Chosen: How Opening My Home Healed My Heart by Sandra Ellen Smith

Chosen: How Opening My Home Healed My Heart by Sandra Ellen Smith is incredible book. I felt like I was sitting down to coffee with a friend as she shared her story. The books is told from the author’s viewpoint as she shares her childhood and her experience raising her birth children, exchange students, and three young Black men she took in who needed help at her kids’ school. 

 
The author’s past was heartbreaking, but it is her resilience that makes this an incredible story. Her heart of compassion, her problem solving, and ability to care for others was very moving. She elegantly shares the problems the young men she took in by giving you the right amount of backstory to help you understand their lives. I found the story riveting and read it in two days. 

Chosen: How Opening My Home Healed My Heart by Sandra Ellen Smith is a wonderful book you do not want to miss. I was absolutely engrossed in the story of the author’s life, and inspired in how she helped others change the course of their lives. I very highly recommend and this will be a 2026 favorite for me. 

I was gifted a copy and not required to write a positive review. 

Born in California, I grew up across the West. My harrowing, nomadic childhood included living in a shack without electricity or running water. After putting myself through college at the University of California Los Angeles and law school at University of Southern California, I became the director of litigation for Apple Computer, Inc., in 1998. Later, I moved to the Washington, D.C., suburbs with my two biological children, where we opened our home and hearts to eight more. In the D.C. area, I represented domestic abuse survivors and their children, including as a Guardian Ad Litem in the D.C. Superior Court. Over the years, I’ve been actively involved on the boards of multiple academic, public, and nonprofit institutions. Today, I’m in private practice, living in rural Colorado with my two dogs, Twelve and Thor, and serving as president of the regional fire board. My large, amazing family visits often.