| In Touch Shabbos Retreat in Eastbourne 2009. Shabbos retreat gives support to special needs parents. This year's unique residential Shabbos Retreat for parents of special needs children in Eastbourne has been acclaimed for giving vital chizuk and encouragement in confronting the daily challenges of bringing up a child with disabilities. Organised by the In Touch support group for the second year running, the Shabbos Retreat attracted around 40 couples to Eastbourne. Hosted in a sea front hotel with comfortable rooms and spacious dining and conference facilities, as well as delivering inspiration and encouragement, the event provided parents with a welcome respite break. Besides laying on sumptuous catering by Mrs Bassi Berkowitz, the organisers went to extraordinary lengths to make every participant feel personally welcomed and pampered. Every family arrived to find a beautiful personalised welcome pack in their named room, with reading matter, flowers, sweets and other tasteful and tasty goodies. Every detail was taken care of, down to the local pool being booked for private use and a creche being provided for young babies so that parents could get to every session without worry. The Retreat provided a safe, supportive and understanding group where both mothers and particularly fathers felt able to speak openly about their worries, struggles and questions about the future. Each family's story is unique, but they share the themes of emotional and spiritual struggle, physical exhaustion, and frequently a sense of isolation and helplessness, especially in the early stages of coping with the unknown when a child with disabilities is born. Achieving a strong sense of achdus and bonding between families from London, Gateshead and Manchester who have shared similar experiences, the event allowed people to learn and draw hope and encouragement from each other. Special guest speaker Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz from Flatbush, NY, joining the gathering for the second year, stirred participants with powerful, poignant stories of his own experiences as the father of Nota Shlomo, a special young man with Down's Syndrome. Drawing on the hashkafa and insights that he absorbed from his rebbe, Rav Moshe Shapiro shlita, Rabbi Rabinowitz showed how Providence guides each step in the journey of exploration that parenthood of special needs children involves. While acknowledging the very real immense challenges of this role, Rabbi Rabinowitz cited an eloquent and inspirational personal letter from Rav Shapiro in which he states that the child with special needs has a unique ability to enable parents to achieve their own unrealised potential for tremendous personal and spiritual growth. In spirited discussion sessions that touched on some of the heart-wrenching dilemmas that can face parents of disabled children, Rabbi Rabinowitz explored such emotive subjects as giving up a child with disabilities for adoption, the appropriateness of tefilla for a child to recover from their disability, striking the right balance between the needs of the disabled child and those of their siblings, and dealing with teachers and educational institutions that are unwilling or unable to adapt to the disabled child's needs. Rabbi Rabinowitz spoke impassionedly of how husbands need to physically and emotionally support their wives, who carry the heaviest responsibility for caring for the special needs child not only when they are young, but often through into adulthood. Speaking on Shabbos, Rabbi Avrohom Moishe Lampin of Manchester made an impassioned plea for someone in the community to set up an information helpline to support and advise parents at every stage in their special needs child's development. Listeners were delighted when as soon as he finished speaking, Kisharon's Rabbi Yitzchak Freeman, himself a parent and Headteacher at Kisharon, announced that Kisharon is already in the process of setting up just such a service, which should be ready for launching publicly in the near future. Mrs Toby Walzer delivered a very successful session to the mothers explaining how every individual has the ability to recognise their innate health, thereby realizing that it is one's thoughts that create one's own reality. Rav Eliezer Schneebalg of Edgware's Kehillas Machzikei Hadass made a special trip to Eastbourne to speak at the lively and sublimely joyful melave demalka. He spoke of his admiration for parents who rise to the challenge of raising a child with disabilities, and drew on the lesson of the dove bringing back an olive branch to Noach to show how it is the difficult and challenging times in life that can show most clearly how Hakadosh Baruch Hu is providing us with what we need. Many participants spoke movingly of how the Shabbos Retreat had helped them voice for the first time the many conflicting emotions that come with having a child with disabilities, by letting them share their thoughts and feelings with others who understood exactly what they were feeling. Fathers especially appreciated this, since they have very few other opportunities to meet and talk with other men who have shared similar experiences even within their own communities. Billed as a rejuvenating Retreat, the weekend was applauded by Manchester participant Mr. Yossi Rosenbaum who spoke for all when he asserted that the event was not a retreat, but an Advance! |
