Speak The Truth
The unfolding of truth is part of the healing. Some people never tell their story. But what if telling it is how you heal and how someone else finds their way out too?
This is how I speak. This is how I write. This is how I show up.
I have lived every side of this story.
I am not a researcher who studied foster care from the outside. I am an adoptee who grew up carrying wounds I didn't have words for. A foster parent who said yes, again and again, long after my capacity was gone. An adoptive mother who developed autoimmune illness from the cumulative weight of loving children through hard places while ignoring what was breaking inside me.
I did the work. I healed, not quickly, not perfectly, but honestly.
Now I stand in front of rooms of caseworkers, foster parents, agency directors, and communities and tell the whole story. Not the polished version. The real one.
Because the real story is what changes rooms.
If my story helps someone survive, then telling it was worth it.
I speak at foster parent conferences, adoption agency trainings, social worker professional development events, school communities, and corporate wellness programs. Everything I speak about comes from what I've actually lived.
Note: Saraphina Mare is the name I chose for the woman I became through healing, motherhood, and lived experience. I use this name to share my story openly while keeping my children's identities private and protected.
Download my speaker profile for topics, credentials, and contact information here.
Keynote Topics
the truth changes everything.
Before You Say Yes: What the System Won't Tell You About Foster Care and Adoption
Most families enter foster care with good hearts and almost no honest preparation. They get trained on policies. They are not prepared for the emotional weight, the trauma behaviors, the system navigation, or the toll it will take on their marriage, their bodies, and their sense of self.
This talk fills that gap. I draw from my experience as an adoptee, foster parent, adoptive mother, and someone who built my work helping families navigate what no one prepared me for. I deliver the honest conversation most training programs never have. Not to discourage. To strengthen.
Families who are genuinely prepared are the ones who stay. The ones who stay are the ones children need most.
Best for: Foster parent conferences · Adoption agency trainings · Social worker professional development · Faith communities
Breaking the Cycle: What Healing Yourself Has to Do With the Children You Love
I thought becoming a foster parent would heal me. I thought if I could give a child what I didn't have, maybe it would fix something in me too.
I wasn't wrong that they were connected. But I was wrong about how.
What I didn't understand at the time is this: unhealed pain doesn't stay quiet. It shows up everywhere.
In my children. In my marriage. In the patterns I swore I would never repeat.
And at some point, I had to face the truth:
I couldn't help them heal if I wasn't willing to heal myself.
This is the work no one prepares you for. Not the paperwork. Not the training. Not the policies.
The real work. The turning inward. The breaking of cycles. The choice to stop abandoning yourself just to keep showing up for everyone else.
Because healing yourself is not separate from loving your children. It's the foundation of it.
Best for: Foster parent conferences · Faith communities · Schools and educators · Adoption agency trainings
What Saying Yes Does to Your Body: Stress, Burnout, and the Price of Unending Compassion
After I developed autoimmune illness. Not from bad luck. From years of saying yes while ignoring every signal my body sent. The chronic hypervigilance of parenting children from hard places, the sleeplessness, the emotional flooding, the survival mode that became my default; my body eventually said no when I wouldn't.
This talk is for anyone whose job, calling, or love requires them to show up for others, often at the expense of themselves. It is a story about what compassion fatigue actually looks like from the inside, why we normalize it, and what it costs when we do. And it is a story about what it looks and feels like to finally choose yourself.
Powerful, personal, and applicable far beyond foster care, this talk meets any room where people are caregivers by nature or profession.
Best for: Corporate wellness programs · Healthcare and social work conferences · Educator professional development · Foster parent conferences
The Families We Lose: What Happens When We Prioritize Placement Over Preparation
This is the talk no one wants to have, but needs to. The one that asks hard questions of systems, agencies, and the professionals who work within them.
What is the cost; to children, to families, to communities, when we move people through licensing without honest preparation? When we celebrate placements without asking whether families are truly ready?
I have sat on the other side of that question. As a foster parent who burned out. As an advocate who watched other families burn out. And as someone who spent years inside the system training, advising, and watching what breaks when preparation is treated as optional.
This talk is not an indictment. It is an invitation to do the harder, slower, more honest work of preparation that actually protects children long-term.
Best for: Adoption agency leadership · Social worker professional development · Foster care system reform conversations · State and county conference keynotes
Experience & Credibility
She doesn't just tell the story.
She lived it from every angle.
Lived Experience
Adoptee. Foster parent. Adoptive mother. Kinship advocate. My perspective spans every side of the child welfare system.
Speaking Background
Speaker and educator within the foster care community. Conference presenter. Panel participant. Experienced working with both professional and community audiences.
System Experience
Founded of a local Foster Parent Association. Vice President at the state level. Director of Foster Parent Relations for a nonprofit. State-level quality assurance work.
Current Work
Founder of Low Tide Lighthouse, foster and adoptive family consulting. Founder of Mystic Moon Healing, healing and support for women.
Training & Education
300+ hours of foster care training, conferences, and workshops. Certified trauma-informed practitioner.
Location & Availability
Based in Monument, Colorado. Available for in-person and virtual engagements nationwide. Travel available for the right fit.
Ready to bring this conversation to your audience?
I am available for keynote addresses, agency trainings, conference presentations, panel discussions, podcast interviews, and community events. I speak to audiences of all sizes and brings the same honesty and warmth to an intimate room of twenty as she does to a conference stage of two hundred.
All engagements begin with a brief conversation to make sure the fit is right, for the audience, the event, and the message that needs to land.
This isn’t a polished talk. It’s an honest one.