Episode 29: Mother to Many: Doing Life with Nine Children
The Forgotten Podcast
The Forgotten Initiative
4.9 • 532 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2017
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsten Smith believes her past experience prepared her for her present reality, although “nothing could fully prepare me to be the mother of nine!” She grew up with an idea of what foster care was, and after college she worked as a social worker with families in crisis, aiding in reunification, but also seeing the effects of child abuse and neglect. “It was a hard job,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know why God put me here.’” A few years later she realized that some of her own children came from those scenarios.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Forgotten podcast, bringing voice to the foster care community. |
| 0:07.0 | Everything is bigger and everything takes more time. |
| 0:27.6 | You know, so cooking is more of a process. |
| 0:29.6 | There's always a lot more laundry to do, and there's just a lot of everything. |
| 0:48.4 | Hey, it's Jamie K. Welcome back to the Forgotten podcast. You can find out more about today's episode by visiting the forgotten initiative.org slash S3E4. |
| 0:54.5 | That's for season three, episode four. |
| 0:57.7 | I can't wait for you to hear my conversation with my friend Kirsten Smith. |
| 1:03.0 | She is a former child abuse and neglect social worker, |
| 1:06.4 | and her husband Josh and her have been married for 15 years, |
| 1:10.2 | and they are the parents of, get this, nine children. |
| 1:15.3 | Six of these kids they've adopted through foster care. |
| 1:18.3 | One is in the process of being adopted, and two, they are hoping to adopt. |
| 1:23.1 | Even as a mom to many, Kirsten does find some time to share in her blog, liliesconsider.com. |
| 1:29.5 | The Smiths live in Ohio. |
| 1:31.8 | And today is just going to be a lot of fun. |
| 1:34.0 | It was fun for me as a mom of seven to talk to her as a mom of nine. |
| 1:38.2 | We talk about her journey, how her kids came to her. |
| 1:41.4 | But then we also talk about some very practical things like laundry, chores, |
| 1:46.4 | grocery shopping, food. How does it look to parent nine children? So get ready. Here is my |
| 1:53.4 | interview with Kirsten Smith. Kirsten, it is really good to talk with you today. I think we're going to have a lot of fun. There's a certain |
| 2:06.6 | kind of kind of kindred spirit we share because we are moms of many. So tell me right now, |
| 2:12.7 | what are the ages of your kids? We have a daughter. She's 15 and a half, 16 in October. So she'll be |
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