Today we’d like to introduce you to Elan Bridges.
Hi Elan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I sat alone in the NICU next to my newborn daughter’s isolette 17 years ago. After the horrific experience of my rushed emergency cesarean, followed by complete disregard by the unit staff, I was in a great deal of pain. The only thing that kept me going was seeing my baby’s face. I took in her bright eyes and head full of thick curls while silently reflecting on the simultaneously traumatic and joyful process that would eventually change the trajectory of my life. I did it! But I was alone and had no one who would comfort or support me. Shortly after my release from the hospital, one question stuck with me: how can I prevent other moms from having to go through what I did?
Over the first couple weeks of my daughter’s NICU stay, I began to think about ways to improve our odds as a family. My parents have always had heavy work schedules and were busy with my younger siblings, so they were not accessible at the time. Instead of wallowing in isolation, I sought community within our little collective of NICU parents. At the time, Memorial Hospital in South Bend contained a floor that was a dedicated Ronald McDonald House, with comfortable rooms for families who did not live locally, access to private showers/bathrooms, plus a communal kitchen and dining space. Each week, parents volunteered to make a shared meal for all of us. I talked with a few of the other parents and came up with a themed plan that would allow us to share each other’s culture and be in community. Each week, we cycled through different themes such as “Favorite traditional family meals”, “Childhood Concoctions”, and “Cultural Food Exchange”. These themes created some incredibly open spaces and opportunities to become close with people who share this unique experience. Those connections helped us through our children’s various medical crises and the death of 3. As our children are now teens, my fellow NICU parents stay in contact. We still share our struggles and joys, which created a strong sense of belonging between all of us.
After our daughter left the NICU and we were adjusting to being home, the isolation began to impact my mental health significantly. I knew I had no community around me, so I reached out to my friend, whose son’s isolette was next to my daughter’s. She was in a similar situation, further exacerbated by being in a high-conflict relationship. We chose to rely on one another to share the mental and emotional load of parenting in our early 20s when neither of us was prepared. This is when I realized that “the village” is what we make it.
These experiences led me to become a doula and maternal child health specialist. My goal is to ease the pain of loneliness and isolation commonly experienced in modern parenting. We are expected to work as if we don’t have children and to parent as if we have no other responsibilities. There is a quote from Angela Davis that became my mantra through this experience, “You have to act as if it is possible to radically change the world, and you have to do it all the time”. Thinking revolutionarily, my closest friends and I chose to create an intentional circle around our collective families, which led to the development of what is now the Reclaim Collective. We are a group of parents/friends who created a large family of choice with those we trust most and trade-off childcare duties as well as errands. We all live separately and have our own lives, but if someone doesn’t have childcare or needs help with a bill another member of the collective steps in.
As firm believers in “Many hands make light work” this is the future. The formation of cooperative collaborative care, resource sharing, and mutual aid are the keys to survival in the ever-changing stage of world economics and social justice. When the system fails families and children, it is imperative that the community, both individuals and organizations, stand in the gap. This is a model of cooperative planning and also has the possibility of leading to establishing healthy co-housing communities of parents in need of support. If the path to stability in an uncertain future depends on a return to the absolute necessity that is “The Village”, the resulting increased collective thinking truly has the power to radically transform the world.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not been a smooth road. The greatest struggles came from a lack of faith in my own abilities and the accompanying anxiety of feeling lost. I have a Type A personality, I push through and manage challenges with a overwhelmingly strong independent streak. I have never let a challenge stop me, but I definitely can get overwhelmed.
My mother has this incredible gift for snapping me back to reality when I am overwhelmed. She has honed this skill since I was a child. At the exact moment my heart begins to race, her impeccable timing ability leads her to hold my hands between her own and ask, “How do you eat an elephant, Domanique?” The use of my middle name always gets my attention and pulls my focus back into the moment. Taking deep breaths, I always reply “One bite at a time.”
The external struggles are more closely related to the issues affecting families in every day life: lack of resources, systems that do not communicate, failure of social safety nets, and a lost sense of community belonging. These challenges have informed the kind of person, parent, and public health professional I have become. I do not regret them, as I learned a great deal about myself as a result.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am one of those people who cannot sit still for very long. I wear a lot of hats in our community and have for 15+ years. I began as a community doula in 2013 and have worked 124 births within Kalamazoo, Kent, and Calhoun Counties alone. In that span of time, I have built close relationships with the women I supported and trained, some of whom have now gone on to become doulas and/or community health workers themselves. Upon finding my stride, I realized that with my level of education and drive, I needed to have a seat at the table to affect real change.
After the birth of our son, I began working for a local home visiting program housed in the health department as an administrator, data analyst, and outreach coordinator. I stayed on for about 6 years, then the pandemic hit. The amount of stress I was under at the health department was incredible. I experienced clinical burnout from receiving threats and daily disparagement for simply doing my job and answering the phone. I reached my limit and I left the health department. I left to lead a maternal infant health program at a local nonprofit while I completed my Master of Public Health program.
After I finished, I returned to the health department in a direct service capacity. I am now a maternal-child health and child development specialist with Kalamazoo County-Healthy Families America (HFA), and I have been here for almost 4 years. My HFA team is comprised of the most incredible women I have ever had the honor of working with, led by our supervisor, Denise Price. It feels so validating to finally have a team of “doers” around me. We are happy to be the squeaky wheels if it means all families have access to the services they need to thrive. I also serve on the State of Michigan’s Healthy Families Michigan/Parents as Teachers Advisory Council, which informs the Michigan Public Health Institute and Center for Quality Family Support, which supports and supervises home visiting programs over the state. I have learned so much from them throughout this time and absolutely love my job.
I also am the Public Health Navigator for the Institute of Public Scholarship, another local nonprofit. I work on the Ampersee Home Start Advisory Team and assist our housing-insecure participants with accessing resources, state assistance, SSI/SSDI, mental health/substance use care, financial education, and more. Our team is close knit and incredibly supportive of each other. Reeta and Mia are two of my favorite people on the planet, and it’s such a joy to work with people with whom I share mutual respect and dedication to our community.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a child, I always had an interest in knowing “Why?”. My parents nurtured this, giving me chances to question the world around me. I was raised in Lansing, a private school kid from the very start which led to my later academic and professional successes. I am SO grateful for my parents prioritizing a high quality education. My parents were divorced, but both remarried their perfect matches. I am blessed to have 4 parents who would move heaven and earth for their children. My knowledge of that level of parental love and sacrifice has stayed with me all my life.
I have always been a reader and retained high amounts of information that later become relevant. My parents always joked that they needed to sign me up for the youth edition of Jeopardy to pay for my college tuition. I spent a lot of time with my cousins as a child, most of us were more like siblings than cousins. My godmother lived across the street from us, so I spent a great deal of time with her as well. We also had a tightly-knit church community, which also was comprised of my parents’ best friends and extended family members.
When we moved to Kalamazoo when I was in middle school, I lost much of my day to day support system. Suddenly, I was dropped into public school which was a massive culture shock for me. I quickly learned to adapt and began exploring things that interested me individually. This led to me creating lifelong relationships, playing more sports, and ultimately figuring out exactly who I was. I loved horseback riding, softball, sculpting, animals and writing – not much has changed in 40 years.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ElanBridges.com
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/elanbridges
