The Truth About Foster Care Adoption No One Talks About
She was told the four kids would not be with her for very long. Five years later, they are hers forever. Rebecca Harvin adopted a sibling set of four from foster care and founded Haven Retreats to help burned-out foster and adoptive parents find rest and healing.
Fostering to Adoption
In this episode of Voices of Adoption, host Donna Pope sits down with Rebecca Harvin, adoptive mother, foster care advocate, and founder of Haven Retreats. Rebecca shares the full arc of her adoption journey, including a calling she felt at 16, the burnout that nearly broke her, and the moment she watched a birth mother say goodbye in a parking lot and knew she could never let those children go.
A Calling That Took Two Decades to Answer
Rebecca felt pulled toward foster care and adoption as a teenager, but it was not until she was 35 that she and her husband welcomed their first placement. Within 18 months, they had taken in multiple sibling sets with ages stacked on top of each other. The pace was relentless, the challenges were unlike anything she anticipated, and she found herself becoming a parent she did not recognize. That season of burnout led her to create Haven Retreats, a nonprofit that offers therapeutic retreats for foster and adoptive caregivers.
Redefining What Success Looks Like
When Rebecca adopted all four siblings in July 2022, the real work began. She opens up about the difference between fostering and forever parenting, the struggle to release unrealistic expectations, and why she had to stop treating her children like problems to solve. Rebecca talks about the varied connections she has with each of her four adopted children and the ongoing reality that her biological kids are still writing their own stories alongside their siblings.
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