Parenting grandmother finds and gives support
By Mary Tudor
Anne Pierce is a grandmother raising her two grandsons, ages five and ten. She is the founder of Grandparents Parenting...Again, a Sonoma County, California, support group for "kinship caregivers," relatives caring for children in their homes.
Anne, 49, left a prosperous career as an accountant in San Jose, California, after she began caring for her grandsons, who had been abandoned by their mother. Isolated with an infant and a 5-year-old, Anne fortuitously discovered a support group for parenting grandparents in San Jose and started her own group when she moved back to Sonoma County, where she herself was raised.
Twice a month, a handful of the 40 grandparents in the group--mostly white grandmothers in their fifties and sixties, with a couple of grandfathers, too--gather in a church conference room to share stories and support. "It helps me to know I'm doing something," Anne says. Hers is one of more than 400 such groups nationwide. "Listening helps me resolve my own feelings."
In the Web space she's allotted on America Online, Anne posts news for the local support group as well as helpful links for her faraway online peers. Anne also belongs to an online community gathered around GrandsRuS, where parenting grandparents publish dozens of stories, poems, and prayers about raising their grandchildren.
Photo credits: (c)Charles Gupton/PNI, (c)Terry Morant
