Maternl: Support Our Efforts to Provide Solace and Healing

Maternl is a pro-bono program to help comfort those in need of support and compassion with a focus on a humanistic approach to healing the tragic losses of pregnancy and newborn loss.

Maternl shares my original projects, personal words, thoughts and poetry which above all enables me to ask why even when we already understand how. Poetry permits me as a doctor of medicine, witness to the frailties of our humanity, to abet healing through the very core of what makes us human; our language and our personal emotions. It has been my platform to tell my 'stories', to honor my patients, my friends, my family and indeed, the essence of humanity, the "family of man".

Maternl is intended for all in need of comfort, healing and solace including mothers and families who have experienced infertility, miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths for when we are ill, vulnerable and in need of care, although our spirits may fade and our viscera may bleed, we must be enabled by the agents of our humanity empowered by our words and language and ancestral songs of promise.

Maternl acknowledges that there remains inexorable suffering which accompanies tribulations not only from inevitable limits of new medical technologies but from pervasive disparities which exist to deny all to have access to and to be recipient of one standard of care; disparities defined by the social determinants of health, limited or no access to care, unconscious bias, lack of advocacy and "avoidance and dismisal rather than involvement and immersion". The paradox of our societies to both cure and cause pain is real and evident. Recognizing and addressing losses that parents experience through miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths (my life's work as an obstetrician) is my overlying mission as I believe it can serve as a paradigm for healing for all patients of all health professionals.

Michael R Berman, MD

Founder and President

Maternl