December 5, 2008

Guests: Sharon Banstra, a Catholic Charities Counselor and Wendy Solawetz with Catholic Charities' A New Beginning Adoption Agency
Featured Saint of the Day: St. Sabas

Today Deacon Rick and Jenny spoke with Sharon Banstra, a Catholic Charities Counselor and Wendy Solawetz with Charities' A New Beginning Adoption Agency. Wendy shared with us the two facets of A New Beginning. There is the pregnancy counselling side, where they work with women who are deciding whether to parent their child themselves, or if it might be best to put the child up for adoption. Once the decision is made for adoption Catholic Charities encourages the mother to make an open adoption plan.

Wendy gave us some of the details of what an open adoption plan entails. An open adoption enables the mother and her family to hand-select the couple who will be caring for the child. It ensures that the mother and her family will still have contact with the child once it has been placed. The Adopted family retains authority once the adoption has been made, but welcomes visits with the birth family. Having an open relationship between the birth and adopted families allows the child to grow up with a full sense of self, knowing where he came from as well as where he's going. Together, they all love the baby.

Deacon Rick and Jenny also spoke with Sharon Bandstra a Catholic Charities Counselor. Sharon and the counseling staff keep very busy. Sharon spoke of the need for counseling. She said that when people get anxious or stressed, they sometimes can get tunnel vision. With a counselor, they are afforded the perspective necessary to start looking toward the source of their anxiety. Counselors can offer an objective look on life's problems. From there, Sharon helps people discover methods of calming down or broadening their thoughts to see the whole picture when they encounter stress in their daily lives.

For those who maybe have a negative reaction to the idea of counselling, Sharon said that anytime we're struggling it is hard to talk about it. The question becomes, how do we think and process things? Sharon tries to look at the steps that led to where you are, and then discover how to work at it differently. She focuses a lot on finding your strengths and using them to help you deal with some of the things that life throws. Sharon has been working with Catholic Charities for thirty years and has done so because Catholic Charities makes its services available to everyone. It meets them in their need and finds a way to enable them to partake in the counseling services.