Adopting Grace shares the story of a mom who needed to make big changes in order for herself and her family to heal. Throughout the book, Tricia mixes in real life stories and practical ideas on how to parent with grace, connection, and relationship. Through her parenting experiences, she also discovered and lived into a gentler side of Christianity. This is a story of God’s grace imparted within family.

Tricia Wilson courageously shares her journey through perhaps some of the most difficult issues we can face. Not only does she look at who she was as a Mother but begins to dissect the religious belief systems and culture that formed who she had become in this role.

Helene Timpone, LCSW

For over 35 years – well over half of my life – my husband Mark and I actively parented children in my home. Our first three children, all amazing boys, came to us through birth. Our next two, beautiful girls, came by adoption. Though there are definitely things I would have done differently and mistakes were made (!), for the most part, our parenting journey with the boys rolled along with the typical bumps in the road. I somewhat brazenly and naively felt fairly prepared, adequate, and up to the task of adopting.

I was comfortable with and familiar with a “traditional parenting” model that I heard much about in Christian circles. This paradigm mostly demanded respect and obedience, with an emphasis on control, and left little room for emotional expression. This was my comfort zone. I had confidence in the parenting toolbox in my possession as it seemed adequate for the task. Those who taught and espoused this method made sense to me, for the most part. I spent some years reading such authors until one day I read a book called “Grace Based Parenting” and there was something deep in my soul that resonated with that text.  On completion of that particular book, I resolved to take a hiatus from reading about parenting. I needed to experience and impart more grace to myself and others.

This was the beginning of a crack in my parenting paradigm. But things were rolling along in reasonable fashion, so there was no impetus for real change. Enter our daughters. They came to us, via living in an orphanage, at the ages of 18 and 22 months. Though our adoption agency had responsibly educated us and challenged us to see that parenting children who have experienced early relational trauma requires different skills, we still weren’t so sure about that. Love is enough is a very common misconception for adoptive parents – well, that and the parenting skills I already possessed.

Critical crossroads – I very clearly remember the moment. There had been a big rage and tantrum that had gone on for hours. I had pulled out all of the tools in my parenting toolbox, and things were escalating. It was as if God Almighty whispered, or probably screamed, into my ear, “you can change yourself and your parenting or you can dig in, cling to your old ways and in the process destroy two children – this is your choice”. That was holy ground.

My early days of writing in this space led to the writing of Adopting Grace: A Parenting Journey from Fear to Freedom. It is a love letter to my children, myself, my husband, and to God. It chronicles over ten years of my journey in the pursuit of new, different, and more life giving tools to fill up the toolbox.