Sarah’s Laughter

Sarah’s Laughter support group is creating comfort and healing through the power of connection. The Monroe group has allowed women to step out of their comfort zones and talk about their circumstances with others who have battled infertility or suffered child loss or miscarriage.

article by STARLA GATSON | photography by PRASAL PRASAI

“You don’t understand the value of a ‘me too’ until you need it,” declares Leslie Bauman. She believes the power of connection is life-changing, and that belief, coupled with divine intervention, motivated her to bring a Sarah’s Laughter support group to the Monroe community.

Bauman first discovered the faith-based nonprofit organization at the Choose Joy conference, where its founder, Beth Forbus, was a featured speaker. Though Forbus’s work and words sparked her interest, it was not until attending the conference again a year later that Bauman knew she needed to become a part of Sarah’s Laughter. “When it came down to it, I almost didn’t go, to be honest,” she admits. “My husband literally put me in the car kicking and screaming. We went and, come to find out, Beth Forbus was the lead speaker for the conference that year. The first night, Beth spoke, and it was like immediately I knew why I was there. I felt like God was like, ‘This is why Cody put you in the car — because you needed to hear Beth speak.’”

Since its establishment in Baton Rouge in 2006, Sarah’s Laughter has grown to include support groups in cities across the United States and Australia, and by the time Forbus had finished speaking on the first night of the conference, Bauman was determined to add Monroe, Louisiana, to the list of Sarah’s Laughter locations. She spent the rest of the weekend shadowing Forbus and other women involved with the nonprofit, learning all she could about leading support groups. After the conference, Bauman returned to Louisiana on a mission to make Sarah’s Laughter part of her home community. Knowing she couldn’t do it alone, she recruited her longtime friend, Beth Hendricks, to help make this new dream a reality.

“I said, ‘What can I do to help you?’ and she said, ‘You can be my co-leader.’ That’s not really what I meant when I said how can I help you,” Hendricks recalls with a laugh. “But anyway, it’s been wonderful; it really has been.”

Making the decision to lead the support group together was one that made perfect sense for Bauman and Hendricks, not just because they shared over 20 years of friendship, but because each woman also had a personal connection to the mission of Sarah’s Laughter through her own experiences with infertility and miscarriage. “That was a huge, huge moment in our friendship,” Bauman says of Hendricks’s agreement to join her. “She and I have been friends since middle school, so we’ve been friends for a long time, but our infertility journeys were very different.”

The details of the two women’s stories differ, however, both Bauman and Hendricks knew they could use their past experiences and the emotions they felt to connect with the women they would encounter through Sarah’s Laughter.

“I personally battled infertility,” Hendricks says. “I still don’t have any children, but my circumstances are a little bit different. I’m not married anymore, and that’s not really the path that I’m on anymore, but it was for about four or five years at least. I know what it’s like to be in the trenches of all of that, and I can kind of go along with other women experiencing that and cry with them, understand what they’re saying. Just to be with somebody else that gets it is something that’s really important to me.”

Bauman says she believes through forming bonds with others who have walked similar paths, women will find healing in ways they would have never expected. “It’s very isolating,” she says, remembering how she felt as she walked through miscarriage. “I call it, like, a quiet loss, because people remember it right then when it’s happening, but quickly, life passes for everyone, and it moves forward, as it should. But for you, it feels very standstill, and you don’t feel like you’re ready to move forward, and everyone else around you is.”

Their personal experiences fueled their passion for Sarah’s Laughter, and the two quickly got to work getting the support group off the ground. The conference Bauman attended was in June, and by July, she and Hendricks had signed a contract with Sarah’s Laughter, solidifying their commitment to becoming group leaders, and secured a location to hold meetings. Though they were unsure of what to expect, the two women hosted Monroe’s first Sarah’s Laughter support group meeting later that month. “We didn’t even know if anybody would really come,” Hendricks admits. “We had about 20 girls show up, which was truly amazing to us.”

The duo’s goal was to provide a space for women to feel heard and understood in the midst of difficult journeys, and so far, Sarah’s Laughter has done just that. Bauman and Hendricks lead the group once a month and have even created a private Facebook group to allow local women to remain connected to one another in their everyday lives. The two have worked to create a casual environment where each woman in attendance feels accepted and free to share her story. “It’s kind of been a learning curve of trying to figure out what works best for our girls,” Hendricks explains. “It’s always different because we never know who’s really going to be there or what circumstances they have going on. So, it could be somebody is just really having a bad day, and our time ends up being kind of concentrated on them and going through that stuff with them, or it could be, like, a time where you are celebrating the great things that are happening.”

Now, with over a year of experience under their belts, Bauman and Hendricks continue to navigate the ins and outs of leading a support group while looking ahead to achieve their next goal: providing comfort boxes for local women going through infertility, miscarriage, or child loss. They hope the boxes will not only let their recipients know they are loved but will also bring attention to Sarah’s Laughter.

“They’re trying to help us get our word out about our meetings and into the hands of people who desperately need to come to a meeting in the life journey they’re in,” Bauman says of the boxes. “Not to build a meeting, but to help people get where they need to be and not feel alone. And the second part of the box is to put things in the hands of people to help them heal.”

Bauman and Hendricks have partnered with The Woman’s Clinic to distribute two different kinds of boxes, one for infertility and the other for child loss and miscarriage. Each box will contain a journal, bracelet, candle, bath soaps, and informational cards about Sarah’s Laughter and the sponsors who contributed to the boxes. They will also include packages of seeds for families to plant, with forget-me-not seeds to honor the memory of a child and mustard seeds to represent hope and faith in the midst of the infertility journey. Inside the boxes will also be wooden clinging crosses, hand-carved specifically for Sarah’s Laughter by men at a Ruston correctional center, and Bible verse cards, which are inspired by the cards Bauman’s own friends and family left around her home to help her through a difficult season of her life.

Though the boxes are intended to bring more women to the support group, Hendricks says she is less concerned with the group’s numerical size and is more focused on letting area women know there is a space for them to be loved and supported. She says, “Ultimately, I just want people here to know that there is something available to them.”

The Monroe Sarah’s Laughter support group has allowed women to step out of their comfort zones to tell their stories, and Bauman believes that, despite the heartbreaking circumstances that lead a woman to a meeting, she will never regret coming. “It’s an amazing community to be a part of. It’s a community nobody wants to be a part of, to be honest. Nobody wants to come to a Sarah’s Laughter meeting — you don’t want a reason to be there. But once you’re there, you have no doubt why you’re supposed to be there,” she says.

Since its establishment in Monroe, many local women have found solace in Sarah’s Laughter. The private Facebook group has 182 members and counting, and approximately 50 of those women have attended a meeting. Through this unique community, Bauman and Hendricks have seen unexpected and meaningful friendships formed and the brokenhearted encouraged, further affirming their belief in the healing power of connection.

Sarah’s Laughter meets the third Tuesday of every month at 6 p.m. at 220 DeSiard St., Monroe, LA. For more information, visit sarahs-laughter.com.