We have a lot planned for Together Called 2025 beyond being blessed by Mark and Tona Ottinger. Take a look…

Preconference Session Friday Afternoon

Stories We Share

Included with a TC2025 registration is the opportunity to come a little early on Friday for a 2pm session engaging a panel of 5 couples in varied seasons of marriage and family who will be sharing their stories, things they have learned, and things they are still learning. We invite attendees to start their Together Called weekend here, joining with others to reflect on our unique and shared experiences and explore where God may be inviting you to see things in your own life in new ways. Our goal is for this session to be interactive and a helpful bridge into the weekend.

About the moderator:

Kelly Raudenbush and her husband Mark cofounded The Sparrow Fund with the mission of caring for foster and adopted children and their grownups by empowering relationships within and between families. What started as a small ministry where they could serve together has grown into full-time work for them both. With a Master’s degree in counseling from Missio Seminary and a certificate in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health from Georgetown University, Kelly has a particular interest in partnering with parents to help children process and understand their histories in healing ways; encouraging, equipping, and empowering parents as they navigate the effects of trauma; and helping caregivers and teachers in her own neighborhood and across the world best experience the power of relationship. But, her biggest passion resides in glorifying God within their own family, as a wife and a mother to their four children…and their two dogs.

The Overflowing Parent: Raising Children from a Place of Fullness and Trust

It is easy to live life with thin margins, drifting on autopilot and wondering why we feel so empty when we believe in a God who is full. One of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is a sturdy, inspiring life grounded in the person and work of Christ. In this session, Dawn Woods will share how practicing Sabbath rest leads to restoration and allows us to be still, self-reflective, present with one another, and able to identify patterns of sin and dysfunction that are often subtle. She will help us better understand why it matters and how even busy families can practice the presence of God in ways that allow us to receive, BE instead of DO, and cultivate peace that transforms us so that our DOING is coming from a place of fullness in HIM. 

About the speaker:

Dawn Woods loves birds and humpback whales almost as much as she loves people. She is described as eager to learn, a lover of nature, and highly relational. After being inspired by her high school English teacher, Dawn went on to study and teach English literature to high school students. In time, Dawn got her Master’s in Counseling and has spent over 25 years counseling and coaching parents, young adults, and adolescents where her wisdom and humor have been put to good use. She brings an objective, leveling voice to those working through challenges and an impactful perspective for the foster and adoption community given that she grew up as a biological child in a foster and adoptive family herself. 

The Nervous System and Childhood Development

Early childhood stressors – whether physical, chemical, or emotional – can shape how the brain perceives, develops, and responds to its environment. When these stressors are persistent, the nervous system can become stuck in what is called a sympathetic dominant state, prioritizing survival over growth and regulation. This prolonged stress response can alter neurocognitive development, affecting focus, emotional regulation, digestion, and immune function. Chiropractic care can play a crucial role in restoring balance to a stressed-out nervous system. At home, parents can support their child’s nervous system everyday through nutrition, routines, sensory activities, and self-regulation techniques. In this session, husband and wife team Drs. Sydney and Joe Trovato will share their experience working with kids who have struggled with these early childhood stressors and the success stores they’ve had when their nervous systems are more adaptable and regulated. They will also offer us practical strategies to take home with us to support our children’s nervous system health and, ultimately, our children’s physical, emotional, and developmental health. 

About the speakers:

Dr. Joe and Dr. Sydney Trovato are the Owners and Lead Chiropractors at Deep Rooted Chiropractic in Malvern, Pennsylvania. They are a husband and wife duo who graduated from Life University in 2023 and jumped straight into opening Deep Rooted Chiropractic. They both have their Pediatric Chiropractic Certification through the Pediatric Experience and have a neurological approach to chiropractic care. With this additional training, they understand the importance of finding the root cause of their patients’ health concerns in order to create a solid foundation for families to adapt, grow, and thrive throughout every stage of life. 

Blocked Care: What to Do When You Run Out of Compassion

Blocked care is a self-protective mechanism in a parent’s nervous system activated by excessive stress. This suppresses the higher brain functions needed for caregiving causing the parent’s nervous system to develop a defensive stance toward their child. Adoptive and foster parents are at higher risk of blocked care due to parenting a child with a history of adversity. With support and good care, parents can regain compassion for themselves and their child. In this session, Melissa Corkum will help us identify the signs of blocked care, understand the causes and types of blocked care, understand how children develop blocked trust, learn the steps for overcoming and preventing blocked care, and explore ways to reclaim compassion for parents and kids.

About the speaker:

Melissa Corkum is a sought-after speaker and author specializing in blocked care and strategies to overcome burnout and chronic stress. A TEDx speaker, co-author of Reclaim Compassion, an adoptee, and adoptive mom, she brings a blend of lived experience and expertise to her work. She is the founder of RISE to Regulation and cofounder of Adoption Wise. Offstage, Melissa enjoys social dancing and savoring the half-popped kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bowl.

