Breaking the Cycle: Tova J. Kreps on Trauma, Adoption, and Building Resilient Families

In this episode, Sherrie invites Tova J. Kreps, licensed social worker and co-founder of Wellspring Counseling, to discuss the complexities of adoption, trauma recovery, and the power of faith in navigating these challenges. Tova shares her inspiring journey, shaped by her upbringing in a missionary family, her personal experience with adoption, and her decades of professional work helping families navigate the complexities of trauma and mental health. Together, they explore the unique challenges adoptive parents face, the importance of setting healthy boundaries, and the profound need for self-care and support in times of crisis.

Tova offers invaluable wisdom on reframing expectations for adoptive families, emphasizing the shift from seeking perfect outcomes to staying faithful and loving amidst the difficulties. She also highlights the transformative power of professional guidance and community connection, as well as the resources available through Wellspring Counseling for trauma recovery and resilience. This episode is a compassionate guide for adoptive families, foster parents, and anyone seeking to understand the intersection of faith, trauma, and healing.

Whether you're an adoptive parent, someone touched by adoption, or a supporter of these journeys, this episode provides hope, encouragement, and practical tools to navigate life’s toughest challenges.

Key Takeaways:

• The Impact of Adoption on Families: Tova shares her personal story of adoption and how it shaped her life and career in social work.
• Trauma and Resilience: Practical insights into trauma recovery for both children and parents, including her innovative "Circle of Truth" model.
• The Role of Boundaries: Why boundaries are crucial for creating security in adoptive families.
• Reframing Success: Moving from outcome-focused parenting to faithfulness-focused parenting.
• The Importance of Support: Encouragement to seek professional help and connect with communities that understand adoption and trauma challenges.
• Self-Care for Parents: Why self-care is essential for maintaining emotional resilience and providing consistent love and guidance.
• Wellspring Counseling Resources: An overview of Wellspring’s trauma recovery programs and opportunities for fast-track family therapy.

All Rights Reserved. @sherrieeldridge

Transcript

I'm just so glad to be coming back to you because this is going to be such a good podcast with a guest that I have invited to come on. And she's an incredible person and I met her in a very unusual way. Her mother is Rosemary Jensen, who was the head of Bible Study Fellowship for 20 years, and then the Rafiki Ministry.

So I got to meet Rosemary again because she had trained me. So I went to give her one last hug. She's 96 years old. And so she connected me with her daughter. And her daughter's name is Tova J. Kreps. She is a licensed social worker and the co founder and president of Wellspring Counseling Incorporated.

Wellspring is a non profit organization that provides mental health education in the Miami area and beyond. Under her leadership, Wellspring has grown from 2 to 34 therapists and has 5 sites throughout Miami. Tova practiced as a therapist with families, individuals, and children for over 30 years and particularly specializes in trauma recovery work.

She successfully created and developed Wellsprings Trauma Recovery and Resilience training programs for youth and adult survivors of trauma, and it's called Bounce Back and Restore. These programs include her original, quote, circle of truth, unquote, model for trauma recovery and resilience training. She has taught trauma courses at Miami International Seminary, Trinity International University, and abroad.

She has also worked with children and parents in schools and through orphan care and foster care settings. Why, she's one of our peeps, isn't she? She is a qualified counseling supervisor in the state of Florida. And so, welcome Tova, it is so wonderful to have you on the podcast. Thank you. Well, thank you, Sherry.

It has been fun to see how we connected and I'm happy to be on here today and to discuss this important topic with you and, and to share in your expertise in trauma work and particularly adoption. So anyway, I'm happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. Well, would you like to tell us a little bit of your story?

Because you've been touched by adoption, right? I have in many ways. So part of my story, as you mentioned, my mother, my parents were missionaries for many years. And so I want to say that adoption or the idea of hospitality or opening your home to people or reaching out to people beyond your natural family was just a culture for us.

And we lived in, I was born in Tanzania, we lived in Africa, we also lived in Okinawa and moved a number of places and so landed in Texas for my high school years. And during those years, particularly my teen years, and I have two sisters, so when we were teenagers, my parents ended up bringing other girls into our home for a variety of reasons.

Two of them actually stayed with us as foster sisters through into adult life, one of whom still lives near my mom, works with her, is wonderful. I think you met her, Sherry, right? Yes. Barbara. But we had others who came and went and came in as foster children, didn't want to stay, didn't like the rules, couldn't stay, all sorts of reasons.

