Author Interview – Jillana Goble

Jillana Goble is a speaker, author, and advocate. She holds a master’s degree in teaching. Together with her husband, Luke, she parents five children ranging in age from preteen to young adult. Jillana is the founder of an unprecedented initiative that has turned into a statewide movement called Every Child Oregon. In 2019, she published No Sugar-Coating, a book with practical suggestions and insight for prospective foster parents. She’s passionate about getting the faith community—as well as the community at large—to link arms with the state’s overburdened child welfare system to uplift vulnerable children in foster care and those who serve them.

Hi. Welcome to this episode of helping writers craft authentic stories with courage. Today we have an author interview with Jillana Goble, author of A Love-Stretched Life. I’m going to read you her little, little bio, and then I will introduce her more casually and let her answer some questions.

Jillana Goble is a speaker, author, and advocate. She holds a master’s degree in teaching. Together with her husband Luke, she parents five children ranging in age from preteen to young adult. Jalana is the founder of an unprecedented initiative that has turned into a statewide movement called Every Child Oregon. In 2019, she published No Sugar-Coating, a book with practical suggestions and insight for prospective foster parents. She’s passionate about getting the faith community as well as the community at large to link arms with the state’s overburdened child welfare system to uplift vulnerable children in foster care and those who serve them. And I will say a great amen to that. That is so important. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, like starting from growing up or starting from now, wherever you want to start, whatever you think is applicable.

Well, I think my family has lived. We are from- let me start over. We started fostering in Bethlehem, New York, and that’s where my two biological girls were born. And then we moved to Portland, Oregon, 15 years ago. And so Oregon is home. And it was in Oregon that I first called the Department of Human Services, Child Welfare, and said, hey, what does it take to be certified?

We’re still certified in New York. And that was eventually how my two sons, not related to one another, came into our family. We fostered them, and then when they needed a permanent placement, we adopted them. And so I work part-time at an organization called Every Child, which I was privileged to help found. And it’s an organization that helps to uplift those impacted by foster care in a variety of ways. But one thing that I personally feel very passionate about is making sure families considering foster care or adoption really go in with their eyes wide open. So. I love connecting people. Kathleen, I love saying, hey, we always seem to have an idea of how something’s going to go right. And so there’s a gap between our preconceived notions of what something is like in lived reality. And so I think when it comes to foster care and adoption, that gap can be pretty wide. And that’s one of my favorite things, to connect people together. Not to scare people, but to also say, hey, let’s give you a non-sugar-coated view of what this looks like so that you can discern if this is a journey you’re feeling called to take.

No, I love that. I think that’s very important. I wrote a little handbook. It’s just a tiny little freebie I give out. Five Things: A Tiny Handbook for Adoptive/Foster Families. But I also include a chapter in there for people who are thinking about that.

And I also did kind of a sit-down around our dining room table with all of our kids. It was very informal. We were just eating dinner. And I did a chapter on five things that your foster and adoptive child would like you to know. And my kids were just they were just putting it out there. In fact, my youngest son said, “if you’re thinking about fostering or adopting, I might think you’re a werewolf. I don’t know anything about you if I’m coming into your home.” So there is a lot to know, and I think that a lot of people go into adoption and foster care with stars in their eyes, and so what you’re doing is so important.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I agree. And I love that you ask the voices of those with lived experience. And I think. Too. We need to tap into the voices of those foster and adopted siblings with lived experience as well so that they do not get bypassed with the hub of all the extra that comes with this new child that’s being folded into the family.

That you went directly to the source and both those that have lived it on the foster care side and then those that have lived the welcoming inside.

I agree. And I am just thinking I really need to get your No Sugar-Coating, book and read it because I was definitely highlighting portions of A Love-Stretched Life, and saving them to notes and just like, oh, my goodness, I really need to write an article and springboard from this because there’s so much great information just through you telling your story.

So much information. When I was reading about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Charlie, I was kind of like, we know there is no cure. We know that these kiddos are not going to be neurotypical. They’re going to be neurodivergent, but for their whole life, there’s no pill they can take. And I have personally in my family, we have this as well. And I think that sometimes we can get stuck on, well, if I try this or if we go gluten-free, all of these things. Like, if you do all of these things, then it’s going to change everything in their life when we are actually the ones that need to change for them.

I agree with you 100%, Kathleen, and I think that just leads into, like, we want a formula, right? We want a formula to say that kind of shows like input and output being on a teeter-totter level. And oftentimes that can be a real trap that we get caught in, whether it’s kids that we are fostering, adopted, or biological kids, that kind of trap of like, there has to be a formula.

