Tag: Heart mama


Feb
2016

When the road is long and you’d like to forget about adoption

categories: Home

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I love my kids and I love adoption but I don’t think I’m alone when I say that there are some days when I wish I could just forget about adoption. There are some days where I just want to be a Mom without the ‘adoptive’ part attached to it. There are some days when I wish attachment and bonding were automatically thrown into the mix the minute you signed on the dotted line. There are other days when I’m tired of coming up against a rigid Home Affairs and using all my energy and time to get seemingly nowhere. Some days when I long for sameness because if we’re honest here, it’s just easier – different usually equals hard. Sometimes adoption just feels like a long, hard slog and you can’t imagine coming through the other side. Continue Reading


Feb
2016

Meet the Mama – Jane Maritz, new Cape Town Heart Mama

categories: Home, Meet the Mama

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Jane and I have something in common – we both walked the adoption journey with the same wonderful adoption agency, Wandisa. I met Jane and her family at a big family picnic arranged by Wandisa and we got to chat a little bit in between the distraction of toddler tears when countless big orange helium balloons flew up to the clouds and  general kid chaos. Thank you for sharing your story, Jane.

Tell us a bit about your family.

My husband, Adrian and I have been married for 2 years now, together for 5 years. We live in Cape Town. Adrian has lived in Cape Town his whole life, I was born in SA but grew up in the USA (in Denver Colorado) and moved back to SA when I was 21. Finally, after a very long but worthwhile wait, we were blessed with our son, Noah, in July of last year. And when I say blessed, I really mean it! He is the most chilled out, happy little soul who is always smiling, barely ever cries and he has slept through the night since the day he came home.

He’s a total daddy’s boy – ‘the two best friends that anyone could have’. I can’t believe it’s only been 6 months. I can’t imagine life without him. Continue Reading


Dec
2015

Learning to dance – About attachment in adoption Part 2 by Alexa Russell Matthews

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Attachment in adoption is something that adoptive parents desire the most – we wish that there could always be an instant connection when we meet our child for the first time, but the reality is that often attachment is something that you have to work towards and grows over time, even if the love is instant. Alexa shares some great advice for those of us on the attachment journey in this short piece. Thanks Alexa! Continue Reading


Dec
2015

Meet the Mama – Sonja Meyer: Joburg Mom of FOUR

categories: Home, Meet the Mama

8f7c2773.jpgSonja and her husband Paul are the proud parents of four kids: Mia, Micah, Max and Macy. Sonja is a hands-on multi-tasking stay at home mom who home schools her eldest two. Thanks for finding the time to share the story of your rainbow nation family with us, Sonja!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your family.

My husband and I stay in Johannesburg and we have four adopted children. Two beautifully free little girls aged nine years and 11 months. And two wonderfully wild boys who are seven and two years old. Building a family through adoption has been a truly incredible journey that turned out being much less scary than people think. In most aspects we are just a normal family and yet I will never forget how the gift of adoption has brought these four remarkable kids into my life! Continue Reading


Oct
2015

Our family shoot in the Company’s Garden with Heymama

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Our family was treated to an afternoon family shoot in the Company’s Garden with Heymama and photographer Ilze Louw. Heymama is a style-driven lifestyle website for parents and if you haven’t checked them out yet, go go go! They’ve also just added a small, curated store to their website – they only stock items that they love and it’s updated every week.

Back to the photoshoot: Ilze captured some beautiful family moments despite the chaos – at least one of our three kids was always running off away from the camera, some over eager squirrels wanted to be friends and Judah kept losing a shoe. Oh, and a group of tourists decided to jump on the bandwagon and snap some of their own pics of us which was a bit distracting – having a family shoot in such a public space had some challenges! It was a whirlwind thirty minutes (with a lot of bubbles), but we had so much fun – you can read our interview that Heymama published over here.

I’ve chosen few of my favourite pics from this fun afternoon which was not easy as I LOVE them all. Thanks Charine, Jani & Ilze!

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