Mother Nature was smiling down on participants this morning for the seventh annual Bridget’s Run.
The fundraising event, which takes place every October at the Barrie Waterfront, helps bring together the community in an effort to support families who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss, explained Theresa Morrison, executive director and co-founder of local charitable organization Bridget’s Bunnies.
The event kicked off in 2018, one year after Morrison’s daughter was born still the day before her due date.
“After her death, we decided we wanted to do something to help other families that were going through what we were going through. It felt incredibly lonely,” she said before kicking off Saturday’s warm up.
Knowing what she and her husband had experienced following the loss of their daughter, the couple decided to start providing comfort kits to Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre.
The kits, she explained, serve as bereavement tool kits that can be handed out to families that were experiencing loss. In addition to grief resources, the kits include a bunny, which she said helps to fill a parent’s empty arms when they’re leaving the hospital without their baby.
“The idea is we want to set them up for those first days, hours, minutes to not have to worry about all of those extra pieces. We include sage tea (which) will help decrease mom’s milk supply. We have journals … and any kind of tools that helped us in the early days of our loss,” she said.
“The kits meet people in their moment of crisis, and this is where we try to pick them up further down their path and remind them of the love and joy that their babies brought them.”
Midland residents Shannon Hitchman and Peter Norman heard about the run on the radio, and decided to come take part as a family.
“It’s a cause everyone cares about. It’s something that everyone can support no matter who you are,” said Hitchman. “Everyone knows someone (who has experienced this kind of loss).”
In order to fund the kits, Morrison said they knew they’d need to create a fundraiser. Thinking back on how much running had helped them find a way to deal with their own grief, the couple decided to organize the very first Bridget’s Run.
That first year, she said, they’d only expected to see their friends and family come out in support, but they were very wrong.
“We made it public and had no idea what we were getting into. I feel like we’ve been trying to catch up ever since. We had 350 people come out that first year and fundraised over $30,000. Now, in year seven, we have over 760 registered already today,” she said. “We know right now that our fundraising is up about 50 per cent and our registration is up about 15 per cent.”
Based on what had already been raised through online donations, today’s event was expected to gross more than $60,000,” she said, adding about 80 per cent of the comfort kits are funded by the money raised by the annual event.
To date, the event has raised more than $250,000, she added.
Seeing the event’s continued growth and success, admitted Morrison, definitely brings about mixed feelings.
“It’s incredible to see the community support and we couldn’t do the work that we do without it. This year, we know just over 50 per cent of our participants are new. We know there’s always going to be new participants,” she said, fighting back tears. “One in four pregnancies ends in loss. Anytime we see our numbers climbing, we get excited, but then we also know the names of the babies attached to it and the parents. It’s a joyful (event), and that’s how we present it but we also know the devastation that goes into us being successful with this.”