And I think oftentimes the formula for people is, hey, if you have the right amount of love and nurture and discipline and structure and faith, that will somehow equal a clean slate. And I think it’s a really tempting narrative to be, say, like, look at all that this child is being offered and yet to recognize that trauma and a year of substance exposure may remain prominently inscribed on that slate forever. And so how do we just as you were saying, how do we accommodate and change our perspective on that? But as I write about it in A Love-Stretched Life, I thought I was kind of easy breezy, like, oh, I don’t have any preconceived notions of what my family is going to be like. I’m just so open, which sounds like such a lovely thing to say until you realize, oh, I actually did have unvoiced preconceived notions. I just wasn’t even aware of them until it was like, well, this is not it, until you realize when I was thinking about my family, I never really thought this would be the scenario playing out before me. And so, yeah, I think we all kind of can get wrapped up in the allure of if only we could do this. I’ve been exactly where you are. If only reduce no red dye and all the things and realize, you know what, we’re still in a place to struggle. And maybe it helps a little bit, but there’s nothing that’s going to completely overcome, right?

And there are some things that do help a little bit because my youngest Rafal, whom I was talking to you about before we started recording, we were on vacation visiting my brother in South Carolina, and they were going to order pizza, and Rafal was eating gluten-free, and it was helping him a smidge.

And my brother asked him, we’re going to get pizza. What will happen if you eat some pizza? And he said, my inner HULK comes out.

That’s such good self-awareness. Actually.

I was like, okay, so I’m going to leave it up to you, or you’re either going to, like, swim laps, run around the neighborhood, do whatever, but you know, that’s going to happen if you eat the pizza. So I will leave it up to you. And he did eat the pizza, and he was fine.

But yeah, it’s like we do try these formulas, and it’s not that way. This is not math and it’s not computer programming. And I say if you were thinking of computer programming, it’s like the kid has all of these loose wires and these formulas that don’t connect. If X is this, then they don’t have that. We have that if X is this. And there’s a multitude of possibilities that can outcomes. So let’s see. I think we’re kind of answering this question, but who is A Love-Stretched Life for and why?

It certainly has a very natural audience. Kathleen with foster and adopted families. But I would hope that it would actually be broader than that. I would hope it would be for anyone who cares about vulnerable children. I would hope it would be for anyone that kind of experienced that gap between preconceived expectations and lived reality.

And I hope it would just be for those that are willing to be changed in proximity to other people. I mean, that is a huge theme throughout a Love stretch life is how I have been changed through being in close proximity to those whose burdens are more than they can bear. How I’ve been changed being the mom to a child with a significant brain-based disability. How I’ve been changed walking alongside my 13-year-old adopted son’s first mom, and how I’ve been changed reconnecting with our very first child in foster care after 13 years of having no contact.

So a lot of it is really about how I’ve changed and how I’ve learned more about God and who God is through being in proximity to people who are different from me and who have stretched me and who have contributed to this love-stretched life that I’m living, which is why I chose that title well.

And I think that is the measure of a great book, is I like to read books that I see a transformation. We want to see character transformation, right? We want to see the hero of the story change.

And change doesn’t mean conquer. Change often means that there’s a flipping you on your head and shaking you upside down, and all of your beliefs come out and you look at them and say, wait, this doesn’t fit anymore, or, I just can’t believe this anymore. I have to change the way that I parent. I have to change the way that I believe. And I would really. Truly hope that a lot of the church body. Big C church would read your book and read books like that because as I was reading your bio and I was cheering for you. That has been a huge struggle for me. Is trying to get local churches to become trauma-informed and go in and do this training to explain to them.

This is why this kid is misbehaving. Because that’s always the question. Not that I think it’s about the behavior, but that’s the big thing is how can I get this child to behave and why is he not? Because he can’t not. He won’t, and all of those sorts of things. And I’ve done workshops for Casa workers and in the school system and for counselors and bus drivers, but knocking on the church door, sometimes I’m just bloodying my knuckles, but I won’t stop.

But I think as churches begin to read a book like yours, specifically all of those sections where you talk about how trauma affects people, I had a lady actually just kind of reach out to me through messaging, and she said, I just ordered two of your books one of them was A Positive Adoption Story, and another one was a novel (Defining Home) that I wrote. And I always focus on human trafficking in some way, shape or form in my novels. And she said, “I never thought in a million years I would read a book about adoption and get something out of it. But I did.” And she’s not an adoptive parent. She’s not a foster parent. And I was like, yes, just like you were saying, your hope is that other people will read it too, because not about the adoption story. It’s about the change and the transformation in us and our attitudes. And if that can help someone else along the way look at people more lovingly, more compassionately, more empathetically, then yes!

I totally agree with you. And I want to say I’m surprised, but sadly I’m not. That you’re able to engage CASA and the school and counselor is more easily than you’re able to engage the church. I think that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with this myth of the perfect formula that somehow having faith negates the very way that God created our bodies.

