Episode 190: Uncovering the Importance of Trauma-Informed Parenting (w/ Kara Higgins)
The Forgotten Podcast
The Forgotten Initiative
4.9 • 532 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back in 2009, trauma-informed care wasn’t discussed as much as it is today and many families were not as open about the hardships that came along with an adoption. Kara Higgins always knew she wanted to grow her family by adoption, and she and her husband, Ryan, later had the opportunity to do so when adoptions opened up in Rwanda. That’s when she came face-to-face with trauma at a time when very few realized what it meant.
Kara is the mother to six children through foster care, adoption, and biology. She and her husband founded Imana Kids, which is an orphan care ministry with an educational sponsorship program in Rwanda focusing on trauma-informed interventions, learning, and care. Kara has more than twenty-four years of experience as an international healthcare provider and orphan care advocate for some of the most vulnerable populations of women and orphans, and it was an honor to speak with her today.
In this episode, Kara shares openly about her journey to understanding trauma-informed care, how her expectations of adoption matched up to reality, when she discovered that trauma isn’t just for foster children, and why connection makes all the difference in the world.
This really is one you don’t want to miss.
Show Notes: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/kara-higgins-190/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sharing the stories of the foster care community. |
| 0:03.6 | This is The Forgotten podcast. |
| 0:06.3 | That there's this big story and you're only seeing a little tiny, you're just in one chapter right now. |
| 0:11.8 | He's already written this huge story and he wants redemption for you and he wants redemption for your child. |
| 0:26.5 | Hey, it's Jamie Cabe. |
| 0:31.4 | Welcome back to the Forgotten podcast, where we are highlighting the stories of the people of foster care. |
| 0:32.9 | With every episode, our goal is to help you better understand the foster care community. We want to bring |
| 0:38.6 | you hope and encouragement in your journey and help you support the agency workers, foster parents, |
| 0:44.8 | vulnerable adults, and children in foster care right where you live. If you want to learn more |
| 0:50.6 | about TFI, catch up on past episodes, read engaging articles, or partner with us |
| 0:56.2 | on mission with a gift of any amount, head over to theforgotteninitiative.org. We are in this |
| 1:04.4 | together. Thank you for listening and engaging with us. We love having you as part of our family. |
| 1:14.9 | Okay, it is time. Let's do this. |
| 1:30.3 | Today I am joined by Kara Higgins. Kara is a mother to six children. And as we talked about how her kids came to her family, it's been through the old-fashioned way. It's been through foster care. It's been through adoption and |
| 1:35.5 | legal guardianship. So your kids have come to you through a number of a variety of ways. |
| 1:40.9 | Kara and her husband Ryan founded Amana Kids, which is an orphan care ministry, which is an |
| 1:48.0 | educational sponsorship program in Rwanda with a focus on trauma-informed interventions, learning, and |
| 1:54.5 | care. Also been trained and certified in cultivating connection, which is a parent-to-parent |
| 2:00.2 | program under the |
| 2:01.2 | umbrella of Empowered to Connect. And she facilitates classes as well as one-on-one coaching |
| 2:06.8 | for foster and adoptive families, social workers, counselors, and medical students on applying |
| 2:12.9 | trauma-informed care, which is based on TBRI, trust-based relational intervention. We've talked about this |
... |
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