Michelle went through her pregnancy alone and her son Odin was born in November of 2019. Almost immediately, she experienced severe postpartum depression and anxiety.
As a single mother, Michelle felt isolated and a great deal of shame for not being able to care for her son the way she wanted to.
“As the days went by, instead of becoming more and more comfortable with caring for him and trying to feel hopeful about how this was going to turn out for me, it just kept getting worse and worse. I started thinking... I can't do this.
"I wanted my child so badly, but I started thinking maybe I'm not the best option for him. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong and I felt like I had no other options.”
Michelle began looking for a program that might take Odin for a while so she could get to a more stable place to make a decision about adoption.
A friend introduced her to the Families Together program through Christian Heritage. That’s when Michelle met Jon & Lindsay Davidson, who agreed to care for her son in their home for 3 months so that Michelle could get help and get healthy.
“I look at my son now and I know that it would have been the biggest mistake of my life to give him up. Jon & Lindsay gave me my ability to be a mother, to have my son in my care and to experience the joy that I have from him being with him every day. I'm just so grateful that they were able to give me the gift of time to get well and get better so I could be the mom that I wanted to be to my son."