We can give cognitive a sense that, for example, my child has a brain-based disability, but we also are created as limited human beings, and we also were created with a nervous system and things that can only take so much, right? So we can get cognitive assent to this. It doesn’t change the effect that sometimes there are very real physical effects happening to us. We can know about primary trauma that I think even less talked about for caregivers, the secondary trauma, and how we can experience secondary trauma through either hearing the stories that the ones in our home are telling or through the witnessing and interactions and interventions of trying to keep people emotionally and at times physically safe in your home that can induce secondary trauma. So I totally agree with you with kind of the power of just sharing from the messy middle. I really feel like that’s my heartbeat. I think so oftentimes. We all love a good story where the protagonist overcomes and everybody has five tips for having a better life or whatever it is. And I really felt so grateful to Tyndale, the publisher, for allowing me the privilege of just sharing from the messy middle, using some of this platform to educate others about what it’s like to have a child with high behavioral needs due to an invisible disability. And I think I write about this in A Love-Stretched Life, but I think we have this role tendency, Kathleen, to share about hard things when we’re on the other side. And I think there’s so much power in saying, hey, for some of our journeys, there is no other side. Like, this is the journey. There’s going to be an ebb and flow, but there’s never going to be clearly crossing over that mountain to say, we are now on the other side. So what do we do to authentically bring our very real hopes and dreams and rumble with joy and grief on this journey? And I think that’s what draws other people in is that vulnerability that begs vulnerability more than just like, hey, I went through something hard. Here are my tips to overcome. But I think society, we’re so eager for that, right, that’s messier to say, hey, I want to learn from you, and all that life is thrown your way. It doesn’t make a catchy sound bite, right?

Right. And I honestly think that I remember that portion where you’re getting ready to go speak, and it’s like, I’ve had that happen to me, too. It’s like, you know what? My home is in complete chaos. And I’m like, okay. What are you doing? God.

And then you just have to share what’s real, because people connect with that. And I know the adoption support groups that I’ve participated in that are most effective are the ones where people are just sharing their stories and saying, you know what? My son just took a machete to the baby swing. True story. And just chopped up this and chopped up a bunch of things in the backyard. And I had to call the police because I was hiding in my closet, afraid for my life, then saying, you know what? Just do A, B, and C. And then people leave feeling, oh, my gosh, I’m never going to make it, because they just have that they’re wearing this flowery blouse, and they look so put together, and all they did was A, B, and C, and I’ve tried A, B, and C-D-E-F-G.

Nothing is working. Please tell me what to do. And sometimes what to do is just that. We’re in this together. We’re here together. And I like what you said about and I can’t remember the words, I saved it to notes, but it was kind of like, there’s no day that’s just like, this is a good day and this was a bad day. No, it’s like a tsunami followed by some calm, followed by another tsunami, followed by some calm, followed by and I remember talking to my brother, who has two sons, and he and his family were in for the holidays, and he was telling us some things that had happened. Now, this little boy had a little scrape with this, and this is what happened. So I shared, like, five or six things that had happened, and I’m not going to go into that. But he was like, So that happened, like, within a few months since we’ve seen you. And I said, no, that all happened in one day. And he was like, what?

Yeah, no, it is. I think the invitation in that just because every day is kind of like a sprinkling of good and hard together. But I think the gift of parenting, Charlie, is that it has invited me to notice things that, before, I would have just mistook as, like, low-level behavioral expectations.

Even with my other child that was in foster care and had some trauma in his background, he has trauma, and he’s also pretty neurotypical, and it is a game changer to have trauma and to be neurodivergent. It allows me to say, wow, you stay buckled. High five. You didn’t swear at your teacher today. That’s amazing. You didn’t punch a hole in the wall. Good job, buddy. All of those things that would have just kind of been like, what any of my other kids had done, some of this, I think I probably would have stared comatose on a wall for a day.

I mean, seriously, it would have been so shocking. And now it’s like you said, well, all in a day. Like, all these things, the interminglings of highs and lows. But I do really believe there is if I can stop and pause long enough to pay attention, there really is a more ever present awareness. I don’t always have this. I’m not speaking from a place of like, this is just enlightened place. But when I can quiet my mind and I can quiet my body enough to just pay attention, I feel like it allows me in the moment to appreciate things that would have completely passed me by before. And there is a gift in that.

And there is a big gift because I think that a lot of young moms, especially with very neurotypical children with no Capital Letter Syndrome, they’re still waiting for the day to be perfect. They’re still waiting for everything to come together.

