These mothers share grief, shame — and hope

Nicole Peter hasn't seen her children in six years — not even photos.

Peter lives in Minneapolis. Her daughter, 15, and son, 11, live in Florida with her daughter's dad. They don't want to see her. Their memories of their mother are all from the days when Peter was a meth addict.

After they moved to Florida, she went through treatment and has been sober for more than four years. But her kids remain angry. Last May, at their request, Peter voluntarily gave up her parental rights.

"I went through feeling like I was just a horrible person," she said. "You just have this longing so much to fix what you did. And you can't."

Then Peter found a support group that brings together women like her — mothers who have lost their parental rights.

"I thought, wow, there's other women out there who can understand what I'm going through," she said. "You feel like you're accepted and you kind of fit in with the group. It's a place without judgment."

The group, called Stronger Together, was organized last year by Bellis, a Minneapolis nonprofit unconnected with government agencies or the legal system. Bellis was founded in 1983 to support anyone affected by adoption: adoptees, adoptive parents, birth mothers, foster parents, people who've been in foster care, even adoption social workers.

"It's just kind of a home for your stories," said Executive Director Jenny Eldredge.

A few years ago, Bellis leaders realized there was one group they were not serving — in fact, nobody was. Every year, some 1,500 women in Minnesota lose parental rights, Eldredge said. With no agency or organization support, these women are left, at best, invisible, and at worst blamed and vilified.

"After a mother's been to a hearing where a judge signs a termination rights order, there's no one there ... she's dealing with the worst grief you can imagine, without support," Eldredge said.

"It's like the moms cease to exist in anyone's mind. When you consider how badly the women feel about themselves, it's just heartbreaking at every level."

In 2019, Bellis commissioned a study by St. Paul's Wilder Research, which found no other organization in the country — very few in the world, even — serving women in that situation.

With funding from the Sauer Family Foundation in St. Paul, Bellis began a pilot program of weekly in-person meetings last April, offering free cab service because many of the women lack a driver's license. Weekly Zoom meetings, added in July, drew women from around the country.

Five of the women in the pilot were surveyed in August, and all reported feeling less shame and more calm about the future.

Got 'out of control'

Like all of the women in the pilot, Peter experienced a difficult childhood: "rejection issues, sexual abuse, quite a bit of trauma." She was 11 when she started drinking and smoking. Still, for years she managed to remain "functional," she said.

But in 2015, it "got out of control." She began selling drugs and taking drugs intravenously. She lost her job and her home and moved with the kids to her mother's home in Buffalo, Minn.

One day, child protection officials stopped a friend from picking up Peter's daughter at school. Then they called Peter and told her to surrender her son that evening.

"I told my son how much I loved him, then I had to watch them take the kids away," she said. "That moment something broke in me. I couldn't feel anything but loneliness and pain. It doesn't get more shameful than that."

At first, the kids were in foster care and Peter could visit them at the Wright County Human Services Center. She planned to send them to Florida to live with her daughter's father, and then move to Florida herself. But a month later, she walked out of the Human Services building and found agents waiting to charge her with selling drugs, a felony.

She wound up serving six months in jail, was placed on 25 years probation and was required to go to treatment for her addiction.

"I would do anything to go back and just change that whole situation," Peter said. "I play the should have/would have/could have game of regret and remorse."

Like other mothers who have shared this experience, Peter dreads people asking whether she has children.

"I don't know how to answer that question," she said. "And I don't want to get into the whole story."

Talking is healing

The pain doesn't go away. Some of the women who've attended the Stronger Together sessions lost their children as many as 10 or even 20 years ago, said Paola Schnabel, a social worker who helps facilitate the sessions.

"This is the first time they've been able to talk about it," Schnabel said.

Many friends and relatives — even many therapists — don't understand. Worse, they'll tell women what they should have done. Never mind that it's too late.

'It's frankly sad that [Stronger Together] is the only option" for supporting women in this situation, Schnabel said. "This is just one small group, one small agency that's doing it. We need to have other places — even just within Minneapolis."

During the group sessions, a bond formed among the women, according to a report on the pilot. "Participants did not appear to hold back on sharing their stories — the good, the bad and the ugly," the report said.

"It's honestly one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed in my life," Eldredge said. "I feel like my heart grows a few sizes every week when I meet them."

Peter appreciates the group so much that she has been rounding up other women to attend.

"It takes a lot of courage to talk about it," Peter said. "But it's so good for you ... Time doesn't heal things. Facing things heals things. You have to face stuff. You have to look it in the eye and deal with it."

Stronger Together groups are held in person at 10 a.m. every Tuesday at the Bellis Minneapolis offices, 3249 Hennepin Av. S., Suite 103, and via Zoom at 7 p.m. Tuesdays. For more information, 952-944-0866 or info@mybellis.org