We gave the 27 families in our Sparrow Family Care Grant program an invitation to enjoy a date night on us this month. It’s one small way we can care for them. We also sent them a resource of date night conversation prompts for adoptive couples that we’re sharing with all of you! We hope it can be a tool to prompt smiles, nods, listening noises, and an affirming sense of togetherness. 

Click below to download the conversation prompts created for couples currently pursuing adoption or newly home.

Click below to download the conversation prompts created for adoptive parents in any season.

“This parenting journey is hard, and it’s so nice to laugh when there is not much to laugh about in our day-to-day lives right now.”

“The laughter was healing, and the worship was sweet.”

“As newbies, my wife and I had no idea what to expect and left with hearts filled, encouraged, with gut pains from laughter.”

“All the attention to details made it a personal experience and not just attendance at a big conference.”

“This is just what our spirit needed to continue this calling God has for us.”

We have a lot planned for Together Called 2024 in addition to hearing from J.R. Briggs and Graham + Abby Allen throughout the weekend.

Preconference Session Friday Afternoon

Lessons in Listening and Thoughtful Repair: Relational Practices to Support Your Family

Relationships are hard. Arguably, foster and adoptive parents know this more than most. We invite you to start your Together Called weekend experience here, joining with others to reflect on our experience of relationships, explore what the term attunement means, and practice in real time how we can offer and receive it through the tool of reflective listening and thoughtful repair. Our goal is for this workshop to be experiential, practical, and a helpful bridge into the weekend.. 

About the facilitator:

Kelly Raudenbush and her husband Mark cofounded The Sparrow Fund with the mission of caring for foster and adopted children and their grownups by empowering relationships within and between families. What started as a small ministry where they could serve together has grown into full-time work for them both. With a Master’s degree in counseling from Missio Seminary and a certificate in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health from Georgetown University, Kelly has a particular interest in partnering with parents to help children process and understand their histories in healing ways; encouraging, equipping, and empowering parents as they navigate the effects of trauma; and helping caregivers and teachers in her own neighborhood and across the world best experience the power of relationship. But, her biggest passion resides in glorifying God within their own family, as a wife and a mother to their four children…and their two dogs.

Optional Breakout Sessions Saturday Afternoon

Managing All the Meltdowns (Theirs and Ours)

Oh no, here we go again! Another flare up, just a different day! Our children’s tough situations often become our tough situations as we try to manage their meltdowns and our own. In this workshop, we will unpack frustration in children, the whys and wherefores, and offer you tools to help you manage your own anxiety and regulation and equip you to support your children in the same. Sounds like magic? No, it’s not magic, but it is an effective method that has empowered many families in managing all the meltdowns while maintaining respect for themselves and promoting self-respect and positive identity in the children they love and care for.

About the facilitator:

Maude Le Roux, OTR/L is an occupational therapist and director of A Total Approach, a private therapy center in Glen Mills, PA since 2001. She opened her online academy in 2019. She trains extensively nationally and internationally, empowering both professionals and parents in their care of children. Maude is a great believer in the human spirit and believes that God created the human brain and, therefore, holds the key to true healing of body, spirit, and mind.

What Teen Adoptees Need: Seeing the Valuable Child Within Your Growing Adolescent

Teenagers are hard to care for. Teenagers with a history of trauma are hard to understand. Parents often ask: Is it trauma? Is this the stage of adolescence? Is it our parenting strategy? In this session, we will unpack how adoption trauma can manifest itself within a teen’s unique developmental stage. Sara will lend personal insights and offer practical ways parents can support teens to grow their sense of feeling seen, valued, and heard and connect in ever deeper ways. 

About the facilitator:

Sara Odicio is a licensed social worker and an adult adoptee who was adopted from an orphanage in China when she was 13 months old. Sara has worked with adoptive families since 2018 in various capacities including post permanency case management, parent education, mentoring, support group facilitating and clinical therapy. Through these opportunities, Sara felt challenged to engage with her own adoption journey on a deeper level. Sara founded CORE of Adoption, LLC in 2021 to combine her life experience, skillset and passion in supporting teen adoptees through coaching and support groups. Aside from CORE, Sara works in a local foster care and adoption agency as an outpatient therapist with the goal of earning her clinical license in social work. Sara currently resides in Lancaster County, PA with her husband Jared and two fluffy cats, Misty and Milo. She enjoys finding hole-in-the-wall food places, taking walks, deep and edifying conversations, and serving as a worship leader at her local church. 

Intimately Acquainted: Reclaiming Connection, Friendship, and Pleasure With Your Spouse

We may know what it is to be in love; to share hopes, dreams, and desires with our spouse. But, life has a way of filling up and crowding out the deeper connection that many of us envisioned in our marriages. How do we build intimacy in the midst of life’s chaos and challenges? How do we find our way back to one another when seasons have changed us? How do we make space for pleasure in a world where “doing hard things” has become our way of life? Together, let’s unpack these questions and more as we reimagine our relationships with greater pleasure, connection, and desire.

