Lindsey Brewer is a mother — and she refuses to stay silent.
“If I can help one family grieve a little better, that would mean everything to me,” Brewer, a paramedic from Janesville, Wisconsin, said.
Her son Grayson was stillborn at 21 weeks, and a photographer was there to capture the family’s final moments with their son. Brewer says the photos and the online community she found through social media helped her stay strong as she processed her grief.
Brewer is one powerful voice in a growing movement of women who understand that sharing their stories is the first step toward dismantling the stigma around the trauma of pregnancy loss.
Watch the video above and read our full article to learn more about how families are helping each other heal.
Homepage photo by Michael Cullen Photography.
Tag: social media
How Do You Heal After Pregnancy Loss? For These Couples, the Answer Is Publicly
Last December, Lindsey and Ryan Brewer’s son, Grayson, was delivered at 21 weeks. Immediately, the couple had a photographer come to the hospital to take family photos.
One photo shows Lindsey in a hospital gown looking down at Grayson, a small bundle in her arms. Another shows Lindsey holding Grayson’s hand up to the camera; it is so small that it barely covers the tip of her index finger. The scene all seemed fairly standard — as far as family photos go — except that Grayson was stillborn, and this was the way the Brewers were going to remember their son.
The next morning, Lindsey sat down at her computer in her home office in Janesville, Wisconsin, and did something that is increasingly becoming a trend among women who have stillborn children or miscarry: She wrote a Facebook post announcing the death of her son, and then shared pictures from the hospital and her maternity shoot.
About one in four women who become pregnant will miscarry, and one in 160 will experience a stillbirth. Of those women, a growing number are dealing with the devastating pain and grief in new ways, particularly in their use of social media. Sharing their personal stories, it seems, helps these couples deal with their grief and begin the process of healing.
‘YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE YOUR BABY’
The couple was ecstatic when they found out Lindsey was pregnant a few months earlier in August. Lindsey, 25, and Ryan, 29, had been married for less than a year and had just started trying for a family.
At the 12-week checkup, they found out that they were having a boy but also got some troubling news: The baby was measuring small and had two cystic hygromas — buildups of fluid behind the head and neck that can be an early sign of Down syndrome. A test showed their baby had a 95 percent chance of having the chromosomal defect.
The Brewers opted to do another test to confirm the original findings. Either way, they were still excited to be parents. They had picked out an outfit to bring him home in and decided on a name: Grayson John Brewer.
At the 16-week mark, Lindsey went in for an amniocentesis, the test that would confirm if the baby had Down syndrome. But there was worse news.
After an initial scan, the doctor said that she could not perform the test. There was too much fluid buildup.
“It’s inevitable,” Lindsey remembers the doctor saying. “You are going to lose your baby.”
In an instant, the Brewers went from preparing to meet their son to preparing to lay him to rest. Together, they decided that Lindsey would continue with the pregnancy unless her health was compromised.
At 21 weeks, the Brewers went in for an ultrasound and found out that the baby’s heartbeat was gone. That was a Thursday. The next Monday, Dec. 11, Lindsey and Ryan went to the hospital where she was induced. Grayson was born soon after.
They called their friend, a photographer, to come and take photos of the family, and then Lindsey and Ryan took Grayson home to rock him in his nursery before taking him to the funeral home to prepare for burial.
The next day, Lindsey went to Facebook for support. As painful as it was, she was ready to share her loss and grief.
“I wanted the news out there,” Lindsey says. “And I needed people to talk to.”
A SOCIAL TREND
Sharing on social media helps families break through the isolation of miscarriage and stillbirth, according to Denise Cote-Arsenault, a registered nurse and professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro School of Nursing. For more than 30 years, Cote-Arsenault has worked with families who have lost babies.
She’s seen more families have pictures taken and displayed not only on social media but also in their homes. She says they also actively speak about their deceased children as part of the family, things that simply did not happen a few decades ago.
“I think it’s a very healthy, therapeutic thing for them to do,” Cote-Arsenault says. “It used to be if you lost your baby you were told not to talk about it.”
