HAMILTON, Ohio — They have a family big enough to start their own sports team, but instead, they’re starting a conference to help foster and adoptive parents.
The Nelsons are a family of 11. There are two parents and nine kids, with seven of the kids were adopted at an age too young to remember family in any other way.
Christie Nelson said getting to this point, from fostering kids to adopting, wasn’t easy.
“There’s a lot of trauma that comes from that, especially through foster care, not only the loss, but things that may have been witnessed in their home before they came to see us, and those are things we continue to work through,” she said.
Daryl Nelson, her husband, worried about the stress of it all and the costs
“That was a big fear for me is how am I gonna pay for all these kids,” he said. “Childcare, schooling, activities, after school, all those things, but at the same time, a kid doesn’t really need money… they just wanna be loved.”
They found support through their struggles.
“We’re not afraid to fail, and we’re not afraid to admit our failures, so by doing that, admitting ‘Hey, I struggle in this area, more people come out of the woodwork, like I thought I was the only one,’ so that’s how you get help,” said Daryl Nelson.
Nine kids later, they’re trying something else.
“We want to raise awareness for trauma and we want to give people the tools, especially adoptive families to help their children to deal with the trauma,” said Christie Nelson.
For the first time, they’re setting up the Benison event center they own in Hamilton, for an event called ‘THRIVE.’ It’s a conference to help foster and adoptive families connect with resources just like what helped their family of 11.
The ‘THRIVE’ conference will go on all day Saturday, March, 11th. For more information about the conference, click here.
