More Than a Foster Child: A Story of Healing and Hope with Solange Carlson

More Than a Foster Child: A Story of Healing and Hope with Solange Carlson

This episode isn't just about foster care. It's about grief. It's about identity. It's about what happens when a child loses not only their home, but their sense of safety, belonging, and sometimes even themselves. Solange Carlson's story is one that stayed with me long after we stopped recording. As a child, she was removed from her home and placed into a world she didn't understand. No one explained what was happening. No one gave her the language to process the fear, confusion, or loss. Like so many children in foster care, she was expected to adapt, survive, and keep moving forward. But what struck me most was not the removal itself—it was the invisible aftermath. The constant moving. The changing rules. The uncertainty. The way a child begins creating stories to fill in the gaps when no one explains the truth. Stories like, "I'm not worthy," "I'm a burden," or "I don't belong anywhere." Those stories don't disappear when a child leaves care. They often follow them into adulthood, relationships, careers, and parenting.  What Solange helped me understand at an even deeper level is that leaving foster care doesn't mean the journey is over. In many ways, it's just beginning. We expect young adults to age out of the system at eighteen and somehow know how to navigate life, relationships, emotions, jobs, and parenting. Yet many have never been taught how to regulate their nervous system, process grief, ask for help, or trust another human being. They carry the weight of losing biological family, foster families, siblings, friends, homes, schools, routines, and pieces of their identity—often over and over again. We talk about permanency, but we rarely talk about grief. We talk about outcomes, but we rarely talk about healing. And until we do, we will continue expecting children to build a life on a foundation that was never fully repaired.  What gives me hope is that Solange's story is also one of courage. She became the very thing she needed as a child. Through years of self-awareness, therapy, mentorship, and hard work, she chose to break cycles instead of repeating them. She chose healing. She chose to become present for her own children even when it meant facing painful memories she had spent years avoiding. Her story reminds us that healing is possible, but it should not be this lonely. Children in foster care don't just need homes. They need connection. They need consistency. They need adults willing to listen before they judge, to offer compassion before advice, and to leave the door open when a child isn't ready to walk through it yet. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply remind a child, "When you're ready, I'm here."  So let me ask you a question. What if awareness wasn't the finish line? What if it was the invitation? The invitation to notice the foster child sitting in your child's classroom. The invitation to support foster families in your community. The invitation to offer more grace, more patience, and more understanding to children whose behaviors may simply be speaking the pain they don't yet have words for. Because every child deserves more than survival. Every child deserves to feel seen, known, and valued. And no child should ever age out of needing a family.  Find Solange here; https://www.instagram.com/heal_loud_and_love_louder/ Contact Corree or find out more about Corree and learn about all the ways she does not choose to stay in one lane go here: https://correeroofener.com/ [https://correeroofener.com/] To Purchase Emotional Money click here: Emotional Money [https://a.co/d/08GWK2mP] Are you ready to walk with us for https:/https://fosteringthesummit.org [https://fosteringthesummit.org/]  Join us as we change the statistics for children aging out of foster care. Also, follow me on https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/ [https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/] for more inspiration and practical wisdom for your business and life.  Until next time, keep shining bright! - Corree

The Relationships We Stop Choosing with guest Melissa Nanavati

There is something powerful that happens when we stop looking at relationships as something we “have” and begin looking at them as something we actively choose, nurture, and participate in every single day. In this episode of The Courage Coalition, I sat down with relationship coach and TEDx speaker Melissa Nanavati to have one of those conversations I believe we need to be having more often. Not just about love, but about connection, intimacy, communication, and the stories we carry into our relationships without even realizing it.  What struck me most during our conversation was this idea that so many couples are not actually falling out of love they are falling out of intentionality. We become busy. We become tired. We become parents, business owners, caregivers, and problem-solvers. Somewhere in the middle of surviving life, we stop seeing the human sitting across from us. We stop asking questions. We stop holding eye contact. We stop allowing space for curiosity and instead begin creating stories in our heads about what someone else’s silence, expression, or reaction must mean. And the truth is, so much friction in relationships is not actually about the issue itself it’s about the meaning we attach to it. That hit me deeply because how often in life are we reacting not to reality, but to the story we’ve created around reality?  We also talked about something I think many women especially need permission to hear: space is healthy. Time alone is healthy. Wanting moments to reconnect to yourself does not mean you love your partner less. In fact, Melissa shared the neuroscience behind why absence and intentional space actually increase connection, desire, and appreciation. That conversation led us into something even deeper arousal, not just sexually, but emotionally and spiritually. The feeling of being alive. The feeling of excitement, curiosity, novelty, and presence.  One of the greatest reminders from this conversation was that courage in relationships is not the absence of fear or discomfort. Courage is being willing to have the conversation anyway. To say, “This is the story I’m telling myself.” To ask for what you need. To sit down instead of running. To hold hands instead of building walls. To choose connection instead of assumption. And maybe most importantly, to remember that the person sitting across from you is not your enemy — they are your teammate. In a world teaching us to disconnect faster than ever, maybe the most courageous thing we can do is stay open long enough to truly see each other again.  Find out more about Melissa Nanavati here: https://melissananavati.com/ [https://melissananavati.com/] Melissa's BRAVE framework here: https://melissananavati.com/bravescripts [https://melissananavati.com/bravescripts] Contact Corree or find out more about Corree and learn about all the ways she does not choose to stay in one lane go here: https://correeroofener.com/ [https://correeroofener.com/] To Purchase Emotional Money click here: Emotional Money [https://a.co/d/08GWK2mP] Are you ready to walk with us for https:/https://fosteringthesummit.org [https://fosteringthesummit.org/]  Join us as we change the statistics for children aging out of foster care. Also, follow me on https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/ [https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/] for more inspiration and practical wisdom for your business and life.  Until next time, keep shining bright! - Corree

Foster Care Isn’t a Program — It’s People with Judi Martin

My heart was so full recording this episode of The Courage Coalition with my dear friend Judy Martin and when I say dear friend, I mean lifeline. Judy was our certifier when Chad and I became foster parents, but she was so much more than a checkbox on a system form. She’s also an adoptee, an adoptive mom, and she’s spent years inside the foster care system as a caseworker and certifier. And when you hear her story the truth of what trauma does, the way it lives in the body, the way it shows up even when a child is “safe” you can’t un-hear it. We have to stop telling ourselves the lie that “they won’t remember” or “it was before birth so it doesn’t count.” Trauma doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t wait for a first breath. It’s real, it’s biological, it’s spiritual, and it leaves scars that don’t disappear just because we wish love could outwork it. What hit me hardest is this: we keep trying to fix foster care with policies and statistics, while forgetting the human standing in front of us. We create laws that force timelines and placements like kids are paperwork, not souls. And then we wonder why teens spiral after 12 homes, why foster parents burn out in 18 months, why families fall apart under the weight of a system that doesn’t train them for reality. Judy said something that I’ll carry forever what kids need most is consistency, and that consistency doesn’t always have to be a foster parent. It can be a coach, a neighbor, a church family, a grandpa, a mentor… someone who doesn’t disappear. Someone who becomes a constant. Because the truth is, when a child only knows chaos, chaos becomes their safety and they will recreate it inside calm because calm feels like danger. We have to stop being shocked by that and start being equipped for it. And here’s the part I want you to sit with: what if everyone said yes to one child? Not even forever. Not even adoption. Just one. Or what if ten families ten businesses, ten women, ten church friends said, “We’re going to support one foster family. We’re going to be the village.” One person brings dinner. One person drives to practice. One person folds laundry. One person listens without trying to fix. One person becomes respite. One person becomes the safe adult a child can count on. The crisis is not bigger than what we’re capable of we’ve just convinced ourselves we’re powerless, so we do nothing… and nothing changes. Maybe courage isn’t climbing a mountain today. Maybe courage is a single step toward showing up for one human. Because around here, you know what we believe: if it changed the life of one, would you do it? Contact Corree or find out more about Corree and learn about all the ways she does not choose to stay in one lane go here: https://correeroofener.com/ [https://correeroofener.com/] To Purchase Emotional Money click here: Emotional Money [https://a.co/d/08GWK2mP] Are you ready to walk with us for https:/https://fosteringthesummit.org [https://fosteringthesummit.org/]  Join us as we change the statistics for children aging out of foster care. Also, follow me on https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/ [https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/] for more inspiration and practical wisdom for your business and life.  Until next time, keep shining bright! - Corree

