Sharing Kindness
Yesterday I spent time with the co-founder and executive director of Sharing Kindness, Kim, along with Kathleen, the director of clinical and community services. What an inspiring and important organization they have created and grown. Sharing Kindness describes their mission as Sharing Kindness, seeded from the shared devastation of suicide and grief, tends a thriving community through empathy, education and courageous conversation.
They inspire and invite some very difficult conversations about grief, mental health and suicide, and I applaud them! How does this relate to my career as a postpartum doula and lactation counselor? Well, some families welcome a new baby and experience depression and anxiety. Some families experience the incredibly painful loss of a baby or child. And every family I have worked with experiences a mixed bag of emotions - joy, fear, excitement, exhaustion, worry, you name it. Many feelings that are hard to talk about or admit. Moms have expressed to me that they feel they are expected or supposed to feel a certain way. The shoulds we put on ourselves can be demanding and unrealistic. ‘I should breastfeed”, “I should be happy”, “I should let him cry it out”, “I should be ready to go back to work”, “I should not worry so much”, “I should be grateful for what I have”, should, should, should.
And if a family has experienced grief of any kind, the shoulds may become even more difficult and confusing. This grief is profound and heavy and so difficult for most of us to talk about or know what to say. Sharing Kindness is working to secure more funding to provide education around grief, as well as numerous support groups. One of which is a Perinatal Loss Support Group: https://sharingkindness.org/perinatal-loss-grief-support-groups/
I would like to end this post by acknowledging that Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day is observed on October 15th each year. Perhaps if you know someone who has experienced such a difficult loss, you could reach out and let them know you are thinking of them, sending love, or available to listen.
