Kindness (for my expat friends)
If relationships go bad here, you live within 10 feet of each other and it is painful and awkward. This is a very small island. It is the walking on eggshells that we all do just to try to get by.
Discouragement and doing GOOD.
do the good that I see in front of me today
Mario and the journey ahead
Last Wednesday evening I was laying on my bed after work in front of my wind machine fan, cooling off. The weather is getting hotter and more humid by the day as the hottest part of our endless summer approaches. The kids had just been picked up from school and were...
Papillon Enterprise: Artisan Export Company in Haiti
We were all collectively being transformed into something we never expected….
Am I a better mom because I’m not poor?
This is the reality of the poverty orphan dilemma that we wrestle with. I wrestle with it every day. I know that I could scoop up any poor mother's child- and she would gladly give them to me and I could give them three meals a day, lots of love, protection,...
Residential Schools and Modern Adoption
Shortly before I moved from Canada to Haiti to pursue adopting a child who had a mother (tongue in cheek), I learned about a small stain on Canadian history known as the "residential schools". Not that all on wiki is true but - You can read about it here: {...
The Green Machine
People often ask me what my background is. What business experience I had. I usually playfully shrug and declare my German major in college to have played a serious role. Or maybe it was my years as a stay at home mom with breastfeeding tendencies and other attachment...
Dirt cookies, clay and the beginnings of our pottery department.
Novens took the dirt in his hands and mashed his thumb and his pointer finger together. A little bit more water maybe. Yes, that was it. Now he placed it gently in the center of his palms and rolled it as fast as he could into a little ball. Little did we know, that...
The Cereal Box
Over the past 6 years we have received thousands of boxes full of empty cereal boxes from churches, schools, afterschool programs, homeschool families, nursing homes, and just people who collect as a family. We can go through 400 cereal boxes per day! What is the...
Throwback to 2010. A night in the maternity ward.
This was a blog I wrote in 2010 about an experience with one of our artisans who is STILL working today, raising her kids with dignity. It is a sobering reminder of how much Haiti needs good maternal healthcare, safe deliveries and an understanding of the psychology...