I make my living as a lawyer, but what I do is take care of other people’s children.
For more than 40 years, I have been working with traumatized children, starting when I was a preteen helping my parents with their summer camp and church ministries. In the years since, I have served as a juvenile court probation officer/social worker, group home parent, criminal prosecutor, non-profit volunteer and Board member, and attorney defending youth-serving organizations.
While still single and early in my legal career, I served as a volunteer foster parent for emergency placements. In North Carolina, I worked as a federal prosecutor of child abuse and violent crimes, and served as a foster-parent for respite care and long-term placements of abused children and teenagers. I returned home to Georgia, switched to civil law, and married a man with five children, two of them still at home. Most recently, my husband and I have found ourselves raising a grandchild.