Kathleen Guire - 25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas: An Advent Devotional for Adoptive and Foster Parents

25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas, is a unique tool to help adoptive families throughout the busy and often hectic holiday season, especially as it focuses on specific needs that children impacted by trauma can experience. Adoptive families have unique challenges, which often become magnified during the holidays. Kathleens experience as an adoptive mother has enabled her to provide an insightful perspective that many other adoptive families can relate too. She does this in a way that also incorporates specific scripture that connects very well to the concept of adoption. This spiritual connection can help families reflect on the adoption story of Christ, as a way to help their family bond and form traditions through their own adoption stories. Parents will be able to read along on a day to day basis and reflect on their own experiences, while reading encouraging words from a fellow adoptive parent. The tips that Kathleen suggests offers comfort for adoptive families as they learn how to best navigate through the holiday season in ways that fit the specific needs of their child and their family as a whole.

Molly McCartney MSW, LICSW, CTT

Psychotherapist/Adoption Therapist and Adoptive Parent

She stood at the stove in her pink and blue plaid robe, tied tightly at the waist, her dark pixie cut askew from the pillow. She leaned toward the teapot, willing for it to whistle. On the cutting board cranberry orange bread waited to be sliced and toasted. We kids would lather the slices with butter and watch it seep into every crevice. Mom was always the first one up and the last one ready, thinking of everyone except herself. Her porcelain skin, dark hair and full lips gave her an Audrey Hepburn-ish look, but her heart more resembled Mother Theresa. She served the poor in the same way she served her family, with every ounce of herself. As a teen, sometimes I wished she served the poor less and me more, but as an adult I know serving the Lord was her true passion. She cared for the least of these because that is what He told her to do. She served Him by caring for the broken, the outcast, because she had been broken and outcast. Mom understood the truth of the Gospel that Jesus came for the lost, to heal the broken hearted. She passed her heart on to her children. She passed her traditions on, too. At her insistence, we read the passages from Luke every Christmas morning, a tradition the Guire family continues to this day. There are so many Christmas seasons I hear an Amy Grant Christmas song and burst into tears. My mom has been gone for over twenty years and yet, a sight, a sound, a feeling takes me back. I see her standing by the stove or holding a mug of hot water to keep her hands warm. I revisit Christmas memories again and again just to catch a glimpse of her and ponder the meaning of it all.

Standing around a grand piano at a cast party for a production of Scrooge singing Christmas carols, sends me to the ghosts of Christmas past, standing in the choir loft of St. Patricks singing Joy to the World on Christmas Eve at midnight mass. I thought those times were so ordinary, yet so magical and permanent. I thought they would never end. But, they did end. Again, years later, with my own children, we lit the Advent candles, read the readings and sang the Christmas carols. Oh, those days when I was cranky or tired and pushed through anyway, I am glad. The ghosts of my Christmas past paint a picture I am happy to revisit, not ones I regret. Thats why Im writing this book for you, dear friend, 25 Days of Thriving Through Christmas, to build memories for each of us, that we can revisit and weep with tears of sorrow that they are over and joy that we have them tucked away to pull out and read at any moment.

When Jerry and I adopted a sibling group of four from Poland, the holidays took on a new bent. Kids from hard places often do not know the meaning of celebration. We have to teach them and be patient while they sit on the sidelines or hide under the table. We parents must gently coax the child from darkness into the light without overwhelming them at the same time. Its like walking a tightrope with no pole in the middle of a crowded mall during Christmas season. The slightest noise or smell can set these kids off and then everything is out of kilter. Some parents decide not to make any traditions or participate in anything because their kids dont want to or they are afraid. Years from now ghosts of Christmas past will haunt these families with the vacuous vacuum of silence. Other families do the opposite and participate in everything, throwing their kids universe out of whack. No one enjoys the holidays. Mom is cranky and says things like, This just doesnt work for me, I give up! Kids are in survival mode, lashing out, melting down and the home becomes a war zone.