1. Give us a brief history of your company.
Red Bird Ministries is a Catholic, pro-life/pro-family grief support ministry that supports families who have experienced child loss of any age and any circumstance including: miscarriage, stillbirth, and after birth as an infant, child, adolescent, or adult child. We journey alongside other couples of loss supporting them through the trenches of grief.
2. What would you tell the rest of Acadiana makes you special?
What makes Red Bird Ministries so special is that we support couples of loss as couples of loss. The hardest thing to hear after you lose a child is that couples of loss typically get divorced. The harsh statistic of divorce of couples of loss is around 75-80%.
Through the experience of serving others through our own losses, we identified that although each person grieves differently it is vital that couples learn how to grieve together and to support each other.
Grief can cause distance within a marriage if the couple does not know how to love each other through their loss. We offer bereaved couples the tools to face each new “first” together, and how to communicate with each other.
3. What are you most proud of?
We are most proud of the support and encouragement that we are receiving to continue on our journey to help grieving families of the Acadiana area. With the help and support of our community our non-profit continues forward in bringing support to the brokenhearted. It is important for us as a new ministry to continue to receive that support and encouragement to continue our mission.
4. Where do you see your business in 10 years? What are your plans for the future?
We have so many plans for the future, but our two main goals is to create, film, produce, and implement a grief support program for couples of loss. The mentorship program will allow a couple new to Red Bird to walk with another couple of loss who is a little further along on their journey. Partnering like losses, couples find commonality in their grief journey. Friendships are formed and the journey towards healing is found in helping each other through the trenches. Video production is scheduled to begin in the fall, and completion of program is scheduled for soft launch sometime in early 2020.
Our second goal, which is a long term goal is to build a facility that we can provide services for couples on a daily basis. Most couples of loss find that they need support more than once a month, and it is our desire to provide more opportunities to bring couples of loss together. We also need space to offer counseling services, workshops, support groups, and other events inside our own facility.
5. 1A is Focused on Forward“ meaning we are taking an active role of improving the community we live in. Our members are Focused on Forward, too! What does Focused on Forward mean to you? How is your company Focused on Forward?
To me, “Focused on Forward” means to provide a community that thinks forward, works forward, and supports forward. Looking at the big picture of grief and how much it affects the community at large, it is overwhelming at times. So many families in our area have suffered the loss of a child, and so many families are grieving, but it’s not often that families will talk about their loss. This is an old way of thinking, and it’s our mission at Red Bird to break the taboo of the silence of grief.
Our community is rich in compassion and support. It’s in our nature as Cajuns to go the extra mile for each other. By educating our community on child loss allows families of loss to take a step out of isolation back into community. Bringing awareness to the dire need of a ministry of loss gives a voice to the voiceless. Let’s support our families of loss forward, reach out to someone you know that may have suffered the loss of a child and share more about Red Bird Ministries, or make a donation in honor of that child. Honoring and remembering someone’s child is one of the greatest gifts that you can give to couples of loss.