Posts about death in general have increased on Facebook since 2014, when it changed its policies around memorializing pages of the deceased. A study conducted last year on social media mourning found that 50 percent of Facebook users surveyed had either posted or interacted with a post about death in the last few years.
The number of online support groups has grown since 2014 as well. Families who have suffered pregnancy loss now have many spaces online to connect, grieve and bring awareness about the prevalence of miscarriages and stillbirths to a wider audience.
Currently, there are more than 100 active Facebook groups and Instagram pages devoted to grieving parents. There are also accounts dedicated to awareness, specifically on Instagram — a recent search shows that the hashtag #pregnancylossawareness has been used nearly 19,000 times on the platform, and #pregnancyloss has been used more than 100,000 times.
Dr. Jessica Zucker, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who works with women who’ve experienced pregnancy loss, runs an Instagram account herself, a page called I Had a Miscarriage.
“We’re seeing more people announcing their losses, because why shouldn’t they? If it’s become normal to share sonograms and gender reveals, acknowledging pregnancy loss is just as important,” says Zucker. “If people are sharing about family-building, shouldn’t there be space for people who intended to build their family to share their grief if it goes awry as well?”
Research has shown that using social media can be beneficial to the healing process. A 2016 study by Eastern Illinois University graduate student Resa Ware, a hospice bereavement counselor, found that many people who use Facebook to publicly express grief find it helpful; 46 percent of users surveyed said that Facebook had a positive impact on their individual grief journey.
After Lindsey posted her story on Facebook, several mothers in her community messaged to share their own stories of loss and offer support. She also joined a Facebook group for bereaved mothers.
“People can post and everyone is so supportive and behind them,” says Lindsey, adding that speaking to women who have had similar experiences helps her the most. “It’s amazing.”
NEXT STEPS
At first, after they lost Grayson, the Brewers weren’t sure that they could handle another pregnancy. But friends and family encouraged them to keep trying. “Remember,” a friend told Lindsey, “you are parents even though you don’t have a baby at home.”
The couple have been trying to have another child since February, but are not pregnant yet. As much as Lindsey wants to get pregnant again, she’s also terrified. She’s not sure that she’ll ever enjoy pregnancy again. And as time passes, she’s found that people who have not lost a child sometimes don’t understand that she’s still grieving.
Still, she has continued to share photos from her shoot with Grayson on social media and says that she could not be happier with how the images turned out, or her decision to have them done.
And until the time comes when she’s able to share news of another pregnancy, there’s still Facebook.
Facebook Takes on Revenge Porn
Facebook announced this week that it will expand its quest to solve for “revenge porn” — the act of sharing sexually explicit images of someone online without their consent — by asking users to voluntarily submit their own racy photos.
Sounds legit, right?
It actually could work, according to tech leaders and activists who argue that in order to combat unauthorized sharing of photos, there needs to be a tech-driven solution.
“It’s demeaning and devastating when someone’s intimate images are shared without their permission, and we want to do everything we can to help victims of this abuse,” said Antigone Davis, global head of safety for Facebook, in a post on the site.
Last year, the social media giant released a set of tools that, on the back end, uses photo-matching technology to stop an intimate image or video from being posted again once it’s already been reported and removed from Facebook-owned platforms, including Messenger and Instagram.
But that system is reactionary: an image has to already be published for all the world to see before it gets taken down.
“Even if these platforms are willing to take [the material] down, we know it can be very distressing for someone to have these images seen by their employer or their family members or peers,” says Erica Olsen, director of the Safety Net Project for the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). “That reactive measure of taking them down after they’ve already been online — the damage is kind of done, in some way.”
In response, Facebook is taking a tip from survivors’ own proactive measures by using copyright law to block unauthorized images — in some cases, before they can even go up.
Olsen says that survivors have been known to take all the images or videos in their possession and copyright them. That way, if a photo or video is uploaded to a site that has a copyright firewall, the image is immediately flagged and removed. For sites that don’t have those protections in place, copyright law supersedes, and legally the images must be taken down.
With the new protocol, people can upload intimate images of themselves, privately, to ensure that they can’t be uploaded by anyone else. Facebook has partnered with several safety organizations, including NNEDV, who will facilitate the process in which users are provided a one-time link to submit any images of themselves that they do not want shared online. The images are reviewed and given a unique hashtag that can identify attempts to upload the same material in the future without having to store the original on Facebook’s servers.