So, for me, I grew up with normalizing of having the extra people in your family beyond blood family, and so it was seen normal to me. So, when I got married, and I work in the field of social work, I work in the field of counseling, and kind of tangentially, my husband and I met these two young children who were brother and sister, they were six and eight at the time, who needed a home.

And so we ended up taking them in as foster children and then adopting them. It took about a year later before the adoption went through. They are our children who are very grown adults to this day and they became our children. I have to say it was not family planning. We did not say, okay, we're going to adopt or we're going to have children now.

We didn't do any of that. So, there was a lot of crazy to us having made that decision in hindsight. We hadn't been married very long. It literally wasn't family planning. It was a calling from God. It was two kids who needed a home, and we thought we could do it. Whether we were right or not, I don't know, but we thought we could, and we felt profoundly that this was God's calling, and as I said, it was.

Something that didn't seem so impossible just from my worldview. So you think about how did it affect our lives? I can just say if you've had children, children affect your life. For the rest of your life, you're affected because you had those children. And so I think that is just true for us. We had children who came to us in that way and yeah, our lives have been very affected.

I love the atmosphere that you grew up in, you know, with children around you in your home. It just reminds me so much of my story. My adoptive grandmother was the matron at the county orphanage in the county where I was adopted. And so I played with those kids all the time. You know, it was just the way it was.

And, uh, I can understand in a small way, Tova, how you had that mindset going in from having grown up the way you did. You know, I think one of the relevant lessons I learned by having foster sisters come in and out of our home was I began even early on to realize that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

And I remember being shocked with one of the siblings of one of the girls that was with us. And she was in the house too for a little while and she left because she didn't like the rules. Now I need to tell you the rule that broke the camel's back was that she couldn't smoke in the house. She can smoke outside, but not in the house.

So you think about that, and I remember being so shocked. You're going to go to a family system that isn't protective of you, that doesn't get you to school, that, I mean, a really dysfunctional system because of this very minor rule. And I remember as a kid going, you're crazy. Like, what are you thinking?

You know, but I began to learn that these are deeper things. And sometimes people can receive love where they can't or sometimes there are other deeper things that haven't resolved that are all mixing into the pot. And I think it just helped me kind of see that, that this is messy and people's lives are messy.

And sometimes you can give that love and receive that love and it works beautifully. And sometimes something gets in the way of that. Often, I'm sure many listeners would agree with that in their experiences. I remember your mom telling me with one of your sisters that she stole a, or came out with your mom's shirt on and, you know, was doing some crazy adoptee things.

Your parents tried a lot of different things to try to help her. And if I'm remembering right, and correct me if I'm wrong, Tova, but she said that she They took away everything that, except what she had to do to function and that she cried and said that she was so thankful that they set boundaries for her, very healthy boundaries, and because all the other ways that people had tried to help her didn't work.

But with your sister, it did. I thought that was such a sweet story. Did I get it right? Yeah, I think so. I know my parents tried really hard to parent well. And I think one of the biggest issues is that normal parenting It often works with normal kids and adoptive kids, but sometimes it doesn't. And so that's where you have to kind of go above and beyond to figure out what's going to work for this child who is so unique.

Like you get all this advice from other people, just do blank. And they're just referring to the normal just do's. And they don't always work. I'm sure that's true for all children. What works on one child doesn't work on your third child. And that's always to a degree true. But I think particularly with foster and adoptive children, the parents need to get good advice and be creative in what they do.

And boundaries are very, very important because it creates security. for kids who've not always had a homeless to stay in. So it is very secure to have parents who are stable and calm and set boundaries and stick with them. And they don't get all emotional about it. They just like, that's the way it is in our house.

We did chores. It was just the way it was. It's a good way to grow up where you believe that work is a part of your life and it wasn't a questionable thing. So, there are lots of good healthy boundaries there. So, yeah, I'm sure my parents did that. I don't remember that episode, but I'm sure they did. So, you grew up with that atmosphere and how did you choose social work and the degrees that you pursued?

It seems like an obvious lead in from your background, am I right? Yeah, I went to college, I went to Wheaton College outside of Chicago, and there are a lot of missionaries in that school. It's a very international school and Christian school, so I think I kind of stayed in that milieu of, people who do those kind of things, but I actually got a degree in literature and secondary ed, and I taught high school English for four years.

