Session Recording: Becoming Fluent in Difficult Stories
In June 2025, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption welcomed more than 600 Wendy’s Wonderful Kids® professionals and agency administrators to Columbus, Ohio for our annual Wendy’s Wonderful Kids Summit. The event featured three days of learning sessions from experts and advocates in child welfare, including Beth Guckenberger, co-executive director of Back2Back Ministries.
Based on her lived experience as a foster and adoptive mom, Beth shared practical strategies and inspirational stories to help foster and adoptive parents as well as child welfare professionals in navigating challenging situations with the youth in their care. Or, as Beth describes it, “manage the tension between hope and hard.”
“When you don’t have the long view in mind, children, inadvertently, can become projects and not people,” Beth said. “They are not projects, they are people. And they don’t need fixed, they need healed.”
Watch Beth’s full presentation, “Becoming Fluent in Difficult Stories.”
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More about Beth
Beth and her husband, Todd, serve as co-executive directors of Back2Back Ministries and Trauma Free World. After graduating from Indiana University, the Guckenbergers moved to Mexico where they lived for 15 years and worked with children and families. Between biological, foster and adopted children, they have raised 11 children. Beth is the author of 15 books, including adult and children’s titles, and a world-renowned expert on childhood trauma and child welfare. Learn more on Beth’s website.