Lily Pad’s story doesn’t start with a place. It starts with a person.
And her name is Ashlyn.
“We were in the car on our way to school, and Jennifer started asking me questions about the DSS offices,” Ashlyn remembers. Jennifer Tice, and her husband, Benjamin, are the co-founders of Lily Pad, but this conversation was before the first Lily Pad was installed in South Carolina. At the time, the Tices had already adopted two brothers, in addition to their own biological daughter, and they had fostered children in short-term placements, long-term placements, emergency situations and even offered respite care for other foster families.
In early 2022, as the world began to open up from the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Tices began to open up their hearts to the possibility of welcoming older foster children into their home. Soon after that, 15-year-old Ashlyn and her 11-year-old sister were placed with their family.
The siblings and their brothers had been in and out of foster care since they were very young. Ashlyn was abused in her biological family, and both girls were adopted into a different family several years later. Unfortunately, they both survived abuse in that home as well, and DSS removed them and placed both girls in the Tice’s home.
“The first weekend Ashlyn was with us, as we listened to her being so vulnerable and sharing her story with us, I was overcome with how brave this child was,” recalls Jennifer.
Ashlyn continued with the memory of that early car conversation with Jennifer.
“The third time [I went into foster care], I sat at a table beside my caseworker’s cubicle ,” she continued. “I fell asleep. I was so tired and nervous, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was afraid. Would I end up in a group home? I just sat there, listening to my caseworker tell my story and other people’s stories. It was scary.”
When Jennifer looks back on this conversation today, she says, “Ashlyn had been separated from her sister, questioned by police, and then brought to the DSS office, where she had to wait in a cubicle with her caseworker. She fell asleep in an office chair out of exhaustion. She awoke to phone calls from families rejecting her placement, talk of being separated from her sister, and the possibility of placement in a group home. That was the moment I realized we could do better for these children.”
Ashlyn smiles when she remembers this part of the early morning car ride that would change the path of both of their lives.
“Jenni said, ‘What if we made a space that was like a living room or a home? What if it had things to comfort you and help you to relax?’ That’s how it started. She was really serious about it.”
Just a few months later, in March 2022, the Tices launched Lily Pad. Ashlyn and her sister continued living with the Tices, but a new familiar face had started to bond with the young girls. Her name was Aunt Stephanie, Jennifer’s older sister.
“I’d always thought about adoption, and I’ve supported my sister through her foster care and adoption journey, but it’s funny how things work out,” said Stephanie. “I’ve worked as a high school educator for so long. I’d sensed the need to give a safe space to teenagers, and I always wondered what it would look like to do that.”
“When Jennifer and Ben welcomed the girls into their home, I had recently completed my Ph.D. program and was working full-time at a local high school. It was totally out of the blue. I first met Ashlyn at our church’s women’s Christmas brunch. She was a little shy at first, but she seemed to tag along with me so I invited her and a few other girls over to my home to bake some cookies. By the end of the day, she’d taken over the kitchen and made sugar cookies for us!” Stephanie laughed as she shared the memory.
Ashlyn and her sister continued to spend a lot of time with Stephanie - shopping together on the weekends or hanging out after school and doing homework at her home.
“I told my coworkers that I felt like I would be a mom by the end of the year,” said Stephanie.
When Ashlyn thinks about this time in her young life, she says it was “like our brains were connected. We both had the same idea around the same time.”
The sisters shared a bedroom at the Tice’s, and one evening at bedtime, Ashlyn’s sister turned to her and said, “If Aunt Stephanie could adopt us, would you let her?”
Ashlyn said yes immediately.
“The next morning, I had a doctor’s appointment, and I was driving in the car with Jenni. She said, ‘I don’t know if this is the right time to ask you this, but Aunt Stephanie would like to adopt you.’”
Ashlyn smiled and said she’d just been talking about that with her sister last night, and they immediately called Stephanie.
“I started crying. I was so happy,” said Ashlyn. “She was so happy too! We moved into her house on June 4, 2022.”
Nearly one year later, the adoption was finalized, and for the first time in their lives, Ashlyn and her sister had a loving, stable, safe place to call their home.
“I was happy but also so nervous,” acknowledged Ashlyn. “It was a big moment in my life. A new chapter. I closed the old one and opened a new one.”
Earlier this summer, the family’s latest adventure was what they called their “Adoption Celebration Cruise.” They headed to the Bahamas on a Disney Magic Cruise together, and, as Ashlyn reflected on that experience, she said she can’t wait to start building more memories, creating family traditions and enjoying life together.