After a while, I felt like I was, honestly, I was more interested in the kids than I was the literature. So, I made a shift and I went to graduate school and got my master's in social work and then eventually my license to do clinical counseling with Stuart. Oh, amazing. What a blessing you are. I'm sure to so many people down in Florida, but probably across the country, right?

I hope so. You know, you and I have gotten acquainted and here I am working on this book for adoptive moms, right? Well, I kind of threw out a term. I said, adoptive moms have a non abandoning heart. We've kind of chewed that up and tossed it around. And what do you think about that, Tova? Do you think as an adoptive mom, if I said to you, you need to have a non abandoning heart, how would you feel?

Tell me, I'd love to know. Uh, yeah, we did toss this around. I'm not sure I totally understand what you mean by it, but I think that adoptive parents, And maybe not as much foster parents because you know it's temporary and it's designed to be temporary. But for adoptive parents, like any other parent, the great intention of your heart is not to abandon your child.

Everyone knows having a child is a permanent thing. And so I think adoptive parents, just like any other, come in with every, not just intention, just expectation that this is a child and this is a relationship for life. This is my child and it's for life, even into adulthood. I think that people do have non abandoning hearts when they go into it across the board.

And I think the hard part is if for some reasons, and we can get to it, it does fall apart. That's where that pain comes, because the intention was permanent. And when it isn't able to be permanent, then that's a painful thing to let go of, because I intended to do this the rest of my life, and because of X, Y, or Z, I can't.

Or they can't, or whatever it is that causes that adoption to fail. So, yeah, I think it's a painful part for them to think, well, oh, I didn't have a non abandoning heart. Well, that's probably not true. They probably did have a non abandoning heart and were forced, because of whatever, to let go. That's so cool.

I just wonder if, if we can take it way back to creation and if God planted in their heart, you know, that children and their parents were to have intimacy and connection, and I wonder if that's what they're thinking, if it comes from the way God wired them, that that's what they want. And especially with adoptive moms, they want to be so good because they are so broken up about what their children have gone through.

They're so broken hearted. I just wonder sometimes, Tova, if it would be sacrilegious, even, to reframe the dream, to take that perfect dream, I don't want to take it away, but I think if they could reframe it a little bit and know that they're normal, that nobody, you know, is the perfect mom or whatever with a non abandoning heart, would that help adoptive moms or that are struggling?

Yeah, I think you're talking about the moms where it looks like it may fall apart or it may not be sustainable, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think they do need to let go of that. I think, you know, you used a good biblical concept that parents and children are an eternal relationship. We see that in God as our father and, you know, so much of the Bible.

But I think the Bible also speaks of marriages as being permanent. It's leave and cleave for life. And so you go into a marriage, nobody goes into a marriage expecting it to end or you wouldn't make that commitment. But Jesus does permit divorce, and Abraham did because of the hardness of people's hearts, because there's, we're sinful.

That's not a judgment statement, it's just that we are sinful, the world is broken, and sometimes there's a lesser of the evils in terms of an ending. And so I think God allows, even for something that he sanctified as permanent and holy and says if you tear it apart, you're going to rip it. But there are times because of our brokenness that even those permanent things that God designed are not sustainable.

And so I think letting parents know that if it has to end, and we could talk about that, but if it does, for severe reasons, That doesn't mean they didn't love, or try, or that they abandoned. It means that they or their child made a decision based on what felt like no other alternative. So yeah, I think we can let go of that dream and say, for myself, as we hit some of the hard stages, The way I reframed some of it for myself, and it really helped, I feel like God helped me do this, was to say, to change my goal.

I used to have a goal of having succeeded with the children, that their life succeeded, they're happy, they're successful, they can function in society, they're doing okay, you know. So the goal is them as a person, this outcome, and giving them an opportunity to have a good life, right? Eventually, I did reframe that, and I think it was healthy because I moved from that, which I literally can't control their outcome, nor can any parent of any child.

We really can't control the outcomes of our children. What is within our control is our faithfulness. When I redefined success as how my kids turned out, and defined success as I did what I should have done today, or in this situation, or I was faithful to the commitment I made. That's a big one. I was faithful to stay in it, and I was faithful to do what was the right thing, and to figure out what the right thing was.

And so, it really, that really freed me to just focus on what was in my control, and, which is a lot. Staying faithful to a commitment is a, big thing and a hard thing to do. And, you know, loving well when it's not going well is a very hard thing to do. And so it is a big mandate to control what we should control and what isn't our control.