In this way, sensitive and damaging photos and videos are preemptively flagged and blocked from ever being seen by the public at large.
Revenge porn has become a widespread problem. According to a 2016 study by the Data & Society Research Institute, more than 10 million Americans have either had someone threaten to post lewd images of them, or have been the victim of such images being shared online without their consent.
Amanda Lewandowski, a clinical teaching fellow at the Technology Law and Policy Clinic at New York University, has written extensively on the topic of how copyright law can be an effective — and proactive — solution to fighting revenge porn.
“Because an estimated 80 percent of revenge porn images are selfies, meaning that the subject and the photographer are one in the same, the vast majority of victims can use copyright law to protect themselves,” she says.
Olsen has seen the tactic work. “In many cases, survivors have learned that copyright laws [make it] a little bit easier to go after sites and get images taken down,” she says.
Now, with the roll out of Facebook’s new proactive self-reporting program, victims and survivors have one more tool in their arsenal to fight back against online harassment.
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Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Facebook provides users with a one-time link to upload photos, not partner organizations.
6 Social Impact Apps Designed With You in Mind
There’s an app for just about anything these days. And whereas sometimes it feels like many of them lack any real reason for being — like these, um, “wonders” of technology — there are several that serve a very legitimate purpose, which is to drive social change.
And just as technology has become personalized and accessorized, the ways in which you can donate your time or money is equally as diverse and seemingly tailored just to you. Here are a few choice apps to put on your radar, whatever the type of mission-driven person you are.
FOR THE SEE-AND-BE-SEEN CROWD
GLOBAL CITIZEN: Probably best known for the insanely packed festival it puts on in New York’s Central Park each year, Global Citizen rewards users for taking action on such issues as global hunger, poverty and climate change with free concert tickets.
Past performers at Central Park’s Great Lawn have included big names like Beyoncé, The Killers and Stevie Wonder. Coldplay’s Chris Martin, the festival’s curator, reportedly has his sights set on Johannesburg for another musical celebration later this year to honor Nelson Mandela, who would’ve turned 100 years old in 2018.
By simply tweeting a message of action or signing a petition, users earn points and are then entered into a lottery to win tickets to Global Citizen’s network of worldwide festivals and concerts.
WE DAY: The WE movement began life as a Canadian nonprofit and eventually grew to international status. Through after-school programs designed by WE, students are encouraged to take measurable actions on issues ranging from cyberbullying within their community to improving access to clean water in developing countries.
After a year, students who participate in the program are invited to attend a We Day festival, where they might catch appearances by bold-faced names like Kelly Clarkson, Selena Gomez and Andre De Grasse.
But for students who don’t have a WE Schools program, the WE Day app allows them to earn festival admission through volunteer work. So far, the organization has galvanized over 1 million youth to volunteer more than 27.6 million hours.
FOR THE GYM RATS
CHARITY MILES: Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and Humana, Charity Miles tracks how many miles you walk, bike or run, and then donate to charities of your choice.
Bikers receive 10 cents per mile to donate, while joggers and runners get 25 cents per mile. There are dozens of charities to choose from, including The Wounded Warrior Project, Stand Up to Cancer and the Alzheimer’s Association.
While the amount you can raise for any one training session is small — completing an Ironman triathlon would only donate a bit over $15, for example — the more you exercise, the bigger your impact.
MAXIMUSLIFE: Thrive on a little friendly competition? MaximusLife allows you to enter fitness challenges and compete against friends, all in the name of raising dough for the causes you most care about.
The platform pairs with your wearable devices to track your exercises, along with your sleeping habits, and rewards you points that corporate partners will accumulate and donate on your behalf. Participants can take on daily challenges to increase their points as well as join a team to up their rewards.
FOR THE INSTA-OBSESSED
EATWITH: Sampling food from different cultures is a sure-fire way to expand your knowledge of the world and better your relationships with people who are different from you. (It also makes for envy-inducing vacation posts.) In fact, culinary diplomacy has even warranted its own field of study at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy.
