We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marcy Bursac a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marcy, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved?
When my husband and I agreed to be the pre-adoptive home for our two children who were in foster care at the time, we were told we would likely be fostering them for 4 months before we could set a court date and adopt them.
Nine months later full of behavior ups and downs, there was no end in sight. I was so frustrated. Had I really not desired biological children? Surely, at the 9 month mark things would be a lot different had I chosen that path. In frustration I saw a glimpse of hope. Maybe the delay was for a reason. I talked to my husband about what I felt like was a silver lining and he agreed blogging about our experience with 2 rules (1. we would never explain why our kids were in care and 2. we would never bad talk the biological family) was a neat idea. So I wrote. I wrote when we were traveling for a biological family visit. I wrote when there were court dates. And people were curious.
People cheered us on and people asked questions. Most had never known someone who helped children in foster care before. And they all of a sudden saw the need and the potential to help. That’s how my social enterprise – The Forgotten Adoption Option – began. I saw an opportunity to teach the process we were navigating. To teach others how to adopt through foster care, too.
Marcy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Adoptive mom of a sibling pair, Marcy Bursac here. :waves:
Foster care adoption was my Plan A.
I run a social enterprise – The Forgotten Adoption Option – to help future forever families consider and navigate the foster care adoption process. While remote homeschooling my children during the pandemic, I began to see a gap between adults with the desire to adopt and the 115,000 adoptable children within the U.S. With a heart for those children, and a deep desire to take action, I wrote a book for adults, “The Forgotten Adoption Option: A How-To and Self-Reflection Guide for Pursuing Foster Care Adoption” and launched The Forgotten Adoption Option Podcast.
As USOA Mrs. Ohio I am an ambassador for the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, on a quest to find forever families for the 115,000 United States children who are waiting to be adopted through foster care.
After placing in the top 16 at the United States of America’s Mrs. pageant and winning the People’s Choice Award, in May – National Foster Care Month – I published a book for children of all ages, “Are You a Forever Family?”. Later this year I will be launching an app (The Forgotten Adoption Option app) to recruit 25,000 adoptive families.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
For 12 years I had the honor of raising money to help social service organizations, like Dress for Success Midwest, provide their services to the local community. It was around 7PM one night when I realized I never created Mom Goals but the ache I felt in my heart having just told my children “goodnight” over the phone certainly was not a Mom Goal I would have wanted. So I pivoted. I gave up leading a department and the worthwhile career I had loved so much, recruited my replacement, and I reskilled.
I was selected to enroll in LaunchCode’s 6-month co-ed coding bootcamp program (LC101). It was hard and oftentimes I felt unequipped, but I learned how to code. I learned that if I persevere through the learning process, I can learn anything. Being open to the learning process, after finishing LaunchCode I was awarded a scholarship from Google to learn JavaScript (a programming language) on the same day I began working at a Fortune 75 company where I now work.
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
When I received stimulus payments during the pandemic I felt a deep responsibility to steward the funds well.
After talking with my husband, we agreed I could use one of the payments to scale conversations I had been having with prospective adoptive families in our home multiple times a year and write them down into a book – The Forgotten Adoption Option. My intention was to scale from my living room to the whole country. So I recorded an audiobook and self-published the ebook and paperback book. To date, I have reached 4,000 prospective adoptive families.
Contact Info:
- Website: forgottenadoptionoption.com
- Instagram: @marcybursac @forgottenadoptionoption @usoa.mrsohio
- Facebook: Marcy Bursac, The Forgotten Adoption Option, USOA Mrs. Ohio
- Linkedin: Marcy Bursac
Image Credits
Nathan Cohen, Simply Sweet Photography MO, Jay Hladyshewsky