The Courage to See Yourself First with Anne Peshka

We spend so much of our lives chasing the checklist. Performing. Achieving. Becoming who we think we’re supposed to be so we can finally feel accepted. But what if the real question was never “What do you do?” What if the real question has always been “Who are you?” Because from the moment we take our first breath, we are taught—subtly and loudly—that love, safety, and belonging are earned through behavior. Be good. Be quiet. Be what we need you to be. And without even realizing it, we build our identity around those expectations… until one day we wake up and realize we don’t even know who we are underneath it all.  What struck me most in this conversation is how deeply we are wired for acceptance—and how often we look for it everywhere except within. We wait for someone else to see us, validate us, choose us. But the truth is, real acceptance is an inside job. And that’s not fluffy or easy—it’s gritty. It’s the work. It’s peeling back the labels, the trauma, the stories, and asking yourself, “What is actually mine?” Because when we don’t do that work, we abandon ourselves first. We break our own hearts trying to fit into spaces that were never meant for us. And then we wonder why we feel empty, disconnected, or unseen. But here’s the hope—and it’s a powerful one. Change doesn’t come from someone else forcing you to be different. It comes from a moment, sometimes the smallest moment, where something shifts inside of you. A glance. A word. A connection. A tiny thread of belief that maybe… just maybe… you are not what you thought you were. And when that thread is nurtured, it becomes something bigger. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But steadily. That’s where courage lives. Not in becoming someone new, but in finally seeing, accepting, and loving who you’ve been all along. Find Anne Peshka here: https://annepeshka.com/ [https://annepeshka.com/] Contact Corree or find out more about Corree and learn about all the ways she does not choose to stay in one lane go here: https://correeroofener.com/ [https://correeroofener.com/] To Purchase Emotional Money click here: Emotional Money [https://a.co/d/08GWK2mP] Are you ready to walk with us for https:/https://fosteringthesummit.org [https://fosteringthesummit.org/]  Join us as we change the statistics for children aging out of foster care. Also, follow me on https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/ [https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/] for more inspiration and practical wisdom for your business and life.  Until next time, keep shining bright! - Corree

Healing, Hope and The Power of Being Held with Heather Gibson

Some conversations do more than inform us, they remind us that healing rarely looks the way we expect it to. My conversation with Heather Gibson was one of those. What struck me most was not just that we share the foster and adoptive journey, but that her story reveals something so many people miss: behind foster care is trauma, and behind trauma is often a desperate need for connection, safety, and unconditional love. Heather’s path into foster care was not some grand, polished plan. It was a quiet nudge, built through personal heartbreak, compassion, and the kind of life experience that teaches you to notice the lonely person in the room. And that matters, because so often the people most called to this work are not responding to a spotlight moment, hey are responding to a holy ache they cannot ignore. What moved me deeply in this conversation was the way Heather began to see that animals were not just companions, but bridges to healing. When her daughter, carrying layers of profound trauma, could not find words for what she was feeling, she could talk to the cat. That moment says so much. It reminds us that healing is not always linear, clinical, or wrapped in something the world easily understands. Sometimes healing begins in the quiet presence of something that asks nothing from you except to be loved. For children who have been moved, uprooted, unseen, and left carrying invisible disabilities born of trauma, that kind of unconditional connection can be life-changing. It can regulate what feels unregulatable. It can soften fear. It can create safety where trust has been fractured again and again. This conversation also held a bigger invitation: to look beyond judgment and ask better questions. Better questions about foster care. Better questions about biological families. Better questions about trauma. And yes, even better questions about breeding animals with purpose and care when the goal is support, stability, and healing. Heather’s work is rooted in understanding that the right animal can offer hope in ways many traditional paths cannot. That is not a small thing. It is sacred work. And what I hope listeners take from this episode is that courage often looks like listening to the heartbreak in front of you and choosing not to look away. Sometimes that heartbreak becomes your purpose. Sometimes it becomes the very thing that teaches you how to help others feel seen, safe, and loved. And that kind of courage changes lives. As always remember, Love you meant it. Find out more about Heather here: https://www.instagram.com/bigheartedbreeders/ [https://www.instagram.com/bigheartedbreeders/] Find here guidebook to dogs and fostercare go here:  Contact Corree or find out more about Corree and learn about all the ways she does not choose to stay in one lane go here: https://correeroofener.com/ [https://correeroofener.com/] To Purchase Emotional Money click here: Emotional Money [https://a.co/d/08GWK2mP] Are you ready to walk with us for https:/https://fosteringthesummit.org [https://fosteringthesummit.org/]  Join us as we change the statistics for children aging out of foster care. Also, follow me on https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/ [https://www.instagram.com/correeroofenercoach/] for more inspiration and practical wisdom for your business and life.  Until next time, keep shining bright! - Corree