But being faithful to that calling is enough. And God does the rest. I mean, it's like the old, you know, we can prepare for battle, but victory belongs to the Lord. And I think we can prepare for great parenting, but the outcomes belong to God. But our job is faithfulness. Well, I love that. Could you just tell me some of the clients, like who are the described, so that they don't feel alone, moms that are just at the end of themselves, like I know one that lives here in Indiana, that child is in residential care permanently or tried to burn down the house or things like that.

Is that an example of getting at the end, and if they're in the emergency room with the kid who's tried to burn down the house or whatever, um, that happened here, then what is the next step for that mom? Yes, faithfulness, but then as a clinical social worker, tell me what that mom should do. I mean, does she bring the kid home?

Does she call a different counselor? What are they to do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I do think kind of what are the deal breakers, you know, to some degree and same thing as in a marriage, you know what I mean, what is sustainable and what's not. I think there are things that would tip to saying I can't, even if I'm not going to unadopt them at this point, I can't have them in my home, like putting them in a residential home or something.

You know, there are a lot of degrees of separation, if you will. But I think safety to the adoptive child, safety to other siblings in the home, safety to the parents, the home, the dog, safety is valid reason to have separation and then you got to figure out what that means. But I think if emotional distress is so severe, again, let's start with the adopted child.

They don't want to be there. at all, and they're sabotaging everything to not have to be. There is a point where you say, I just need to love them through it so they know that love will stand up to those kind of tests. But other times, it's like there's a desire for the child so badly to be not in that situation or in that family that their goal is to destroy the possibility.

They're not testing, do you love me? They're stop loving me. I don't want to be here. And that's a fine line to know, which is true. But all that to say, that's a time where maybe you say, I'm going to listen to my child and my child's desires and my child's needs that say, I don't want to do this and give them room to talk to counselors and lawyers or whatever it takes to say when kids are of age, even like in split families and divorces, where they reach an age where they can say, I don't have to be with mom anymore.

She treats me better. I don't have to visit dad. They have a voice in it. And so I think sometimes we have to really listen to and care about our children's voices and that is still being faithful. It's faithful to love them where they are, how they are, and with what's going on for them. So yeah, I think I'm hitting at some of what you're asking.

What do you do? I think the main piece of advice I would say is to get real professional help. And we can get More of that later. Maybe I need to talk first about hurting moms emotionally, but I think you need wisdom and guidance from people who know what they're talking about to figure out what to do next.

Not your friends, maybe not even your pastors, not your siblings, not because they, If you haven't been in this type of situation, you don't really have good, clean advice. You know, maybe it's like a war veteran who needs to go to the VA to talk to people, versus other people who just don't literally understand the language of what's happening or the experience.

And I think that's true in adoptive families. So the key is get help and get help that is qualified and not just advice giving. Yeah, so that would be an adoption competent therapist, right? Yeah, adoption trauma competent, maybe attachment disorder competent, maybe behavioral health care where they can work with systems, particularly trauma care.

And you may have to have more than one expert for the different aspects of whatever it is is being managed at that point. Yes, well, the mom, she's brought her child home from the hospital or whatever, the ER. Tova, would you counsel her to, I mean, she needs to take care of herself. What would you tell her, and what can you tell the moms out there that are listening?

Yeah, so all those hurting moms, I just want you to know you're not alone, and there are others out there who have been through that. I think you need to find them and that goes back to finding professionals who are really skilled, you need to find other people who understand because for many of the people I've worked with and it was true for us too, but for many of the families I've worked with, it is so profoundly isolating to have other people not understand what you're going through and so that's where a group of other adoptive moms who get it, a group of therapists who get it, and people who have been in the field are the best line of defense.

Let's start with just self care. So you come home and what happens is all the attention is on the child, this poor child, because they are the identified patient, as we'd call it. But often the parents are ignored. Because you're worried about your child who's bleeding from their arm from a suicide attempt or something, right?

Or in your case, you're saying they'll burn you in the house, and so what do we do with the child? And so what happens is the parents are in a big adrenaline rush to handle the crisis. But they've had a traumatic experience. I think starting with self care is important, and maybe that's just starting with some distance in order for everybody to have a little self care.

If it's possible, let somebody else handle that child for a while or put them somewhere else and say, I'll be back, but we just need to regroup. I know we didn't do that enough. My husband and I, when we had crises that would happen, we would just solve the crisis, which is not the same thing as caring for ourselves.

