At four years old, Sheena Wood was told that she had to make herself “adoptable.”
She had medical challenges with her eyesight, feeling lost and alone as she navigated the journey of foster care, moving from foster home to foster home throughout her early childhood. She felt rejected and didn’t know if anyone would want her or if she would be able to find a place to belong.
Today, Sheena is a mother of five, married to her college sweetheart, and serves in a church in Florida along with her husband, Josh.
In this episode, Sheena shares what it was like to experience foster care, how well-intentioned advice can go wrong, why our words matter as caregivers to children who have experienced trauma, and why “Amazing Grace” helped her feel truly seen.
TAKEAWAYS FROM TODAY’S CONVERSATION:
1. Children can believe it’s their fault.
After so many traumatic and heartbreaking experiences, it’s not uncommon for children in foster care to develop the belief that what they are experiencing is their fault. They try so hard to fit what they believe will help them be more desirable to a foster or adoptive family and, when it doesn’t work, it further reinforces the belief that the problem is them.
“As a child, I internalized every single time I changed homes. It was my fault; I did something wrong. I’m so bad.”
2. Sometimes we have to look deeper to identify a child’s needs.
As we heard in Sheena’s story, she was almost labeled “unadoptable” as a four-year-old child. However, as her intellect was being tested, what didn’t get noticed was that she couldn’t see and needed glasses. It’s important to recognize that we are often getting just part of a story, and we may be missing key details as we look to support a child in the best way.
“They were checking my intellect, but I couldn’t see. So they weren’t checking my basic needs.”
3. Don’t take challenging behaviors personally.
The very behaviors that helped them survive in their old environment don’t fit into their new home. Like Sheena shares in her story, it can be jarring to experience order when all a child has known is chaos. Don’t take it personally or be offended when children act out or display coping behaviors. Instead, seek to understand what role that behavior served them in their past and what an environment is causing them to feel.
“My world was so broken before that when I was in a world that was put together and organized it didn’t feel right.”
Meet Our Guest
Sheena Wood is a former foster child, wife to a pastor, a mother, and previously served as a Children’s Outpatient Case Manager at a Mental Health Hospital, a faith-based Homeless Shelter Director, and a Mental Health Technician and Case Manager at a Women’s Faith-Based Eating Disorder Treatment Center. Sheena has a Bachelor’s in Social Work and a minor in Psychology. Her mission is to see families healed, strengthened, and protected through faith in Christ and support in a local church. Sheena is married to her college sweetheart, Josh, with whom they have five children ranging from 6 months to 15 years old.
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