel like anyone gets it and NOBODY will help you.
I am going to be joining together my ventures to discuss adoption journeys as well as building an online craft business, so if you or someone you know has been through a hard or a failed adoption, this podcast is now for you.
Since I have always been a seamstress and then I started my online business as my own therapy, I can’t be the ONLY crazy one out there! Oh wait…I’m not crazy! A judge made sure of that…but that’s a story for another time.
~Kam
Ep. 17 - Full Transcription
[00:00:00] Kam: Happy Thursday, my friends. Hope your day is going well, and I hope your week has been quiet, uneventful, um, good, at least. Welcome into episode 17 of the Makerspace. And I just wanted to kind of chat with you Today on this episode. I haven’t even made any notes. I’m kind of treating this like a Marco Polo and which is a great app if you guys don’t know anything about that, but I’m not an affiliate.
[00:00:33] Kam: I just love the app, but I wanted to just kind of Share my heart, I guess a little bit and kind of tell you where things are going and kind of where things have taken a turn. Back in June, uh, for the virtual street market, I had a summit and it was a successful summit and we had a great turnout and I was very excited to get in there and start sending out.
[00:01:08] Kam: emails and build my email list and build a community and all the things that I knew I was supposed to do once we launched the summit and the other speakers had a great turnout and we had more to add to our email list and that was all good but before I sent anything out I just had this We call it in Christian is a check and it’s a lot like showering with your socks on.
[00:01:41] Kam: If you can kind of imagine doing that and how irritating, um, you’re completely distracted by what you’re doing because you’re still wearing socks. And it just didn’t fit. It wasn’t right. And every time I kept trying to go do it, something would stop me, whether it was, um, a health reason or a distraction or timing or whatever it was.
[00:02:07] Kam: And I knew what it was. And… Being a Christian, I am a believer in that God speaks to us in different ways. And so I knew what that was. I, I’ve felt it before. And so I stopped and quit pushing because when I try to do stuff in my own strength, it does not go well. I’ve also proven that theory. So I decided to just pray about it and wait about it.
[00:02:36] Kam: Pretty much all summer, um, I did not feel I was supposed to really get back into it until recently. And to be quite honest and to be transparent, I really didn’t want to do what I felt God was calling me to do. Not because I don’t feel that there’s a need, but for selfish reasons. Purely selfish reasons, um, for the last seven years, my family has been through a very hard journey of adoption and I had started sharing that journey, um, with family and friends and anybody on Instagram, um, over in apples and aprons and I used that platform.
[00:03:27] Kam: Uh, one to sell products so that we could make money for the adoption, but also to educate people. And then we brought our kids home from Europe and they are a sibling group of three and they were within three and a half years of each other in age, the three of them were, they were, they’re very close in age and they were very close, um, just.
[00:03:59] Kam: Relationally, they were kept in the same orphanage and they were brought up as close together as, as their country could bring them up together, um, which meant a few different issues, but they weren’t in a foster home. They were in an orphanage and which. Is good and also has some disadvantages, uh, which I will share more over the next upcoming weeks.
[00:04:34] Kam: Um, but I just kind of wanted to give, um, a very. Shallow end version, I guess, is the best way to put it of, um, their background. When we brought them home, the oldest was 13 and then we had a 12 and then a 10 year old. And we also biologically have three children that were within four and a half years of each other.
[00:05:04] Kam: And they kind of fit in with all of them. And so they were 14, 13, and 10 when everybody got here. So we have two sets of Irish twins, basically, with everybody together. So that being said, I had used Apples and Aprons just to kind of tell everybody what our journey was in the whole process and everything.
[00:05:34] Kam: What I did not know and we were not prepared for was the trauma. I did not grow up with trauma in my life, um, at all and was not prepared for what comes with that. And neither was my family. My husband has more experience with trauma in his background, but we were unprepared. We were uneducated on our side with what to expect and how to parent.
