Ep. 99 Is there a limit to a Mother’s Love?

TRANSCRIPT

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Gissele: Are there limits to a mother’s love? Hello, and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world.

Gissele: Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support our podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion.

Gissele: Today, we’re talking with Sandra Cavanaugh is a creativity and communication specialist, transformational coach, consultant, keynote speaker, educator, podcast host, and best-selling author, as well as CEO of Spontaneous Brilliance , LLC. Sandra helps people step past the fear, frustration, and limiting beliefs to recognize and value their unique creative genius, discover their purpose and passion, take inspired action, and thrive as empowered conscious creators on the great stage of life.

Gissele: Through decades of working with children with special needs, Sandra developed [00:01:00] her deep belief that everyone is brilliant. We have no shortage of brilliance in the world, just a reluctance to offer it and a resistance to accept it. And as a very proud mother of four remarkable daughters, Sandra’s personal journey as a mother has made her a fierce advocate for children in foster care, adoption, children’s mental health, FASD, autism, neurodiversity, LGBTQIA+ rights- Yes

Gissele: and creativity in education. Please join me in welcoming Sandra. Hi, Sandra.

Sandra: Hi. How are you?

Gissele: Great, thank you.

Gissele: Thank you so much for being on the show. I was wondering if you could start by telling the listeners a little bit about how you actually became an adoptive mother.

Sandra: How I became an adoptive mother.

Sandra: I gave birth to my oldest daughter almost 36 years ago. and that was a very difficult pregnancy. And even though she was[00:02:00] Born super healthy. It was something that I almost didn’t live through and couldn’t do a second time. So we were telling her from about the time that she was two that we would adopt a little sister for her.

Sandra: And when she was 13 she came to us and went, “Hey, you guys if you don’t do that soon, I’m gonna be out of the house before you adopt.” And so we went through the process to set ourselves up for foster adoption. We were looking for one one girl, about seven was what we thought. and one day after we had put in our home study and gotten all prepared, I was looking at kids all over the country that were available for adoption, and I literally saw this girl.

Sandra: There was only two paragraphs on the website thing, and there were these two paragraphs there, and she was sitting, in a photo shoot that they had set up for her, and she was nine. [00:03:00] And I saw her, and I just thought, ” Okay, I can read between the lines here enough to know that there’s other issues going on that they’re not mentioning, but I’m supposed to be this girl’s mom.

Sandra: I’m this girl’s mom.” And I called my then husband and said, “Hey, y- you’ve gotta see this because this is it. This is her. I know she’s older than we thought. I don’t care. I’m supposed to be her mom.” And so we set out in the process, and just a couple of days later the social worker from there, which they’re not supposed to do, they’re supposed to call social worker to social worker, but instead they called me directly and said, “She has a biological half-sister that’s also just become available for adoption.”

Sandra:</