Michelle Schumacher | Success Storyteller

Photo by Chris Kuhn

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When Michelle and her husband Steven got married, they knew having a child together was in their future. As stepmom to fifteen-year-old son Sam, the South Tampa marketer and writer got a taste of motherhood, but the couple were determined to expand the family. “Steve had already experienced the stories and fulfillment of parenthood which I hadn’t. We ultimately decided we wanted to adopt and wanted to stay close to home, adopting a child within our community, so that’s what we did,” she says.

An extensive background staging elaborate live music events and coordinating the most minute details for celebrity parties at Seminole Hard Rock Café seemed simple in comparison to the confusing, complicated system she and her husband set out to navigate before and after the formal adoption of son Chandler, now 9. “It felt like looking for a needle in a haystack to find the actual course of action to help us get through whatever issue we were having. Many times in social services even if you can find something, you have to go through a referral process, then be interviewed to see if you qualify, and then you get the service and think you’re finishing up but something else happens and you realize you still need assistance but they tell you the case is closed and that you have to start all over again,” she says. “It’s not an easy process. Services are limited to begin with and accessing them becomes a real challenge.

After adopting her son, Michelle left her full-time marketing role to devote more time to raising her new son. She launched a freelance marketing business, Plan B Events and Promotions (planbeventsandpromotions.com), a decision which proved invaluable given the amount of time spent on follow-up phone calls with social services. “What concerned me is that I had changed from full-time employee to part-time working and part-time being with my child, so I had more time available to research these things. I worry about the families with two-income households who don’t have the time,” she says.  “For all the time I had spent on the phone researching and looking for options, I knew that other people had to be struggling because they likely didn’t have the same time to put into it.

In May, Michelle set out to simplify the process for other adoptive families and support those contemplating adoption. She launched the Foster Adoption Success Stories blog (fosteradoptions.blogspot.com). Besides including links to local organizations, counselors, foster/ adoption experts and other resources, the site provides a home for other adoptive families to share their own stories and lessons learned and to initiate an honest, open dialogue between those who’ve gone through adoption, are currently in the process or others considering the option. “I’m hoping that we’ll start to forge a community of adoptive families and one where we can all feed off each other, support one another and make each other aware of whatever new information we come across,” she says.

In addition to providing words of encouragement and useful experience-based advice, Michelle says she is equally focused on pushing for post-adoption support services in the area. “I’d like to see any family that adopts get all of the resources that it needs. As a community, if we offer all of the support that we can possibly make available and the family chooses not to use it, then I feel like it’s the family’s responsibility to find their way to success on their own. If we’re not offering these services or making them readily available, then I feel like as a community, we’re failing these people who are trying to make a better way for these children who otherwise wouldn’t have that kind of a future."

It’s now been two and half years since the adoption. Michelle says her family isn’t that different than other families. “We have just about as many complexities that you could have given that we have divorce and stepfamilies and adoption with all of the issues that come along with that. It seems like when we get through with one challenge, there’s a new one. Overall, I don’t think that what we go through is a whole lot different than what any other family goes through with everybody trying to keep everybody else on track and getting to their goals.”

And what would Michelle say is her own adoption success story? “When adopted children come into new families, I think a lot of people assume they’re going to be molding the child’s behavior to what it should be versus what it may have been previously. What I quickly discovered and conveyed to my husband and stepson was that we had to look at how we were reacting as much as we had to look at the behaviors he would exhibit, we had to look at what was an issue versus where we needed to just let it go. So I attribute our family’s success to a willingness to change and to learn.”