Members of Growing Intentional Families Together work together as professionals and see themselves as members of the GIFT family – a group joined together by law, love, and a common purpose. All members of GIFT are certified professional coaches who graduated from Resource Realizations’ Coaching Academy. Each has experienced adoption or fostering as a way to create our families. The strongest thread that binds us together is our unyielding desire to assist adopted and foster families. GIFT members are linked to the adoption world either as adoptive/foster parents and/or experienced workers in the adoption field. GIFT coaches understand the road that is adoption and fostering. We are unified in our desire to assist those who choose to travel this path as well.
Like many adopted families, GIFT members differ from one another! With these differences, we have learned to work well together just as a family melded together through adoption or fostering can learn to do so. We hail from and now live in all parts of the country. Our genetic, ancestral, religious, and cultural differences are part of what makes our group unique. They help to make us a thriving group – a “family of coaches” standing by to assist your family in a powerful way.
GIFT coaches operate as a family by design and intention. Birth families are grounded in both ancestry and culture. Adopted families are brought together through a legally binding agreement and unless it is a relative adoption, the parties will lack a common ancestry and may have different cultural backgrounds. Families form and grow in different ways but they are “real” regardless of how they developed.
Like a tree, GIFT is rooted in core beliefs about the importance of a healthy adopted family and how it contributes to a healthy community, country and world. GIFT developed out of its members’ understanding of GIFT’s purpose, value system, mission, and vision. GIFT allows our “branches” to form in a way that expresses our true selves and to grow with the group in a positive, effective and workable way. A tree, then, was a natural metaphor for our company, our “family of coaches.”
Like a family, we acknowledge there will be times when we disagree, but we know that through acceptance, compassion and understanding, and willingness to take action, collaboration will guide us to the many possibilities and lead us to a workable solution. Like a bonsai tree, GIFT members “graft” to create a tree that mimics a full size one. As a “family of coaches”, we exemplify what we want for the families of adoption or foster care – a family of intention that can grow as a unit, yet allows its “branches” to flourish in their uniqueness and independent growth.
Susan David
