Sarah Schmidth
Contributing Author, Director of Design, Marketing Manager at Lifetime Healing Foundation
Website Address: https://lifetimehealingfoundation.org
On “Ignite Success,” Sherrie Clark welcomes outstanding leaders to this uplifting and interesting show, filled with practical advice and tips for business professionals. This week, Sherrie sits down with Sarah Schmidth from Lifetime Healing Foundation.
To learn more, visit https://lifetimehealingfoundation.org
Short company description:
Lifetime Healing Foundation’s mission is to foster innovative programming that supports mental health initiatives for women who have experienced trauma through adoption, trafficking, sexual abuse, or any other form of exploitation.
How do you define success?
Success, in adoption education, would look like marginalized voices with lived experience being continually spotlighted, earnestly listened to, heard and authentically supported, especially as shifts and changes are made towards reforming the laws, policies and dominant narratives and practices of domestic infant adoption in America. Success is women not falling through the cracks any longer, after generations of being silenced in shame, but instead, having programs in place to support them in their times of crisis.
If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?
For shifting and reforming the dominant narratives about birth mothers and domestic infant adoption, via adoption education from my own lived experience as a birth mother of over two decades, and for being willing to have a continual growth mindset in shifting perspectives to the realities of my experiences long term and what that means about the legacy I leave.
How has your business changed in the past 12 months?
With the overturn of Roe v Wade, more vulnerable, in crisis women than ever before are at risk of being exploited through adoption avenues, whether by unethical, money hungry agencies and lawyers, desperate prospective adoptive individuals hunting for pregnant women online and through groups, unlicensed and unauthorized consultants and facilitators, illegal baby brokers and broken systems as a whole. Our business has shifted because more women are in need of quality, ethical, life affirming post placement care in the aftermath of life altering and heart shattering decisions, often made under duress, through coercive tactics and using manipulative trauma mining, religious narratives and demeaning language.
What are your biggest goals in the next 12 Months for your business?
Mainly, to get the word out about us and that we exist. We have never had a marketing budget, everything has been out of pocket and word of mouth up to this point. We are the first and currently only national post placement care network, our groups are held in 11 states, but how many women are still continually being missed because they don’t know we exist, don’t have a group in their area or anyone willing to step up to provide one, coupled with how hard we personally know it can be to come out of our isolations as birth mothers to really reach out and seek help and support when so many of us were made to feel it was undeserved after making these choices for our children. We want women to know they have a safe place to come and find ways to process and heal, as we will all continue to do for the rest of our lives, in the aftermath of choices we made or were made for us.
