Bellis in Full Bloom
(Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)
Message from Executive Director Jenny Eldredge
January is a good time to think about summer in Minnesota instead of the winter that’s all around us. Escape for a minute and picture a sunny summer day as you stand alongside a huge patch of wild daisies, that are easy to find in Minnesota.
Daisies make me smile because they are one of the best symbols of “Bellis,” which is a botanical term that includes daisies and sunflowers. Like these sunny and sturdy flowers, folks with adoption and foster care experiences often feel brighter and stronger in groups compared to standing alone.
This year, our nonprofit will celebrate its 40th anniversary, and how our reach has grown over 40 years! Women from Alaska to Anoka to Atlanta join our expert-led, online support groups for mothers with lost parental rights. Their children are in foster care or adopted. These mothers are very much part of our community, as are those at the Shakopee women’s prison who attend our weekly support group there as they grieve their parental rights lost before or during their incarceration.
Bellis stands with all members of our community in their grief, joy, questions, worries and celebrations.
Our expertise is creating safe places to talk openly and honestly about ambiguous loss, which is when we mourn someone who is alive but not in our lives in the way we hoped. It’s a unique grief with no ritual (such as a funeral) to mark the loss and with little chance for closure. We know that birth mothers—no matter how it came to be that someone else parents their children—find solidarity in Bellis support groups and retreats. They chart ways to make meaning of their grief, and they share that with adopted persons and with adoptive and foster parents. The roots of our experiences weave the community together.
And, happily, while Bellis stretches into new places, we aren’t alone. New friends from Mitchell Hamline’s Institute to Transform Child Protection, the Small Business Institute at the University of St. Thomas, Amplify Mission Network, the Medica Foundation, county guardian ad litem and court staff, faith communities and others have come alongside Bellis to offer expertise, networks and funding. Stalwart friends at the Sauer Family Foundation, the League of Catholic Women, and the Catholic Community Foundation have celebrated successes with us and continued as supporters.