Truth First. Decisions Second. Children Always.
“I didn’t just enter the foster and adoption world. I lived the realities that shape it..” - Me
Low Tide Lighthouse wasn’t born from a business idea. It was born from living through what happens when good intentions meet a system that requires far more preparation than anyone talks about.
I felt called to foster. I believed love would be enough. I said yes when children needed homes. And I kept saying yes long after my capacity was GONE.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the cumulative weight.
The appointments.
The trauma behaviors.
The system navigation.
The advocacy battles.
Adrenaline carried me at first.
Then exhaustion replaced it.Eventually, my body stopped cooperating. I developed autoimmune illness. I found myself depleted in ways that sleep couldn’t repair. I needed therapy. I needed boundaries. I needed support I had not built in advance. That experience changed how I see this work. Foster care does not just test your parenting. It tests your nervous system, your marriage, your identity, and your limits, all at once. You can feel called and still not be ready. You can be compassionate and still need preparation. You can love deeply and still need structure.
Low Tide Lighthouse exists so families don’t have to learn these lessons the way I did. This work is not about discouraging you. It’s about strengthening you before the weight arrives.
If you are going to say yes to this journey, let it be a prepared yes. A steady yes. A sustainable yes.
You don’t have to burn out to become wise.
If you are standing at the beginning of this journey or already feeling the weight of it, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Explore The Lighthouse Programs here.
Every family enters this journey from a different place. Some people are just beginning to consider foster care. Others are already in the middle of it and feeling overwhelmed. If you’re not sure where to begin, start with a conversation.
Schedule a Consultation
15 minutes. No pressure. Just clarity.
Rooted in Reality
Heather works with individuals and families navigating foster care, adoption, and kinship care, offering clarity rooted in lived experience inside the system.
With lived experience as a foster parent, adoptive parent, and adoptee, alongside professional leadership experience within the child welfare system, Heather helps people slow down, ask better questions, and understand what these paths actually require before children pay the price for adult uncertainty.
Grounded in Experience
She has served in leadership roles within foster care and adoption systems, trained prospective foster and adoptive parents, worked inside an adoption agency, and participated in system-level quality assurance and advisory work. She understands both how the system is designed to function, and how it often feels to live inside it.
Heather’s work centers children first. She helps adults decide whether foster care, adoption, or kinship care is truly the right path for their family, and supports those who move forward in doing so responsibly, with eyes open and support in place.
She also works with adults who were raised in foster care, adoption, or kinship care and are beginning to unpack the long-term impact of those experiences.
This work is not therapy and it is not legal advice.
It is education, navigation, and honest conversation, without sugarcoating the realities families face.
Pictured: My time when I was VP of our state association board. Me with Susan Ramirez (CEO of Austin Angels), volunteering at various events and me at our annual conference.
My Experience: A Heart-Led Journey in Foster Care Advocacy
My work in foster care didn’t begin with a program. It began with years spent inside the system.
• Foster parent for multiple years
• Founder of a local Foster Parent Association
• Vice President on the State Level
• Director of Foster Parent Relations for a nonprofit
• State-level foster care quality assurance work
• Speaker and educator within the foster care community
And yes, I’ve spoken at conferences, volunteered at events, and even shared space with national leaders in foster care. But none of that compares to the stories that brought me here. The children. The heartbreak. The healing. The truth.
If This Resonates
If you are considering foster care, adoption, or are already walking this road and feeling the weight of it…
You don’t have to navigate it alone. Low Tide Lighthouse exists so families don’t have to learn these lessons alone.
If this work resonates with you, you’re welcome here.
Explore the Lighthouse programs or reach out if you need a place to start
