Introducing Rachelle Alspaugh

Bringing In Our Writing Team for 2017!!!!

Meet Rachelle Alspaugh

I am a poet at heart, a blogger for “fun”, and a published author by surprise. I am a Dual Language Pre-K teacher, a passionate Bible study leader, a soccer mom, and an adoptive mom. I love to travel the world and to write the stories that God has written with my life. Nothing brings me more joy than to see how intimately God loves me.

I fell in love with poetry at the age of ten while in the fourth grade, and I’m so thankful for the role that poems have played in my life since then. I moved away from my beloved home in Pennsylvania at the age of 15, and the introvert in me found a refuge in writing poetry as a way to process all the mixed emotions I experienced during that time. I continued to write poems over the years, and they still help me put into words what I can’t always find ways to express verbally.

I started a blog in 2008 when my husband and I embarked on a journey to adopt a little girl from a Latin American country. After blogging through that experience for almost two years, our adoption completely fell apart, and I never got to bring my little girl (and her older brother) home. I then bled my heart out through my keyboard over the following year as I grieved that loss. When I finally saw God restore my heart and redeem our loss for His glory, I turned my blog into a book, Unexpected Tears, hoping it might help someone else grieving the loss of a failed adoption or just grappling with their faith over an unexpected turn of events.

I learned to speak Spanish through a study-abroad program in Argentina during my junior year in college in 1997, and since then, I’ve worked with English Language Learners within the public school system both in Indiana and in Texas. I’ve worked with kids from Pre-K through high school, but I currently teach Pre-K in a Dual Language program here in Texas, just outside of Dallas. I love to lead women’s Bible studies at my church when I have time, though I can’t say I have a lot of extra time during my two teenage sons’ soccer seasons.

The doors of international adoption finally did open for us when we adopted our oldest son from Colombia at the age of fifteen. After bringing him home, I turned my blog into a book all over again to publish a sequel, Painful Waiting, to my first book, Unexpected Tears. Both books tell one continuous love story between our family and two “young men” who never gave up hoping for a family of their own. (www.abhbooks.com/books)

Now I mainly blog about post-adoption family events, to keep my own family in the loop while also giving my readers a way to follow our story, but I always make it a point to direct anyone on my blog to pursue a personal, intimate relationship with Christ. In addition to writing here and on my author blog (www.fromtheheartofrachelled.blogspot.com ), I also will be writing devotionals each month for my publisher’s blog (www.abhbooks.com/blog). I just started a Facebook group called Failed Adoption Grief Support Group and hope God will use my experiences to guide the women in that group through such a difficult and confusing time of loss.

Other ways to find me: