Terri Shields, founder and executive director of Hazelwood’s JADA House International, sits for a portrait on Aug. 15, 2023, at the Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Opioids, violence, chronic disease and more have left many children in the hands of their grandparents. When three of my grandkids fell to me, I didn’t have a community around me. I’m changing that.
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They say the great thing about grandchildren is that you can enjoy them and give them back. But one day I was taking care of several of mine, and nobody came back to get them.
Days after that missed pick-up, I realized that I’d have to shelve my plans for post-parenting life. I’d thought that, because my kids were gone, I was clear to go and have fun. I’d been all set to live the good life — with disposable income — but found myself annoyed that after raising my own, I would be obligated indefinitely to provide three children, ages 6 to 10, with food, clothes, housing, utilities, time and attention. The only thing that came easily was love.
Decades later, I look back and realize that those children probably kept me from doing a lot of things I shouldn’t have done anyway. Plus they literally saved my life. (More on that later.) But I also know that their experience and mine could have been better if I’d had advice and support beyond the invaluable help provided by my mom and aunt. That’s why, this year, I started to help other people who are raising grandchildren and, most importantly, to tell them: You’re not alone.
No one to talk to
I was born and raised in the Hazelwood and Glen Hazel neighborhoods, with a mother and stepdad who left me wanting for nothing — except for a sense of belonging. As an only child for nine of my years and a latchkey kid for much of my childhood, I entered my teen years in search of love and attention. As a result, I became pregnant at the age of 17 and a parent before I could even really take care of myself. I learned on the fly while raising two daughters and a son.
I also got into trouble, including a few retail theft convictions in the 1980s. Thanks to merciful judges, I never did jail time and took their words of warning to heart. I found work in the dietary department at what’s now the Glen Hazel Community Living Center, then at UPMC Western Psychiatric and later UPMC Health Plan.
When three of my grandchildren dropped into my life at age 45, I felt all alone, like there were no resources and no community for me to reach out to. Maybe I moped a little, but mostly I just bit the bullet and did what I needed to do.
My career kept us afloat financially, but barely. Thank God, I was able to keep my gas and electricity bills within my budget. There were hurried baths and showers because there was no money set aside for the water bill of a family of four.
My mother and my aunt were my rays of hope, taking my grandchildren for parts of each week while I worked and studied. But no matter how hard I tried, I always had this nagging feeling that I should be doing more. I knew the kids loved me as their grandma, but there was something missing. They missed their mom. They missed both of their parents.
I took them to therapy. I just wanted them to be able to talk about it, maybe release some issues around the abandonment that, I knew, traumatized them. But they wouldn’t open up, probably because the therapist didn’t look like them. Where could I find someone with whom they could talk — and with whom I could talk? I was frustrated.
Getting my second wind
Making matters worse, my health nearly sank us.
In the 1990s, I was devastated to learn that I had lupus and, in 2012, the autoimmune disease began to show its ugly head. First my kidneys were shutting down, I was told. After three weeks in a hospital, I was stabilized and started to feel somewhat normal.
Then one morning I woke up suddenly barely able to breathe. I didn’t even have the breath to call 911. The grandkids found me and made the call. Had I been by myself, I don’t know what would’ve happened. They basically saved their grandma’s life. That turned out to be congestive heart failure, and doctors didn’t know if I would survive. After several weeks in the hospital, I came out grateful.
If my grandkids gave me a second chance, so did God. I asked myself: So what do I really want to do with my life? The answer: I have to give back.
I found the strength to finish, in December, my bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies at Carlow University. But that couldn’t be the end.
Sharing the lessons of kinship
By 2014, I was heading down the path of helping — starting with women like me. It started simple: Shared meals at my home, some women talking about our struggles and how we can repair our families and ourselves.
From that foundation, I decided to start JADA House International, while continuing to work full time. JADA is an acronym for the names of my older grandchildren (I now have 13, from baby to 28 years old, and four great grandkids). For nine years, I built JADA House largely on my own, with programs including Seniors Going Strong, Adult Night Mondays and JADA GEMS (Guiding and Empowering Minds for Success).
In 2017, the Heinz Endowments* made the very first grant JADA House ever received. The Pittsburgh Foundation* has supported Seniors Going Strong. Starting in 2023, our budget started to catch up with the vision. I’ve been able to hire two great ladies, Mercedes Lynn Williams and Dora Powell.
After nearly a decade of work on our programs, community events have become our signature. As the chair of the Greater Hazelwood Community Collaborative, I was asked by Professor Illah Nourbakhsh if I would like to participate in their cohort at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Shared Prosperity [CSP], where I met Terri Minor Spencer. At a retreat, she asked me if I was looking to add any programs to JADA House, and my initial thought was: Aren’t I busy enough?
But when I thought about it, I realized that my grandparent-as-parent experience gave me something to share. With CSP’s help, JADA House formed a committee to work up the Kinship Program and figure out the budget.
We settled on an eight-week program, designed to serve eight grandparents. The first cohort started in March and through May, we met in Hazelwood with a full curriculum including:
- Understanding childhood trauma through the Center for Victims
- Exploring our family histories with Finding Deep Roots
- Planting peace lilies
- Aligning our cells through the rhythm of drums
- Creating essential oils
- Learning to avoid frauds and scams with help from the Allegheny County Office of the District Attorney
- Picking up some yoga breathing exercises
- Creating family pledges by gathering family receipts
- And more.
Recognizing that grandparents raising grandchildren can’t just drop everything for a weekly meeting, we help them with transportation, dinner and child care on each evening, a $100 gift card — and, at the end, a long-stemmed purple rose and certificate of completion.
It has made me wonder: Why did God wait so long to have me doing what I’m doing now?
Generational curses, blessings
There are nearly 7 million grandparents living with grandchildren in the United States. Based on what I’m seeing, that’s because a lot of parents are either succumbing to gun violence or opioid addiction or chronic illnesses, while some are just teenagers not ready to be a parent. In some cases, I’ve seen a birth parent come back into the picture. Even then, though, these situations involve trauma, and the grandparents participating in the Kinship Program are increasingly conscious of that.
“Drugs have just jacked up our community, and there goes the grandparents, coming in to take care of the kids. … We’ve heard so much about generational curses,” one participant said at the end of the eight-week program. “This, to me, is generational blessings.”
“What you get out of the program is more knowledge of how other people are doing,” said another participant. “Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I can pick up on something else that I’m not doing.”
I wonder whether I would’ve done it better, or at least had it a little easier, if I’d had the Kinship Program years ago. At least I would’ve felt a part of a community.
At age 63, I’m pressing forward. I’ll soon be receiving my master’s degree in business leadership from Carlow University. I’m starting the second Kinship Program cohort and planning for more.
We’re still waiting on our first grandfather participant. Meanwhile, my fellow grandmothers have turned me into something special. I’m glad we have a village where we can bring grandmothers together and they know they are not by themselves.
Terri Shields is the founder/executive director and can be reached at [email protected] Click here for more information about JADA House International.
*Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation provide funding to PublicSource.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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