SARAPHINA Mare

I am a writer, speaker, and healer. My work is shaped by my own experiences, honesty, and many years spent healing.

I became Saraphina Mare after years of surviving, healing, and finding my voice again. Mare means sea, which matches the rhythm of my life—moving through storms, tides, and calm waters. You can call me Mare. Before I chose this name, I was just a girl trying to find where I belonged.

My mom grew up in foster care, and I was adopted. For years, I carried the weight of what that meant: feeling unwanted, unloved, rejected, and not good enough. Sometimes people said those words, sometimes they were only hinted at, and sometimes I just felt them.

Loss came early in my life. By fifteen, I had stopped speaking to my birth father. At sixteen, I lost my adopted dad, who was also my grandfather. On June 5, 1995, when I was seventeen, my birth mom died. Before I was even an adult, loss had already changed everything for me.

At eighteen, I found out I was pregnant. The due date was June 5, 1996. Even though I was still figuring out my own life, I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want my child to carry the same wounds about belonging that I did.

I finished high school and went to dental assisting school. I built a life for my daughter and me. I got married, divorced, and remarried. I learned that life rarely goes the way you expect when you’re young. The hardest loss was losing my mama, my grandmother, who raised me.

In my late thirties, I hoped that becoming a foster parent would help heal the pain I was still carrying.

I didn’t realize yet how unhealed pain can show up in every part of life. Every day, those old feelings of being unwanted, unloved, rejected, or not good enough would surface. I saw them in myself and in the kids I cared for.

My pain started to affect them, and their trauma became part of my own experience.

My marriage was struggling. My health declined, with autoimmune diseases and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. At the same time, I was starting nonprofits, joining others, and serving on boards, trying to fix everything around me while I was falling apart inside.

Then I realized I couldn’t help my kids heal unless I started to heal myself.

So I began the real work, not just surviving, but truly healing.

That’s how Saraphina Mare began.

Now I write, speak, and do healing work to share the full story—foster care, adoption, trauma, and healing. I don’t do this to seem perfect, but to be honest about what this life really requires.

Through low-tide-lighthouse, I support foster and adoptive parents by offering real clarity and help, no matter where they are in their journey.

At the center of everything is one thing.

A woman who chose not to carry her story alone anymore.

You were never what they said you were.