Welcome to The Parenthood Journey Blog. As children, we have a fairytale of what our lives will turn out to be. Usually life is much more complex. When it comes to fertility, its often joyous, but definitely not a fairytale. With the best of circumstances, The Parenthood Journey is difficult; at the worst it is catastrophic.
Our church, Park Hill UMC in Denver, has started a ministry to talk about, listen to, support and educate each other on many of these fertility and parenthood issues that so many of us are silently coping with. Some of these are: infertility, miscarriage, stillborn births, preeclampsia, c-sections, postpartum depression, children born with special needs and life as parents.
We aren’t experts, but some of us are ministers and caregivers, many of us are parents, a few are doctors, nurses and therapists. With your help we can grow this ministry into something really special.
Our first time together was Sunday, October 14th. October is/was Pregnancy Loss Month. We had a Time of Remembrance which will be sponsored by our Tender Loving Care (TLC) Ministry. There is a Japanese word, Mizuko, which means “child of the waters.” It refers to any child who has not breathed air. The Mizuko are sacred in the Japanese culture. We now have a Mizuko statue in our Columbarium for all the children who were miscarried or stillborn. We also will plant a tree in a national forest in for each child who is miscarried or stillborn.
We hope for many contributers on this blog. Those who will tell "their journey" be it a birth story, a miscarriage story or coping now as a parent. We plan to have some psychologists who will weigh in as well. If you are interested in this ministry or know someone who may be, please contact Lauren Boyd lauren@phumc.org, 303-322-1867 ext.208.
Welcome to our new journey together - The Parenthood Journey.
Lauren Boyd
Director of Programming and Membership
Partner to Candi and Mother to Miller who turned 5 today!
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