How It Started

AdoptKM began as something simple and urgent — a fundraising page to help cover the legal and adoption costs of bringing my nephew, KM, home.

What it became is something I never could have planned.

The Fight I Didn't Expect

In January 2024, I began navigating one of the most complex legal and emotional battles of my life — fighting for a child caught in a legal loophole, while facing a caregiver whose manipulation of facts, and of the child himself, made every step harder than it should have been.

Since then I have experienced harassment, stalking, religious weaponization, defamation of character, and isolating tactics by people who operate like a pack — people who genuinely believe that loyalty to family trumps accountability. Their words, not mine: "You don't go against family. Wrong or right."

I have watched people lie. In courtrooms. To judges. With confidence.

And I have had to learn the quiet, disciplined art of letting the truth speak for itself — proving them wrong without stooping, without dragging others into it, and without giving them any more ammunition to use against the child I'm trying to protect.

I walk carefully. Not out of weakness. Out of love.

The Teenager I Never Expected to Understand

I never pictured myself as a mom to a teenager.

Honestly? I didn't think I was cool enough. I didn't think I had the right words, the right energy, or the right anything. I felt completely unqualified.

Then I remembered being a teenager myself — and everything I wished I had felt free to say out loud. Everything I carried quietly because I didn't know if anyone would understand, or worse, if they'd make me feel worse for bringing it up.

And then life gave me a moment that changed everything.

A close family member — a young person who had just lost their family — reached out to me during one of the hardest seasons of their life. I wasn't sure I was the right person. But I showed up anyway. Good morning messages. Good night messages. I love yous. Checking in. Listening without an agenda. Validating what they were going through without minimizing it or fixing it to death.

When it was over, they told me I had made them feel like they had a mother.

I held onto that.

Because I realized — teenage girls especially need exactly that. They need someone who isn't afraid to sit in the hard conversations. Someone who can tackle the tough subjects with love, and sometimes with humor, without ever making them feel judged, broken, or like a burden for bringing it up.

I didn't need to be the cool mom.

I just needed to be the safe one.

Coming Home

In December 2024, after nearly ten years living abroad, I moved back to the United States — and I hit the ground running.

I launched a nonprofit. I immersed myself in mental health training, trauma-informed care, and foster and adoptive parent education. I volunteered everywhere I could. I had the profound privilege of serving as a live-in caregiver to my aunt, who is navigating early-onset dementia at just 54 years old. And I made it my mission to reconnect with American youth — to understand kids here, in this culture, after a decade away.

That commitment led me to KidSave.

And Then, Her

Through KidSave, in October 2025, I met my daughter-to-be.

She is 16 years old. She is everything. And I cannot imagine my life without her.

Every month since we found each other has been better than the last. AdoptKM — which started as a page about one child — has grown into something bigger: a living record of what it looks like to fight for family, to keep showing up, and to build something beautiful out of the hardest seasons of your life.

This is still a journey in progress. And I am so glad you're here for it.