And it took us years after our children were adults to kind of go back and what I call in my teaching for trauma is work the circle where you go back and process traumatic events. Because they were traumatic to us, and we didn't have time to think about that then. So I think what do you do first is you kind of like, oh, what did it mean to me that this happened?

What did I experience? Fear, terror, anger, you know, disappointment, whatever those processes are. They need to be worked through for the parent's sake. And it's really important so that the parent stays sane, but also so that they can come back toward the child with love and compassion versus traumatize themselves that they literally can't stay in the moment.

They can't be wise. They're just reacting. The kid's reacting. You're reacting. And so that slowing down and self care. Make it happen. Take a trip. Go to a retreat center. Do whatever it takes to get you, the parent, back into a state of equilibrium. You can make a wise decision, you know, about what to do next with advice and counsel.

So yeah, I think let go of the guilt because what happened happened and figure out what you need and what they need and what to do next and to just grieve the pain that's going on in the meantime. Yes. That's research that I did for my book that I'm writing. One of the moms was so exhausted that she couldn't even walk across her small kitchen floor.

She was just, no energy. She was exhausted. It's very possible for moms to get compassion fatigue. So one of the things they should do right away is call their doctor. Because just in normal everyday life, when you don't feel like yourself, that's the first clue that you need to see the doctor. I would encourage that as well.

Absolutely. I think it can be very depressing to think that this isn't working out and your dreams are lost or you're depressed for them, you're depressed for yourself. And so you've described, you know, that level of fatigue is profound depression. And it makes sense to be very depressed with so much grief and loss or hopelessness that's settling in.

So sometimes the medical help to get through that time is really valuable. And then the other professional help to really figure out is this grief and loss I just got to work through or is this anger that has turned into depression I'm not allowed to express it so I stuff it and so I that whole thing that goes on and that caretaking and professional help whether it be medical or psychological and both is crucial for moving forward because healthy people can solve the problems with their kids whether they work stay together or not or send them to residential or do what they do but When you're still in a reactive state or an overly depressed state, you can't make good decisions.

In my studying and thinking about this non abandoning heart, at that point, more than any time in mothering, you would know the, the non abandoning heart of Jesus. He's the only one that can be there all the time. And moms don't have to do that. Moms can't do that. That's why they need him. And that kind of always abiding love with their non abandoning heart.

A lot of times moms get real lost in self condemnation and shame, right? Just remember Jesus is the only one. You don't have to be God, right? We don't have to be and we aren't and we can't be and so you're right in it and knowing just letting go and letting God Make up for the difference make up to the difference in our failures But also make up for the difference in what our kids need that we can't give them or when they're beyond us or outgrew it Or whatever that is God We're a part of our children's story, but God fills the other gaps.

He brings other people, other situations, other things, because God is still not abandoning. God is hanging on to them. When they're not a part of us anymore and whether that ends earlier than adulthood or not It's still he makes up that there. He's in charge not us and so we can rest. I do think you're right I think we as moms because you know, I would always question.

Did I do well enough today? This maybe used to do a lot of maybe if only I had her maybe this or maybe that And so we just, versus just letting it be, I did the best I could. I use a phrase in our counseling center, we use a phrase called a good enough parent. Tell me about that. Yeah, I really like the phrase.

It was a colleague who kind of taught it to me. And the idea is that every parent blows it. Every parent makes mistakes. Every parent does things they shouldn't do, says things they shouldn't say, handles things poorly, whatever. If you are generally a good enough parent, You're a good parent. It's enough because it's enough to get it right a good chunk of the time.

And frankly, in normal families, our kids, we grow up, we have our criticisms of our parents. We know they were a good enough parent because we grew up, we're relatively safe, and we went to school and whatever it is. And so I think lowering the standard to good enough, which means most of the time you really tried hard and did it pretty well, is freeing for parents who want to be perfect parents.

I love that, Tova. That's the answer to my question about the non abandoning art. I love that. Also, tell me what you mean. Well, it's just good enough is great goal instead of trying to be the non abandoning heart mom, to be good enough and do your very best and like you said, be faithful to the Lord.

That's good enough. And sometimes your faith may waver, but Jesus is still there. Yes. I would love for you to now tell about your non profit and your work. I was just reading about Wellspring and it says, With the expert support, Wellspring empowers individuals to enhance their mental health through counseling, education, and tailored mental health programs.

Our transformative approach not only impacts individuals, but also radiates through communities and generations. Love it. fostering healthier relationships and deeper connections. For those in distress, Wellspring offers healing for wounded hearts and relief from the emotional pain, while also equipping those seeking self improvement with essential mental health tools, transforming them into emotional athletes.

