December 2024 Newsletter

December 12, 2024 | Fundraising Updates, Uncategorized

A Message from Abigail

Community, friends, and family—we did it! Giving Tuesday was a great success and we met our challenge of raising $15,000 to match a generous grant from the Anderson Charitable Foundation for the second year in a row. Thank you, thank you! We had a total of 89 donations and 100% staff participation. My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude as we continue to ask our community for support and you continue to show up. We really cannot do it without you!

Speaking of gratitude, I have had the honor and privilege to attend birth in Albuquerque for over 22 years. I have caught nearly 1000 babies in my career with the last 14 years being dedicated to Dar a Luz and offering women/pregnant people a warm, safe, caring, and empowering place to give birth. I believe that how we come into this world matters, surrounded with support, calm, and gentle hands. How we care for women and their families during the childbearing years and beyond matters. We build and maintain stronger communities through compassion and evidence-based guidance.

I have worked at Dar a Luz as a staff midwife and the executive director since we opened our doors on March 24, 2011, wearing both hats as well as I could and with as much grace as possible. This year has shown me that I can no longer do both and I have made the difficult and heart-wrenching decision to retire from midwifery at the end of this December. I will be focusing all of my attention on the administrative aspects of our center and moving the organization towards a model of true sustainability that can be duplicated across our state and beyond.

This has been one of the hardest decisions of my life; being a midwife is as engrained in my cellular makeup as being a woman, a daughter, a mother…I am going to miss all of the amazing moments as a clinician! The laughter in a prenatal visit, establishing trust when meeting a new client and their partner, the listening, the holding space, the being there right when they need me. And when a laboring person reaches down into the depths of her being and gives that final push when she thinks she just can’t do it anymore; the look on her face of pure joy and amazement as she sees her newborn for the first time; the cheers and tears as a tiny new human takes their first breath and opens their eyes on this side for the first time. Such gratitude and humility to be the first to touch a new baby, to tell someone “you got this”, to remind them that they know exactly what to do and so does their baby. Thank you for letting me be there for you. Thank you for letting me grow with you. Thank you for teaching me so much more than I ever could have imagined. “Birth is as safe as life gets.”

With abiding love,

Abigail

DAL December Updates

DAL awarded 2025 Challenge Grant

Fully funded in 2003 through the will bequests of Carl C. Anderson Sr. and Marie Jo Anderson, the Foundation funds non-profit organizations in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. The Foundation has invested more than $70 million in nonprofit organizations to assist them in serving the most vulnerable with a focus on children and youth, seniors and people with disabilities.

We are so excited to have met our challenge grant goal and to continue our partnership with the Anderson Foundation!

DAL selected as
2025 Community Rewards Grant Recipient

Nusenda Foundation’s mission is to create stronger communities where our members live and work through collaborative partnerships and by investing in innovative solutions to improve education, health, social, and economic outcomes. Collaboration with your organization is more important than ever in helping achieve our vision of realizing the full potential of our communities.

We are honored to be selected as a 2025 Community Rewards Grant recipient and look forward to this partnership with the Nusenda Foundation!

Call for Editors!

Our incredible staff has been hard at work updating our infamous Baby Book and now we need YOUR help!

We are currently searching for an editor to help format this new iteration so that we can get it printed in the new year.

If you or anyone you know are interested in helping us with this process, please reach out by responding to this email and we’ll be in touch soon!

Donate to DAL before the end of 2024!

Please consider donating to Dar a Luz before the end of the year! Every donation has a profound impact on staff and clients alike and allows us to continue offering our exceptional care to New Mexican families.

We thank you for your support!

DONATE HERE!

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