About the facilitator:

Adriane Dimmitt and her husband Mike, have been married for 14 years, and together are raising four wild and wonderful children. As former foster parents, they know firsthand the struggle of staying connected in the midst of life’s demands. As a writer and speaker, Adriane is passionate about advocating for foster care, parenting children with neurological autoimmune issues, and grieving well. And, oh yes, she’s also passionate about having a marriage that gets better with age and helping others do the same! This year, Adriane has launched a new initiative, Redeeming Childhood, to better equip families facing behavioral and mental health struggles as a result of underlying autoimmune conditions. Her work has given her the privilege of connecting with many families as they pursue wellness for their children. Most days, you will find her at her dining room table, homeschooling her kids, taking long walks in the fields nearby, or dreaming up a new project with her husband.

We gave the 29 families in our Sparrow Family Care Grant program an invitation to enjoy a date night on us this month. It’s one small way we can care for them. We also created and offered them this resource of date night conversation prompts that we’re now sharing with all of you. We hope it can be a tool to prompt smiles, nods, listening noises, and a sense of togetherness.

We invite you to delight with us in the outpouring of financial support we have received for Giving Tuesday! We joyfully anticipate all the ways those dollars will help foster and adopted children and their grownups in 2024. 

Good things are coming! 

For us, Giving Tuesday has always been more vision-raising than fundraising. When we engage more people’s hearts with a shared vision, we are stronger in all the ways. Our mission is to care for foster and adopted children and their grownups by empowering relationships within and between families. It is our hope that as we share images and stories on Instagram and Facebook over the next 2 weeks, more people will embrace the vision for what are doing now and where we are headed as we care for families. 

Our giving goal by Giving Tuesday on November 28th is $60,000: $20,000 for general operating needs so we can keep all of our lights on, $20,000 for our Sparrow Family Care Grant program currently supporting 29 families until they are home for a full year, and $20,000 for new opportunities because it has become more and more clear that we are being called to grow. To help us get there, a few generous, committed donors have pledged to match all gifts dollar-for-dollar up to $20,000. What that means is that whatever you give–small, medium, or large–will be doubled until we reach $20,000 to give us a strong start towards that $60,000 goal.

I remember her well. My 1st-grade self loved her big smile and her early 80s perm. Everyday, she’d stand by the classroom door at the end of the day and hug each of us as we ran to our grownup. I was excited to go to school everyday because of her and those hugs I could count on. 

Touch is powerful. It makes neurons fire in our brain like the fourth of July. Touch is a remarkable tool to build relationship and connection. And, it’s something our children who have experienced hard things often have a hard time with. Some kids can’t get enough of it; some kids struggle to receive it at all. And when they struggle with giving and receiving touch one way or the other, we as parents often struggle along with them.

When our kids are small, we can hold them, literally “wear” them, sleep side-by-side, and guard moments of physical closeness to best build trust and connection. As small kids grow bigger, our strategies to help them give and receive appropriate physical touch have to grow with them. One way we can support our children in this area is to communicate clearly with other grownups who spend time with them how they can support our child and us. 

Here are two examples. The first is a message parents of a child who seeks hugs and kisses could share with their child’s teacher. The second is a message parents of a child who resists giving and receiving affection could share with their child’s teacher. May they encourage and inspire you to communicate to the grownups around your family what your child and family needs. 

Regarding a Child Who Seeks Physical Affection

Dear Mrs. Reid,

We’ve enjoyed all that Jenny has been sharing with us about her experiences at school so far. While the transition back to school hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns, we’re encouraged by how well she (and we!) are doing. 

Jenny has learned strategies to get what she needs. One of those strategies is through physical affection. It makes sense to us. Grownups typically respond readily to children when they put their arms up and when they want hugs or  kisses. It works. We’ve been working hard to teach her better strategies than using physical affection to get what she needs.  

At home, we communicate to her that we are always available and willing to give hugs and kisses but if there’s something she needs, she can use words and simply ask for it. We say things like, “You know, if you need something, all you have to do is ask!” Another thing we have been working on teaching her is that hugs and kisses are for family, and high fives and fist bumps are for everyone else. She is still learning appropriate boundaries. It would be really helpful to us if you reinforce that same message at school. 

We are excited to experience all the ways she will learn and grow this year. And, we’re so glad to have you part of that. 

Genuinely, —-

---

Regarding a Child Who Struggles to Give and Receive Physical Affection

Dear Mrs. Reid,

We’ve enjoyed all that Jenny has been sharing with us about her experiences at school so far. While the transition back to school hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns, we’re encouraged by how well she (and we!) are doing. 

Jenny has learned strategies to protect herself and lower stress. One of those strategies is avoiding giving and receiving physical affection. It makes sense to us. Physical touch often makes her feel vulnerable and, therefore, threatened. As her parents, we’ve been working hard to help her feel safe with us and intentionally practice giving and receiving touch, hugs, and kisses in safe and healthy ways so that she can experience them differently. We’ve also been very careful to guard that closeness, intentionally reserving physical affection to family only. We tell her that hugs and kisses are for family; high fives and fist bumps are for everyone else. It would be really helpful to us if you reinforce that same message at school. 

We are excited to experience all the ways she will learn and grow this year. And, we’re so glad to have you part of that. 

Genuinely, —-