Dear Chelsea - Minisode: Snatch That Kid Up with Chelsea + Catherine

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Chelsea and Catherine talk with a couple exploring the foster system… for the second time.   * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me. In season two of RipCurrent, we asked who tried to kill Judy Berry and why. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods.

She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of RipCurrent Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Lari Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving. And this year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the PODS Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal

this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty. Your donation will put cash directly in the hands of these families in need, and they'll get to decide how to use it, whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business. Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by giving multiplier, which means more money for those in need. Visit givedirectly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. Hi, I'm Radhi Dvlukeh, and I am the host of a really good cry podcast. This week, I am joined by Anna Runkle, also known as the crappy childhood fairy, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of

unsafe or chaotic childhoods. But talking about trauma isn't always great for people. It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who are traumatized as kids, feel worse when they talk about it. Get very dysregulated. Listen to a really good cry on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyankawali, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic.

How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The show was ahead of its time to represent a black family in ways the television hadn't shown before. Exactly. It's Telma Hopkins, also known as Aunt Rachel. And I'm Kelly Williams or Laura Winslow. On our podcast, welcome to the family with Telma and Kelly. We're re-watching every episode of Family Matters. We'll share behind-the-scenes stories about making the show. Yeah, we'll even bring in some special guests to spill some tea. Listen to Welcome to the Family with Telma and Kelly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hi, guys. It's Chelsea and Catherine here. Hi. So today, Catherine, we are doing one of our mini-sodes, and so we have one couple calling in for couples counseling, correct? Exactly, exactly. And for anybody else who wants to write in, please write in. Yes, for sure. Chelsea gives great advice for couples. Yes, yes. I am just, I'm flawless in my advice giving, everybody. I mean, so far it's been four years. I will. I mean, not four years of 100.

You know, I'm sure there's some upset customers, but that's. That's part for the course, you know? It's not like I have a degree. Just operating on, you know, vibes. Good vibes. I'm operating on good fucking vibes, okay? Okay. So our question today on our couples counseling with Chelsea comes from Lynn and Kara.

Dear Chelsea, we're writing in for some advice on whether or how to expand our family. My partner and I have been married for six years and we grew our family a year into marriage in a somewhat unconventional but deeply meaningful way. As two women in our prime fertility years, we considered the full range of options, sperm donor, private or international adoption, fostering, adopting from foster care, you name it. Ultimately, we were matched with an 11-year-old girl whom we fostered for three years before finally becoming her legal guardians. Our plan was always to adopt her, but the system had its own timeline. Whole story there. She's now 16, and we love her dearly. At the time we welcomed her into our home, the idea was to have more children.

But we quickly realized that wouldn't be the right decision for her or for us at the time. Now, with her only a few years from graduating and us both still just 34, the question of whether to grow our family is back on the table. Here's where it gets complicated. There seem to be ethical concerns around every path. Sperm donor. Have you seen the man with a thousand kids? Enough said.

Private adoption feels uncomfortable bidding for babies while so many children in the system need homes. Foster care. I do it again. My wife isn't so sure after everything we went through the first. time. And beyond that, we're both aware of the broader ethical tension of bringing more people into a world that feels increasingly unwell. Add to that are many, many frustrations with society at large, especially when it comes to how we raise youth, and it's easy to feel like throwing in

the towel. And yet, I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of the family we once envisioned. In many ways, I'm fulfilled. I'm a mom to an incredible daughter who loves and needs us. We get the privilege of guiding her into adulthood. But I also love being a mom, and there are joys of parenthood that we haven't yet experienced and still long for. So I guess we're writing in either to have you say, don't have kids, you idiots, which honestly might be the easiest answer, or to help us untangle whether we're walking away from something too soon. Part of me thinks we should just enjoy our impending emptiness freedom.

The other part wonders if we're exactly the kind of people who should be raising more kids, because we get how hard and beautiful and complicated it all is, Lynn and Kara. Hi, girls, Lynn and Kara. Hi, you guys are cute. Wow. Great job fostering an 11-year-old. I mean, listen, right off the bat instinctually, I would say to you, you guys were open to fostering. I mean, those are the kids that need it the most. You talk about bringing children into this world. It's a very valid point. There are so many children that need homes. So it's almost like to me, if that's something you've done, and I know how complicated that system is, I have a cousin who's fostered and to adopt and that turned into an adoption. And I know that it is. exhausting and but when you're up for it which you two seem to be then it's kind of like you're meant to do that like if you can if you've done it you know the ropes you already have an advantage going in because you've been through this system before and you're helping somebody who's already

here in this world that doesn't have the guidance that the two of you can provide and I love what you said guiding them into adulthood I think that is really profound and exactly what parents are meant to do it's not like you own your children You're just supposed to guide them into becoming, you know, big, big humans and good humans. And you both seem like, you know, just from your letter, wonderful human beings. So I would say if you're going to do it to try to go down that road again, knowing that it's going to be a difficult path, but that the outcome is going to outweigh the work that you put into it. Yeah.

