Fostering Community
Celebrating Foster Care Awareness Month: Join AOK in Supporting Local Foster Families
May is Foster Care Awareness Month, and at All Our Kids (AOK), we’re launching a new community campaign to shine a light on the incredible families who foster and adopt in Western Massachusetts-and the unique challenges they face. Thanks to the generous support of PeoplesBank, we’re excited to invite the public to learn more, get…
Read MoreWhat Matters Now
My therapist recently shared a new word with me: pronoia. A state of mind where someone believes the world is conspiring to help. The opposite of paranoia, where someone believes the world is conspiring to hurt. It rang true for the way I’ve been approaching the world in the last couple of years,…
Read MoreSundae Funday 2023 A Huge Success!
AOK Board and Staff Members (L-R): Kyle, Melissa, Marianna, and Elaine. The children were smiling. The weather was gorgeous. People came to run with their families and walk with their kids. We laughed, danced, ate, enjoyed, made friends. THANK YOU to all who made the 2023 Sundae Funday event a huge success! Scroll below…
Read MoreWhy Is Foster Care So Hard?
Adapted from the AOK Guidebook, “It Takes a Village.” There are numerous reasons foster parenting is inherently more stressful than parenting in general. These fall into four main categories: the children, social support factors, financial issues, and the child welfare system. The Children Children who have experienced foster care are more likely to have behavioral,…
Read MoreEp. 27: We’re BACK! (But did we ever really go anywhere?)
It’s been over two years since Marianna and Kyle have recorded in the same room, sitting at the same table, at the same time. And this episode is a true return-to-normal. Plenty of AOK organizational updates, for sure; mostly, though, this is just the taste of normal that we’ve all needed since March 2020. How…
Read MoreAOK Guest Post: Last Chance Words
“When he first came to us, you wrote a letter asking us to take care of him. We loved him and did our best to care for him. I hope you’ll agree…..” I wrote these words in a note to send to our foster son’s mother just hours before he would leave us forever. Or…
Read MoreThe Lasting Effects of Our Time with Michael
Earlier this month would have been the third annual Homebrew Showcase for All Our Kids. The last two years of this event have been a wonderful partnership between Paddy’s Irish Pub and AOK. Although the funds raised as a result of this event have meant so much to us, the relationships we’ve made with the…
Read MoreMissing My Village: A Pandemic Story
Even though I knew it was coming, the news that learning would happen remotely in my town was a punch in the gut. Remote learning was not a painless experience for our family this past spring, and I’m not sure how we’re going to manage it this fall with three school-agers and a toddler. Many…
Read MoreStatement on Systemic Racism
Ep. 25: Meet Child Welfare Advocate and Veteran Foster/Adoptive Parent: Missy Tyler Tarjick
Hearing about Missy’s lifelong involvement in foster care and adoption is inspiring, surprising, and sometimes even jaw dropping. From her own birth family’s fostering journey to her 20-year experience as a foster, adoptive and (more recently) guardianship parent – you are bound to be amazed. Hear about how she manages her large brood (how large?…
Read More