I am available for speaking, workshops, and panels. For topics, writings, and booking information visit SaraphinaMare.com
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Truth First. Decisions Second. Children Always.
I am a former foster parent, adoptive parent, certified foster care trainer, state-level advocate, and the founder of Low Tide Lighthouse. I spent over a decade working inside the foster care and adoption system from every angle, as a child who lived it, as a parent who fostered and adopted, as a trainer who taught it, and as a leader who worked at the county, state, and federal level to change it.
Low Tide Lighthouse is not a business idea. It is what all of that built toward.
Low Tide Lighthouse was not born from a business plan. It was born from living through what happens when good intentions meet a system that demands far more preparation than anyone tells you about going in.
I felt called to foster. I believed love would be enough. I said yes when children needed homes. I kept saying yes long after my capacity was gone, because no one had told me capacity was a real, finite thing.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the weight that doesn’t announce itself until it’s already crushing you. The appointments. The trauma behaviors. The system navigation. The advocacy battles fought alone. The grief of loving children who might leave. The specific loneliness of doing work almost no one around you will ever fully understand. Adrenaline carried me at first. Then exhaustion took over. Eventually my body simply stopped cooperating, and I was left depleted in ways sleep couldn’t touch. I needed therapy. I needed boundaries. I needed support I hadn’t built in advance, because I didn’t know yet that I would.
That experience is the reason this work exists the way it does.
Foster care doesn’t just test your parenting. It tests your nervous system, your marriage, your identity, your limits, all at once, often before you even see it coming. You can feel called and still not be ready. You can be deeply compassionate and still need real preparation. You can love with everything you have and still need structure to survive it.
Low Tide Lighthouse exists so families don’t have to learn every one of these lessons the hard way, alone, the way I did.
“I didn’t just enter the foster and adoption world. I lived the realities that shape it...” Me
I am not someone who did this work and moved on. These children are my children.
My daughter came to us at 14 months old and is now 10. My son came to us at five weeks old from the NICU and never left. We fostered from 2015 to 2019 and adopted four children plus a bonus child who will always be part of our family.
I also came to this work from the inside. My mother was in foster care. I was adopted by my grandparents. I know what it feels like to be the child who doesn’t always belong or feels out of place, not just the adult navigating it on a child's behalf.
That is not background information. It is the lens through which I do everything.
Grounded in Systemic Experience
My work in foster care did not begin with a program. It began with years spent inside the system at every level, as a foster and adoptive parent, as a certified trainer, as a county leader, as a state board member, and as a professional within an adoption agency.
This is not a side project. This is the thing nearly a decade of work was building toward.
This work is not therapy. 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.
Systemic Track Record & Governance
This framework is backed by over a decade of active execution, leadership, and policy navigation across county, state, and federal tiers of the child welfare system.
2015–2019 - Licensed Foster Parent & Adoptive Parent State of Alabama. Executed 4 adoptions and integrated 1 bonus child
2017–2024 - Founder & President County Foster & Adoptive Parent Association, Alabama
2018 - TIPS-MAPP (Trauma-Informed Partnering for Safety and Permanence – Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) 2-Week Intensive State Certification, Alabama
2018–2020 - Quality Assurance Board Member DHR, QA Board, Alabama
2018–2024 - Foster Parent Voice and County Liaison — County Supervisor Meetings County Child Welfare Department, Alabama
2019–2024 - Vice President Alabama Foster & Adoptive Parent Association
2019 - Federal Review Participant Federal Foster Care Review, Alabama
2020–2022 - Director of Foster Parent Relations, Tuscaloosa Angels
2021–2024 - Recruitment Specialist - APAC, Alabama
2025–Present - Founder & Lead Facilitator Low Tide Lighthouse — Colorado Springs, CO
I work with individuals and families navigating foster care, adoption, and kinship care, offering clarity rooted in lived experience and years inside the system, not theory borrowed from a textbook.
I help families slow down, ask better questions, and understand what these paths actually require before a child pays the price for an adult’s uncertainty. I help current foster and adoptive parents who are depleted find their way back to themselves. Part of that work is helping a body that has lived in survival mode for years finally learn how to settle. Alongside our conversations, I guide simple nervous system reset practices, grounding, breath, stillness, so the healing happens in the body, not only in the mind. I help families crossing into adoption understand exactly what they’re entitled to and what comes next.
Families who work with me leave with more than information. They leave with a clear picture of where they actually are, what they need, and what a sustainable version of this life looks like for them specifically, not a generic one.
This work is not therapy. It is not legal advice. It is education, navigation, and honest conversation, without sugarcoating anything families are facing. I’m not a therapist, and this work is built to complement professional mental health support, not replace it.
If you’re considering foster care or adoption and want honest preparation before you say yes, there’s a program built for exactly where you stand.
If you’re already in it and feeling the full weight of it, you do not have to carry this alone.
If you’re not sure where to start, start with a conversation.
Explore The Lighthouse Programs and find your place on the shore.