That is so cool, Tova. Yeah, that's a term I'm wanting to flesh out that belongs to me as an emotional athlete because there are real skills we can learn in mental health and, and uh, we tend to just like try not to be diagnosably mentally ill, but we could become mental health athletes. But basically our work, we have a large practice.

So we do counseling, we do telehealth counseling, mostly in Florida because it has to be by license, although that may open up in the next few years to other states. So we do telehealth and in person in South Florida. We specialize in trauma. So I have therapists who see everything, but we definitely specialize in trauma and all of our Programs are trauma connected.

So we have program for youth, for traumatized youth. And so that for adoptive children might be very appropriate. It's free in Miami Dade County. If someone listening to this podcast were somewhere else, you'd have to come in, into town to do that. Uh, it's in the summer one week programs. We do that as very, very helpful, and individual work with teens who've been traumatized, and so we do a lot of work with foster youth and adoptive youth.

And then we have a similar program for adults, so talking back about parents being traumatized in the process, too. So we have similar trauma recovery programs, intensive programs for adults. That still has a fee, but we keep working on finding funding for those. So those are things we offer. We have funding.

Our website that people can go to, basic counseling people can go to, there's a lot of education we put out there. We also have some podcasts and some articles and things like that, education. That's primarily what we offer and we'd love to have people come and use us or help us direct you to other resources if we can do that.

Just a question that came to mind when you were talking about parents and children, can families come and get a Airbnb in Miami and get help at the same time, like you said, in the summer? Is that an opportunity? It is an opportunity. It would not be, the Bounce, it's called Restore for Adults. Those are groups, so it would be a group of youth, a group of adults in a particular category, you know, grief and long suffering.

You'd be right. So if you wanted to come as a family, it would not be those programs specifically because they would be just for your family. So we would call that fast track therapy or intensive. So you would come as a group. We would give a few different therapists, you know, to kind of divvy up the family, a therapist for the family system and then one for the people in it.

It typically means you have three hours a day of therapy, again, maybe more than one therapist and then in the afternoons you would have experiential therapies, maybe some group work, maybe they send them home with homework, that kind of thing. So it will be several consecutive days at about three hours of therapy per day, actual with clinician therapy and then assignments.

So we call that fast track therapy. And I think it's great for families to do it simultaneously to maybe have in that three hour block you might have. a family session, and some individual sessions going on. That takes some arranging because we have to coordinate the therapist together for it, but it's absolutely doable.

It's called Fast Track. It's not on our website yet, but it will be soon. We're reorganizing how we do that and families will be welcome to come for that. It'd be great. And your website is wellspringmiami.org. Is that right? Correct. Okay. Why don't we just give out the phone number too, in case people want that to get to your office.

Can you give that? Sure. It's 3057225380 3057225380 or wellspringmiami.org. You also have written some really wonderful stuff. I don't know if you've written a book yet. It's in process. But there's a lot on her site and, you know, I'm sure that you would speak all over the country if, if people ask you.

Tova, when I look at your background and how God prepared you for this, I mean, it is so amazing. He's so good to have brought you to this place where you can be such a blessing to so many people. I love you and I want to do another podcast. I'm game. I think it'd be fun. It's been fun to talk to you. I'm happy to speak if someone can pay me to get there.

Oh, I love to teach. I love my field and there's just a lot important things people need to know and loving on people as they get better is something I like to do. So would you also do online teaching? Like a webinar? Yeah, instead of being there. Yeah, that's a lot easier. You could wear your jammies. Well, we like to keep the cameras on.

It's a little more connecting, but yeah, happy to do those. We have some talks in the bag that people could ask, you know, about what is trauma, how to recover from trauma. Some of those things we have at self care for the trauma, for caretakers of the traumatized, things like that. Those are talks we always have ready and talks about learning to listen well and how to heal people through listening.

And then we can always tailor talks based on what people need. Oh, wow. So much to offer. Thank you so much, Tova. You're welcome. And thank you to all our listeners who are probably driving in cars or whatever, sitting on the beach. I hope you're not in the snow here in Indiana. It looks like a winter wonderland.

At Towa's is probably hot, right? Yeah, it's in the 70s and sunny in Miami. So anyway, thank you again so much and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to the 20 Things Adoption Podcast. If you can think of friends or family that would benefit from this information, feel free to share. See you next time.