A Place to Call Home

Adoption had always been at the forefront of Jared and Becky Clark’s mind. Becky’s mom was adopted, and Becky had always felt that she would one day adopt. Jared and Becky wanted a family right away after their marriage in 2008. But after several years of trying and many appointments, they began to realize it wasn’t going to happen for them. With their strong desire to become parents, they made the decision to start the home study process. It was daunting and very intrusive, but they made it through. Jared and Becky thought that they wanted to foster children between the ages of 0 and 5 but didn’t realize how long the wait of fostering any child from their county was going to be. After several months of waiting for a placement, they finally received the call to foster a nine-year-old little girl. They quickly accepted the placement and discovered that parenting older children with challenges was not as scary as they once thought. Their goals and realistic expectations of the foster care adoption had changed as a result of their first foster placement.

Shortly after accepting placement of their foster daughter, Jared and Becky registered with Adopt America Network because they had tried to navigate finding children from foster care themselves and discovered it wasn’t easy. Becky said, “From the minute we called AAN, it felt like they were there to help us, and they were only a phone call away to answer any questions.” Within a very short time, Karen Hojnicki, their AAN Matcher, emailed them with some information about a young lady named Chelsie. They knew they wanted her from the minute they read her profile. Becky felt like she was reading about a younger version of herself, as she and Chelsie had so many of the same interests. Becky recalls, “From the time we indicated our interest in Chelsie, AAN was there cheering us on every step of the way.” Jared and Becky started visiting Chelsie not long after they were officially matched. They recalled the visits being “very awkward at first,” but after several visits they were able to get to know Chelsie better. The summer of 2013 was when 12-year-old Chelsie went home to the Clarks. Chelsie is outgoing and loves working with her hands doing crafts. She likes to make things for other people, especially out of loom bands and duct tape. She is starting to show a stronger interest in reading. Chelsie is very special and likes to be around people. Jared and Becky have seen several changes in Chelsie since she came to them a year ago. She loves to play soccer, but before Chelsie had not shown much interest in sports at all. She enjoyed getting all the attention for the first five months she was in their home. However, now that the Clarks have had other foster children in the home, she has quickly warmed up to the idea of having others to play with. Becky explains, “That is good, because we are ready to fill the house up!”

“It is not always easy to get a teenager to share her feelings, but we generally believe that Chelsie is happy and glad to be a Clark! She has started calling us Mom and Dad, and she calls our parents Grandma and Grandpa. We love to see Chelsie interact with her grandparents. We’ve watched Chelsie grow so much just in the year that she has lived with us; now that she is settled in, it is easy to see that Chelsie is happy to have a
place to call home!”