Hi! I’m so glad you’ve stopped in to check out our site.  I’m Marlynn Pharnes, Founder and CEO of ABriLo Enterprises, LLC.  I am blessed to work alongside children, families, and other professionals as we journey toward healthy relationships with others.  Family, friends, and community are what we are about.

As a sixth generation Floridian, I have a great love for my state and its children.  I’ve worked in local churches and schools, but until I worked in the local dependency system as a clinical analyst, I did not know the depth and the breadth of the loss occurring for our foster and adoptive children.  As my career evolved into private practice, I was approached by a Department of Children and Families employee about focusing on adoptive children in my practice.  My relationship with adoption included extended family members, so I was not a stranger to adoption, but I was by no means an expert.  In my usual overload of curiosity and the need to understand, I read and studied everything I could put my hands on regarding adoption, attachment, and healing in adoption.  I studied the brain/body connection and was fascinated to find that science continues to unfold secrets of why we do what we do and how to manage the fear response.  I realized that the children coming to see me were not “kids behaving badly,” but kids who were afraid.  Afraid of the future, afraid the adults couldn’t keep them safe, and afraid that they would be rejected and lost again.

Adoption is seen by many as a solution.  A wonderful conclusion to a seriously painful event.  For the adoptee, however, adoption is a healing journey, an end to what is known, and a process by which they have to learn to grow in trust and in love to a family of strangers.  Children who can perceive the love and safety of their adoptive parents move forward developmentally and in attachment.  Children who do not perceive their parents actions as love do not feel safe and therefore, have difficulty progressing in relationship.