The Eatwith app allows you to search dinner parties, food tours and cooking classes by location and matches you with local hosts who will serve up one-of-a-kind meals (and experiences) right in their home. The result is an authentic cultural adventure that just can’t be replicated in a restaurant.
FOR THE CONSCIENTIOUS CONSUMERS
FORWARD: Spring has officially sprung, which means that for many people, clearing out closets, garages and dresser drawers tops their to-do list. But instead of relegating household items and clothes to the curb, adding to the growing 12.8 million tons of textiles dumped into landfills each year, Forward lets you offload goods and do good in the process.
How it works: Simply upload a pic of the thing you no longer want and choose a charity. If someone decides to take it, they’ll “buy” it via donating to the charity of your choice. And if that’s not a win-win, we’ll just go back to sticking our smartphones in our mouths.
What I Know About Social Media
This post is paid for by AARP.
How Next-Gen Leaders Are Turning Passions Into Progress
It’s hard to imagine Ari Afsar ever losing her tune. But the “Hamilton: An American Musical” actor, who plays Eliza Schuyler in the Chicago production, spent several years as a tween, then teen, perfecting her craft at a senior living center. Those long afternoons practicing were filled with lost tunes, forgotten words and cracked notes, but “they wouldn’t care at all,” she laughs, describing them as “the best people to perform in front of.”
Those performances sprang from a troubling insight: “When I would visit my grandma, it seemed like I was the only visitor,” she told a packed audience at the Social Innovation Summit in Chicago. “We’re afraid of getting older, so we put older people in the back of our minds.” A young Afsar decided to change that, and at the age of 13, she started Adopt a Grandfriend, a social club that brings theatrical performances to nearby senior centers. After the curtain closed on productions, the performers would spend time with residents. According to Afsar, the results extended beyond the stage, and several long-term friendships resulted from their work.
In a social media landscape that encourages young people to scroll through endless cause posts and calls-to-action every day, it’s easy to wonder if online exposure translates to actual action. But according to DoSomething.org CEO Aria Finger, the next generation isn’t just engaged — they’re highly engaged: 62 percent of Gen Z and millennial respondents have volunteered in the past 12 months, and roughly half volunteer every single month. And, despite the volume of cause-related content presented to young people, tomorrow’s leaders appear to have a knack for targeting the opportunities that are most relevant to them.
That was true for Afsar, who combined her passion for performance with her desire to improve the quality of life for local senior citizens. It also was true for summit speaker Marley Dias, a diehard bookworm who discussed her frustration at her library’s limited selection of books about “white boys and their dogs.” Dias, then 11, reacted by creating a book drive called #1000BlackGirlsBooks, and turned her passion into social action. The hashtag — and initiative, which focuses on books that feature black girls as protagonists — went viral. Since the launch in 2015, the New Jersey tween has collected more than 10,000 books and landed her own book deal. “I want to raise awareness and consciousness,” she says, about her mission to bring inclusivity to bookshelves. “It’s not about just knowing the problem exists, but having the consciousness to want to make a difference.”
Despite stereotypes that Millennials are lazy, self-involved, digital addicts, there is equal — or more — evidence that positions them as nascent innovators. Millennials are more inclined to launch their own initiatives that align their passions with social, economic and civic good, rather than join older organizations aimed at solving the world’s broadest problems.
For a generation that grew up with technology and access, it makes sense that their ventures are often responding to trending or topical issues. Maria Yuan, a NationSwell Council member, was managing a political campaign in Iowa when she realized that citizens also wanted to engage between election cycles — when the real work that affects our lives is done — but there was no venue to support that need. Yuan launched the nonpartisan platform IssueVoter to give everyone a voice in democracy by making civic engagement accessible, efficient and impactful.
“The focus on issues makes sense because 40 percent of voters are independents and 48 percent of Millennials don’t identify with a political party, according to Pew,” says Yuan. IssueVoter also helps turn slacktivism into activism: Users can read legislation in layman’s terms, check out what both sides are saying, look at a personalized scorecard and also send their opinions to representatives in one click.
The Millennial generation’s proclivity for independence and solution-driven work shows no sign of slowing. Market research firm Millennial Branding found that 72 percent of high school students want to run their own initiative one day. Researchers at Northeastern University dubbed Gen Z the most entrepreneurial generation alive.