I think I'm open to that. I don't know if she is. I think what makes it difficult is that even, you know, going and taking that path, there's just so much that isn't in our control, which I guess is true about children regardless of how you do or don't bring them into the world, but how you raise them. But I think it's one of the things that has stuck with me in raising the child we have now is that like every step we take, and this might be at the age that she came to us too, like there's always sadness before happiness when you go through that path, right? Because

there's a loss of a family. There's a loss of so many things. And that's like really heavy. Yeah. The world already feels so heavy that a part of me is like, I don't know if I can do that again, if that makes sense. And when I think about like broadening the family, there's like so many joyous things that I feel like we also didn't really get a chance to experience that I feel like taking that path again, maybe at a different age we would have a slightly different experience, but it just feels like dark and heavy to go down that road again right now. Maybe that just means we're not ready right now. Maybe it does, but I mean, yeah, you are, I mean, you got to, getting a girl at 11 years old is much different than getting a baby or getting even a three-year-old,

you know? It is. It's like, and there's no doubt that it's going to be difficult, but that's going to happen with any child that even if you had a child and you got a sperm donor like that all of that's going to happen what's different about the fostering system is that it's so frustrating and there's so much bureaucracy and you know parents have so many rights until they finally don't have the rights the birth parents you know they have to fuck up so many times and and there's all this stuff that can happen and and while that does sound challenging and onerous it sounds like something that you two can handle. And I'm of the idea that if you can handle something, then you should be the people that are doing it. Rather than, like, you know, say you were looking at another couple, say you

were looking at a six-year-old kid that needed a home, okay? A six-year-old little boy who had been in foster care for six years, and you saw another couple that were going to foster him. And you knew that they didn't have the capabilities or the capacity to love in the way that you did. Wouldn't you want to just go snatch that kid up and do everything you can? had to provide the home that you've already been able to provide for someone. You've proven yourself in this arena. I really feel that when you do something well and have crossed all these hurdles and what you said, I hear you. There's sadness before there's happiness. I think you won't have an identical experience to the one that you had. And there's just so many children out there

that need homes. And when you really care about that, then that's your answer, you know? go help somebody that needs a home. You don't have to do it tomorrow. But if you're on the fence about, it's like you're not on the fence about loving children and wanting to help them. You're not on the fence about that. So I think that it's a definite yes for you guys. And it's just a matter of which way you decide to go. And I would say fostering is, you know, from somebody who's never done this before in my life. Just like, you know, I'm just from what I can hear from you. But you have a pretty close relationship with it compared to, you know, I mean, yeah, I've seen it firsthand, what happens and how frustrating that is.

But, you know, you guys have a lot of love to give. And when you have a lot of love to give, it's kind of your, I think it's your responsibility to give it. Sucks to be good people, you know. That's right. That's right. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville,

tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse. and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever.

At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just. about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter

how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb

explodes in the front seat. of environmental activist Judy Barry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of RipCurrent, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Barry and why? She received death threats before the bombing.

She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement.

Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If one of us wins, we all win. I'm Ashley Reinfeld, and I'm the whole. hosts of the women's skateboarding podcast, good luck with that. Good luck with that is a skateboarding podcast that is part cultural record, part news brief, mostly group therapy, and a place to talk about the past, present, and future of women and gender expansive skateboarding. This week, me and my co-host, Nora Vasconcellos and Alex White, we have Fabiana Delfino on the show, a professional skateboarder

from Florida, whose grit was forged in a family of athletes. Tune in to hear how she broke into the boys club, what it takes to be pro, and why just being grateful. you're here, shouldn't be the price of entry. Maybe the industry thinks that we just started skating five years ago because that's when they maybe started paying attention. It's a no-fluff conversation about putting in the years, stacking clips and receipts, and still having to prove your worth while the industry catches up.

You break down the door, sick now, like, hold the door for everyone. We created good luck with that because we want to share our experience of existing in an industry that wasn't always built for everyone. So listen to good luck with that on IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of their life.

That was my dad, reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not our shame to carry, and that we have big, bold, and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Leitra Tate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like. sounds like in real time. Each week I sit down with people who live through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about

the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing. The unwanted sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's lock in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to the unwanted sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You know the shade is always Shadiest right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back.

So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. I was going through a walk in my neighborhood. Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house. Okay. The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. Oh, no way. I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know.

You are lying. This humongous, y'all. They had some time on their hand. Listen to reasonably shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network. work on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Honestly, I don't have anything to add to that. I think my only question for you is how important is it to you to pass on your DNA? Is that a need, like a feeling either of you have?

Not for me. No, that's a man thing. Women don't give a shit about that. Hence the man with a thousand kids. Yeah, I think if that's not something that you feel a great desire for, then, you know, I think the sperm donor donor route is out. Also, it's just like this world is such a mess right now. Do you really want to do that?

Do you want to bring someone in the world? Right. You don't want to add. You don't want to add you want to comfort what exists. Here is a question for you too. Since obviously you've been researching this and looking into all the possibilities quite a bit. So between a private adoption or foster care, like is there the ability to sort of like be open to both of those and like put your names in the hat for both of those and like see. and, like, see if one starts to feel right or if you start getting more, you know, someone sent to your questions from the agencies or those sorts of things, like, just to feel it out.

Yeah, that's an interesting question. So adoptive license, and it varies state by state, but to be licensed to adopt as separate of being licensed to foster and the routes that those children go through are very different. Yeah, and I would imagine it's like obviously another cost to get the license. to adopt, correct? Yeah, which isn't a big, I mean, we don't care about that. And when we previously, you know, were planning to adopt, we were only licensed to adopt. And so that was our plan, even though the child was in foster care, but they, the system did its thing. Yeah.

They were like, oh, after we had already, like, decided and everything, they were like, oh, you know, well, this might not go through for a little bit. And so we got licensed to Foster so that she could come into our home versus being like, oh, nice to meet you and have a good life. Yeah. So you're sort of already ready on both of those counts. Sorry, I don't mean just foster. I mean adopt or foster. An existing kid.

Just somebody who's already here. Yeah, if you go down the adoption route, I mean, it might take longer, but you're going to get the, it's not going to be the bureaucracy you dealt with with foster care. And that's also a way to rescue someone, you know, to get them in a safe place. Yeah. I agree with Chelsea. you two feel like people who absolutely have more parenting to give and more love to give. So, yeah, find a kid who's out there and maybe just like leave it open to both or, you know,

get registered for both and see which one starts to present itself. Because I do think that the people come into our lives that should be in our lives, you know. Yeah, and thank you guys for doing that. That's beautiful. You're both a beautiful couple. I know you're going to make good decisions and provide. And I'm so happy to hear that you were able to get an 11-year-old little girl under your wings and guide her because she's going to be, you know, her whole future has changed because of you. So you have the ability to do that for people and you should do it.

Well, I was saying this from the start. So now that you've said it, it's not that you have to do. By the way, I'm never encouraging people to have children. So this is a first. But, yeah, so keep us posted. and let us know what happens, will you? Yeah, we will. Okay, all right, bye, thanks so much, girls.

Bye. Bye. Bye. I just announced all my tour dates. It's called the High and Mighty Tour. I will be touring from February through June. So go get your tickets now. If you want to come see me perform, I will be on the high and mighty tour.

Do you want advice from Chelsea? Write into Dear Chelsea Podcast at gmail.com. Find full video episodes of Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching at Dear Chelsea Pod. Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad Dickert, executive producer, Catherine Law. And be sure to check out our merch at chelseahandler.com. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me.

In season two of RipCurrent, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? They were climbing trees, and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. She received death threats before. or the bombing. You receive more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving. And this year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty. Your donation will put cash directly in the hands of these families in need, and they'll get to decide how to use it, whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business.

Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by giving multiplier, which means more money for those in need. Visit give directly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. Hi, I'm Radhidivlukaya and I am the host of a really good cry podcast. This week I am joined by Anna Runkle, also known as the crappy childhood fairy, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of unsafe or chaotic childhoods. Talking about trauma isn't always great for people.

It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who are traumatized as kids feel worse when they talk about it, get very disregulated. Listen to a really good. good cry on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The show was ahead of its time to represent a black family in ways the television hadn't shown before. Exactly.

It's Telma Hopkins, also known as Aunt Rachel. And I'm Kelly Williams or Laura Winslow. On our podcast, Welcome to the Family with Telma and Kelly. We're re-watching every episode of Family Matters. We'll share behind-the-scenes stories about making the show. Yeah, we'll even bring in some special guests to spill some tea. Listen to Welcome to the Family with Telma and Kelly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyankawali, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dabolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type two?

extremely listen to health stuff on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts this is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human