Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Vantine.
Carol, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
In August 2010, my husband and I found ourselves sitting in a small exam room, receiving news that no parent wants to hear. At 24 weeks into pregnancy with our first son, we were told he had no heartbeat. After having two healthy daughters, we never imagined we would be in this situation. We knew it happened, but we hadn’t had much experience with it in our families.
Everything was a whirlwind after that day. We were given medicine in the office to induce labor and less than 48 hours later, we were in L&D delivering our son Matthew Lee Vantine. The days that followed were spent planning a funeral, choosing a cemetery, and making decisions that we never expected to be making. The world continued spinning while my world stood still. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Within a couple of weeks, I was back to work, but I wasn’t the same. I felt so alone in my grief. I didn’t want to make others uncomfortable by talking about my son. I tried to move on but in doing so, I started distancing myself from friends and only wanted to be with my family. I fell into a depression but my tears dried up. I was just numb. For years and years, I lived behind a wall to protect myself and others from these big feelings I’d had.
In late 2016 my pastor asked me to talk with a woman at our church who was having a miscarriage. I didn’t know what I’d say, but I agreed to call her. In walking with her through her loss, I began walking through mine as well. I realized that so many women felt like I had felt for so many years and I began to get a stirring in my soul that I was supposed to do something to help.
Another friend at my church told me about Peyton Lauderdale and about a night of remembrance she had done in 2015 that she called Gathering Hope. After learning more about it, I knew in my heart that this was where I was supposed to be helping. I sent Peyton a message on Facebook and we met shortly after at Starbucks. Instantly we connected and by our second coffee date, we were planning Gathering Hope 2017.
After our 2017 gathering, we applied for nonprofit status and on Good Friday in 2018, we received notification that we were officially a nonprofit organization. We hosted another gathering in 2018 and in 2019, we added a second gathering in Oklahoma. In 2020 we were slated to have three gatherings between August and October, adding Delaware to Oklahoma and Texas but COVID derailed those plans.
By late spring, we made the decision to cancel our in-person gatherings and shift to a virtual setting. This was all new to us and we had no idea how to make this work but with our incredible team, we were able to successfully hold our first virtual gathering on October 3, 2020. We were blown away by the response. Moms from 39 states and five countries joined us on Facebook Live and then moved to virtual tables to share their stories with other mothers who understood the pain of living on this side of heaven without their child beside them. We don’t know what 2021 will hold, but we are excited and blessed to be a part of this journey with hundreds of other mothers who beautifully honor their babies with us every year.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Yes and no. Neither Peyton nor I have ever done anything like this before. Prior to Gathering Hope, I was a teacher and worked in children’s ministry. Peyton had worked in sales and had don social media/marketing for her children’s school. It would seem that we were ill-equipped to run a nonprofit or to plan such a large gathering, but somehow, the skills we had used in our previous work actually served us well. I found that from planning and organizing events for our children’s program at church, I had learned a lot about managing and recruiting volunteers, planning minute details and my planning/teaching/writing curriculum helped me to prepare to expand our gathering beyond Texas. Peyton’s experience in social media helped us to be able to share our message clearly and easily, while her sales experience gave her ease at meeting new people and sharing our mission.
We’ve truly been figuring it out along the way, but it has also come naturally. To help make things easier, we have been truly blessed with hundreds of volunteers over the past four years that use their passions and their gifts to help further our ministry. Whether it is a gifting of administration, hospitality, prayer, or compassion, every volunteer has helped us move forward in serving more grieving mothers and their families.
We’d love to hear more about Gathering Hope.
Gathering Hope provides community and resources to women who have experienced pregnancy and/or infant loss. We started out with an annual gathering that brought women together for a night of worship, speakers, and an opportunity to share their stories with other mothers who could really understand where they were coming from. Just having the freedom to say their baby’s name and openly tell about their experience without fear of rejection or judgment has been life-changing to many women.
After the conclusion of Gathering 2017, we opened our first Facebook group, Gathering Hope: A Community for Moms After Pregnancy or Infant Loss (https://www.facebook.com/groups/850363201806229/). Shortly thereafter, we opened our second group, Gathering Hope: Pregnancy After Loss (https://www.facebook.com/groups/227105124547521/). We have found these groups to be filled with the most incredible, strong women who encourage and lift each other up day after day. I’m blown away by the positivity and light that these women exude. Though what brings them into this “Sucky Sisterhood” is sad and hard, these women rally around each other like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
In 2018, we began to offer quarterly socials to give women a chance to gather with others in the loss community. Our socials have been everything from painting signs, to having a cup of coffee, to a couples night at the Ax Factory. Having more face to face connections has strengthened the bond between our moms.
Our website, www.gatheringhope.org, offers resources to families and friends who are just trying to figure out what to do next. We have gathered lists of counselors in the DFW area who we know and trust, we’ve included other organizations that offer great support, as well as books that we have found comfort in our own loss journey.
I’m most proud that Gathering Hope, though dealing with a really tough issue, has found a way to help families focus on the hope that exists, even in the darkest of situations. Walking through grief is the only way to get through it, unfortunately. You can’t go around it, you can’t avoid it. Believe me, I tried. Though it’s painful, we see the women in our organization grow stronger and braver than they have ever been and then turn around and walk beside another mother who is in the early stages of this process. I love to see these women’s journey from hopeless to pouring into another mother, who is where she used to be. It’s a beautiful sight.
What were you like growing up?
It may surprise people who only know me as an adult, but as a child, I was social, fearless, and silly. I really feel like I was blissfully ignorant to the negativity around me. I loved theater in high school and college. The stage was my happy place. I was happiest with my friends and never tired of being on the go. I have definitely stepped back from the spotlight and today feel more comfortable behind the scenes.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gatheringhope.org
- Phone: 8172012097
- Email: info@gatheringhope.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gathering_hope/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GatheringHopeDFW
Image Credit:
Judy Rodriguez Photography
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