[00:06:08] Kam: And so it’s been a. Very hard journey. And which again, I’ll go into more later, um, more details, but with the virtual street market and apples and aprons, I have decided to marry the two together. So they will work Cohen. Uh, they will work side by side and I will.
[00:06:41] Kam: I will share my heart
[00:06:48] Kam: and try to be a voice for other mamas who are either going through a hard journey, a hard adoption journey, or a failed adoption. I will try to be a voice and a friend, something that I had a very hard time finding during my journey.
[00:07:27] Kam: I used the virtual street market during 2020 when everybody was struggling. And that was a form of therapy for me to be able to use that business. Excuse me. I didn’t think I would get emotional, but I, I’m not going to edit that. Um, because I want you to know that I want to understand the hard
[00:08:05] Kam: that. I don’t always want to share the hard, but I want to be there for other people who are in the hard that may not have anybody to share it with, maybe don’t have any way to find. Therapy, or there’s none to be found, um, but I created the virtual street market and I let apples and aprons kind of fall by the wayside.
[00:08:46] Kam: I no longer wanted to do sewing and crafts and I know how to market websites and I know how to market small businesses through websites.
[00:09:05] Kam: So I was hoping to be able to promote and market other crafters. Since I was not crafting, but I really feel like the Lord wants me to kind of pick it back up. We were created by a creator. All of us have creativeness in us. Some of us are better at other things than others. Some of us enjoy doing things more so than others, but at our very core, we have creativeness in us.
[00:09:47] Kam: And I know that there are other mamas out there who maybe are still crafting and sewing and that’s your therapy. And now in these times, maybe that is a source of income that you can do. I couldn’t leave our home. Um, I had to stay home because of the behaviors that were now in the home, but we needed another income.
[00:10:19] Kam: We needed more money coming in. And so that’s why I built a virtual assistant business called Camela O. And I actually still do some of that more on the podcast producing side, but. Um, I learned through that how to do website design, marketing, and all of the marketing, which I love. I love to promote small businesses, and as you know, if you’ve listened to my previous podcasts, you know this, but if you know of anybody, or you are somebody who has been down a hard journey of adoption, or you’ve had a failed adoption, I would love to connect with you, and.
[00:11:15] Kam: I hope you know that I’m in your corner, and there are some things that people won’t believe about your life, and I do, and I know that there are some things that people won’t understand about your life because they don’t live it, they’ve never stepped foot in it, and until they did. Even I was judgmental on previous, uh, families that I knew with, uh, that had dealt with adoption.
[00:11:52] Kam: And unfortunately, I judged them for how they parented. I no longer do that. I no longer judge, uh, a mom handing over an electronic to a child because she needs rest. I, I no longer do any of that. That’s between them and God. That is their parenting. That is not my business, and all I can do is say that I see you, God sees you, and I want to be there for you.
[00:12:33] Kam: And then on the flip side of that, if you want to build a craft business, I want to be there for that too. So now that I have shared my heart and also my future plans for Apples and Aprons and Virtual Street Market, Virtual Street Market will now be, um, sponsoring all of the Podcasts, but they will be shared and promoted with apples and aprons and as I make stuff and post stuff to sell, I will use VSM to promote it as well so that you can see how I’m doing both sides.
[00:13:21] Kam: So if there is anything that you would like to hear discussed, I will be Actually interviewing, um, therapists, I will be interviewing social workers, um, one of my son’s social worker actually made a comment to me last week that all of the children in their transition home currently are, 90 percent of them are Our adopted kids that are now in the transition home and I thought that was a staggering statistic and I want to get further deeper into that and ask her some questions of what she thinks needs to happen and find out some more of what we’re missing for education.
[00:14:07] Kam: So that being said. I hope you have a great week. I know this is kind of a shorty, but I do hope that you will connect and let me know if you’re out there, uh, because I’m here. So have a great weekend.