“I’ve realized life is long,” says Hamilton’s Afsar. “Yes, I want to accomplish things in my career in the arts, but I also see other areas that I can be involved in. There’s a connection between being an artist and being an activist, and we have to open our eyes to all opportunities.”
Presented by Social Innovation Summit. NationSwell is a Social Innovation Summit partner.
Social Innovation Summit is an annual global convening of black swans and wayward thinkers. In June 2017, more than 1,400 Fortune 500 corporate executives, venture capitalists, CSR and foundation heads, government leaders, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, activists, emerging market investors and nonprofit heads convened in Chicago to investigate solutions and catalyze inspired partnerships that are disrupting history.
When Cities Get Connected, Civic Engagement Improves
With tighter budgets and fewer resources, local governments are turning to technology to stay connected to residents and improve their systems. According to the Digital Cities Survey published by Government Technology magazine, four major tech trends are visible across most of the participants, which range from cities with populations of 50,000 to more than a million.
1. Open data
Transparency is important for governments and thanks to technology, it’s easier to achieve than ever. Leading the pack of cities with easily accessible data records is New York City. The Big Apple started its open data system in 2012 and now has 1,300 data sets available for viewing. Chicago ranks second with over 600 data sets, while San Francisco scores the highest rating in U.S. Open Data Census for open data quality.
Open data isn’t limited to the country’s biggest cities, however, as mid-size Tacoma, Wash., offers 40 data sets and Ann Arbor, Mich,. has financial transparency data that is updated daily, according to Governing.
2. Stat programs and data analytics
These types of initiatives originated in the 1980s with the NYPD merging data with staff feedback, but have expanded to other cities. Louisville, Ky., now has Louiestat, which is used to spot weaknesses in performance and cut the city’s bill for unscheduled employee overtime.
Governing reports that data analytics are also a popular tool to gauge performance. In Denver, Phoenix and Jacksonville, Fla., local governments use them to sort through all their data sets in search of patterns that can be used for better decision-making.
3. Online citizen engagement
As social media becomes more prevalent in daily life, governments are getting on board to stay connected. Through social media sites and online surveys, local governments are using social media to engage their residents in local issues.
One such city is Avondale, Ariz. (population of 78,822), which connects a mobile app and an online forum for citizen use. Citizens can post ideas on the forum and then residents can vote yay or nay.
4. Geographic information systems
Although it’s been around for a long time, cities are updating the function of GIS to help make financial decisions that will, in turn, improve performance, public transit and public safety as well as organize social service and citizens engagement activities.
Augusta, Ga., recently won an award for its transit maps, while in Sugar Land, Texas, GIS is used for economic development and citizen engagement with 92 percent survey respondents citywide.
Based on all this, it seems that cities have embraced the tech craze.
MORE: Which 3 Cities are Fighting Poverty Through a Tech Cohort?
The Tech Giant That’s Playing Fairy Godmother to Teachers Nationwide
Google is getting an A+ in generosity this month.
Teachers in Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Kansas City, Austin and Washington D.C. and more have been #FlashFunded (a social media campaign we can get behind) by the tech titan — meaning that educators in these cities recently saw every single item on their DonorsChoose.org (a crowdfunding site where teachers post items or materials they need for their classrooms) wishlists completely funded.
In Los Angeles, Google donated $1 million to 769 teachers, who will receive school materials such as paper, pencils, books, laptops, musical instruments and microscopes for their 75,108 students, the Santa Monica Mirror reports.
And in Massachusets, Google forked out $175,000 to 202 Boston and Cambridge teachers. (If you click on this DonorsChoose link, for example, you’ll see that every project that was listed on Boston’s page has been removed.)
Google’s move got a hearty pat on the back from native son, Ben Affleck.
MORE: What You Need to Know About the 5 Most Successful Social Media Campaigns for Social Change
Austin received $87,803 for 133 projects, and teachers in Seattle had 341 back-to-school projects funded. Incredibly, a $240,000 donation to Washington D.C.’s teachers has impacted a total of 31,362 of the area’s students.