And it’s really helped me with that same perspective that you’re talking about when I mentor other moms to say, you know what? They say, well, one of my kids didn’t want to make the cookies. We’ll make them anyway. You have no idea. Now that my kids are mostly adulting, they will come back and tell me, oh, my gosh, mom, do you remember that day that we did such and such? And I’m thinking of the three tantrums that child threw not wanting to get in the car, not wanting to get out of the car. Oh, that was a really big moment, Charlie, on one of your vacations, like, oh, yeah, that’s one of mine. And then making sure you punched everyone, kicked everyone. And that was a great day, mom. I remember. That was so much fun.

I think social media, honestly, Kathleen, leads to that. For so many people, that kind of allure of a perfect day, especially for younger moms raising their kids, Instagram. Everything is on Instagram. And I think for families that don’t fit, social media can be a struggle for any family.

But I think for families like ours, it can be really tough to discern what is mine to share. I want to be, what does it look like to be authentic in a place like social media, and what does that look like with families, with kids that struggle?

Do I take a picture of the hole in the wall and say, look what just happened? And that’s not to say that, I mean, it would be unfair if it was only pictures of the holes in the walls and it would be totally grossly misrepresented if it was only pictures of all six of us smiling all the time.

So I think it’s a tricky balance, but it’s so easy to compare our every day and to juxtapose kind of the mundane against other people’s highlight reels. And I think that leads to a lot of loneliness and a lot of feeling less then, which is unfortunate to have our precious energy go towards that, but I know it does for a lot of people.

I know I struggle with that at times, feeling like I really need to be mindful. I actually have limits on my phone and they’re pretty short limits of how much I’m able to scroll just for my own protection of my own mental health. Because I know as much as I want to stay informed and up to date with people, I just know that that can be a real trigger for me to begin to feel depressed.

Yes, I’m 100% right there with you and sometimes I just stay off there altogether because it’s just too much. Well, we’re going to be wrapping up here in a few minutes, but I’m going to ask you, which we’ve kind of answered, but how has God surprised you on your parenting journey?

God has surprised me most of all with becoming this unusual version of a blended family with my 13-year-old adoptive’s first mom. Her name is Jennifer and I write about her in A Love-Stretched Life, and it has been harder than I ever anticipated and it’s also been more beautiful than I ever anticipated.

And so I think that God has surprised me by the interweaving of things that are difficult and worthy and kind of that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without that proximity to others. That has lived a vastly different story for me and I think that has been the most impactful. I’m not the same person as I would have been had I not had the opportunity and the privilege to engage and interact with those who are different. It’s so different than just picking up a book and reading about something in theory and then like living it, living walking alongside someone as they struggle with addiction or untreated mental health issues, or what have you.

And I think if anything, it allows me to recognize that very easily if the circumstances in my life have been different, if I’d walk the mile in their shoes, there is a good place that I actually might be standing where they’re now standing. And so what does it look like to think about the way we want to engage with people?

And that doesn’t mean not setting boundaries at times or anything like that. I mean, that’s a part of love, right? But just allowing myself to be honestly, an invitation to be transformed is what I feel like the invitation was. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I feel like that’s the way that God has surprised me the most, just through seeing God through the people in my life.

Yes, I would agree. And I will say I’m kind of excited about when your kids are older, because I know my oldest daughter has told me over and over again, I would be a selfish brat if we wouldn’t have adopted children.

Mine have said something very similar. Yeah. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things, real sacrifices that they’ve made along the way or real losses that they’ve experienced along the way, but it certainly, I think, has given my kids an eye for people that they probably would have previously unseen.

And I feel like it’s given my teenage daughters, especially a pretty compassionate lens that when we see someone having a hard time in public, instead of the first thought being like, what’s wrong with you? It’s more like, what happened to you recognizing that there is someplace that is stemming from right?

It’s not just nobody’s choosing, nobody’s saying, man, today I really hope I flip out, or whatever. It’s allowed me to recognize the internal monologues I probably had in my head before walking this journey, because any inner monologue I had about seeing a child struggle in public, my first thought, honestly, was like, wow, imagine what’s going on in that home if a child is acting like this in public. Or imagine how that child speaks to you if he’s speaking like that in public. And that child is now my child, and I’m well aware of what’s been poured into him.

And so, anyway, I just feel like my girls have just a higher awareness of other people than I ever did at their age. And I feel like, amidst all the hard things, that has been one of the most beautiful things gained.

That’s awesome. So where can people find you and find your book?

A Love Stretched Life is available most places books are sold. You can order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, and places like that. And people are welcome to connect with me on my website, jillangoble.com, or on Instagram or Facebook. Jillana Goble, first and last name.

Yeah. I’m really pleased to have been able to connect with you today. Thanks for having me on.

Well, thanks for joining us, and thanks for listening, guys, I will see you next week. Bye.