When faith, endurance and creativity are not enough, what’s next?

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Parenting is hard. So what do you do when you’re parenting a child who has experienced trauma or has extra challenges?

You often feel alone and inadequate. You want so much to help your child, but you are at the end of your own rope. You feel guilty that sometimes you want to just quit.

What can you do — how can you make it through the day — how can you help your child while also taking care of yourself?

Maybe someone you love is parenting a traumatized child. Or perhaps you are a social worker, counselor, or other professional who sees families like these every day. You want to know how to better help them.

In Dancing with a Porcupine, Jennie Owens shares with humor and raw honesty the compelling story of her struggle to save her own life while caring for three children she and her husband adopted from foster care. How could she stay loving, giving, and forgiving in the midst of a daily battle with children acting out the rage, resentment, and pain of their own traumatic pasts?

When faith, endurance, and creativity are not enough, what’s next?

Jennie’s children, who are now adults, have bravely chosen to have their stories told in the hopes that it can help other children who’ve experienced trauma. To quote Parker, one of the Owens’ children, “I want my story to be told if it will help other kids.”

You can thrive as a parent!

Sign up for my newsletter and I will send you a periodic email summary of some resources I think would be helpful to you including: parenting tips, self care reminders, trends in research and application regarding parenting wounded children and a WHOLE LOT OF LOVE.

As a BONUS I am going to?send you the first three chapters of my new book,?Dancing with a Porcupine. Just fill in your info and the book will be on its way to your inbox.

~ Jennie

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Adoptive mom, Speaker, Author

Jennie Owens

Jennie is a co-founder at Forever Homes, a nonprofit organization supporting parents of special needs children. She leads retreats for foster and adoptive moms and provides training to prospective foster parents. She also does one-on-one coaching with parents through the counseling clinics she and her husband, Lynn, started. In addition to working in various group homes, she and Lynn have adopted four children, who were ages ,10, 10, 7 and 2 when they became family.

My Story

Over the decades, I?ve read and endorsed many books about adoption, but for this one, I say, ?Every adoptive and foster mother should read this book. In fact, it should be required reading by CPS and adoption agencies.? So many books explain behaviors of kids with attachment disorder, but this leaves the reader somewhat in the cold. Bring them into the Jennie?s day-to-day mothering and the realities and the how-to?s become crystal clear.

– Sherrie Eldridge

Author, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew? (Random House, 1999)

Within the pages of this book, Jennie tells a story of a difficult relationship. She tells of her own hurting, her own successes and her own failures. She tells a story that we all know in some way: Relationships are hard, but be encouraged, the tough things are also the most rewarding.

– Kristin Berry

Co-founder of confessionsofanadoptiveparent.com, Author, Born Broken: An Adoptive Journey (New Leaf Press, 2017)

My Blog

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Thrilled to be featured on the NBC affiliate in our home town

by Lynn Owens | Updated Sep 13, 2019 | Posted Sep 13, 2019

Launch Party for Dancing with a Porcupine

by Jennie Owens | Updated Sep 11, 2019 | Posted Sep 11, 2019

RSVP For the Launch Party Here We are celebrating the release of Dancing with a Porcupine, as well as helping to get the word out to social service agencies and media about the book. Hors d'oeuvres and drinks will be served, and copies of the book can be purchased....

Jennie Owens, Parenting Advocate and Program Manager for Forever Homes, Releases Debut Title

by Lynn Owens | Updated Sep 11, 2019 | Posted Sep 3, 2019

For Immediate Release West Richland, WA, September 3, 2019 - Parenting is hard, especially when parenting a child who has experienced trauma or has extra challenges. You want so much to help your child, but the stress often leaves you feeling hopelessly alone and...

Our Next Phase: Recovering from two decades of special needs Parenting

by Lynn Owens | Updated Jul 20, 2019 | Posted Jul 20, 2019

We needed a change. After an intense 12 years of parenting children from hard places and coming along side of other foster and adoptive families, we were in need of personal rejuvenation. All in all we?d parented over 100 children and helped over 1,000 families. We...

The Vitamins that Saved my Life

by Jennie Owens | Updated Apr 18, 2020 | Posted Oct 27, 2018

Every year at Rejuvenate retreat I?m asked what vitamin regimen helped me get back to health after a doctor told me I was going to die if I didn?t get rid of my stressors. I figured I?d finally write it up in a post it so people can more easily share it. For me, in my situation, these truly are the best vitamins for stress.

Best Adoption Books

by Lynn Owens | Updated Oct 23, 2018 | Posted Oct 23, 2018

I am making a list of the best adoption books. Can you help? Which adoption book(s) have been the most helpful to you? It is no?surprise that adoptive and foster parents have limited time constraints. As a group, we tend to really want to help our kids. I'm working to...