“We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students,” says Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, after a $194,370 donation funded 175 projects in greater Kansas City. “This is a great day for Kansas City classrooms.”
ALSO: To Change Public Education, This Nonprofit Is Hacking the System
Google’s gesture not only ensures that teachers in high-need communities have the supplies and tools they need to help students succeed, but it also alleviates a very expensive burden many of them probably face. As we previously reported, the average educator spends $350 of his or her own money for classroom supplies and resources (and we already know that our country’s teachers don’t make a lot of money). By allowing our nation’s teachers spend less time worrying about money, they can devote more time educating students instead.
This isn’t the first time Google has made a generous donation to help our nation’s educators soar, and undoubtedly, their current nationwide blitz is getting teachers in other cities very excited.
We wait with baited breath to see which city’s deserving students and teachers get #FlashFunded next.
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What You Need to Know About the 5 Most Successful Social Media Campaigns for Social Change
The videos filled your Facebook and Twitter feeds for weeks. Everyone from your great aunt to your favorite actor to politicians jumped on the bandwagon and doused themselves with ice-cold water all in the name of charity.
Whether you love it, hate it or experienced the challenge’s chill firsthand, it’s official: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, in all its cold, wet glory, is a bona fide social media success. But it’s far from the first online marketing campaign to go viral. Here are five social media campaigns — and what you need to know about them — that have made a substantial impact on an organization’s efforts to raise awareness or funds for its cause.
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Did we miss one that stood out to you? Let us know in the comments!
Inspired by the #IceBucketChallenge, Students Are Nominating Celebs to Pay Their Tuition
Never underestimate the power of social awareness campaigns.
That’s the lesson we’ve learned during the past month as celebrities, your Facebook friends and people around the world have been dumping buckets of ice water on their heads to raise funds and awareness for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). Thanks to the #IceBucketChallenge, the ALS Association has raked in more than $100 million and counting.
Piggybacking off the viral sensation, socially savvy college students have decided to use the power of the hastag to draw attention to the cost of higher education.
Called the #PayMyTuitionChallenge, these young men and women are “nominating” the rich and the famous — President Obama, Jay Z, Beyoncé, and Bill Gates to name a few — to pay their college tuition.
MORE: Does Dumping Water on Your Head Actually Work to Raise Awareness?
According to EducationDive, the #PayMyTuitionChallenge hashtag clocked in more than 30,000 tweets in just over 36 hours at a rate of 4,000 student tweets per hour.
And while celebrities have yet to respond to the recent barrage of tweets, the learning management system Blackboard definitely noticed and even launched a scholarship campaign around the challenge.
The company offered one $15,000 award and two $5,000 awards going to the runners-up. To enter, students had fill out a Blackboard website and explain in a video, photo or written response how they will use their education to make the world a better place. The most popular submissions received the scholarships. Blackboard said they received more than 350 entries from all over the world, and last week, the company announced their three winners.
As we’ve previously mentioned, college tuition is only rising and our country’s total student loan debt has soared past a staggering $1 trillion. American grads are saddled with more student loans than ever before, and it’s clear that we have to fix this broken system.
As second place scholarship winner Keeyuania P. from the University of Southern Mississippi said, “Education is one of the best investments a young adult can make. Education has the power to change the world.”
DON’T MISS: Ask the Experts: How Can We Keep From Drowning in College Debt?
I nominate @charliesheen for #PayMyTuitionChallenge pic.twitter.com/DpxYqyvAJC
— I'm Shmacked (@ImShmacked) August 22, 2014
I nominate @KylieJenner because you can spend tuition money on bracelets when I'm struggling to buy a mcflurry #PayMyTuitionChallenge
— ashley | (@EscapeeAshx3) August 21, 2014
I wish this #PayMyTuitionChallenge was real cause once I saw the tuition for this school year, I was like pic.twitter.com/bKFpnAYUkE
— Briana (@livelikebriana) August 21, 2014
I nominate @BarackObama @Beyonce @TheElIIenShow for #PayMyTuitionChallenge. You have 4 yrs to accept #Stanfordstudent pic.twitter.com/dx8yXNKEv5
— ashley♡ (@AshMik64) August 21, 2014