The Better India · 13 hours ago

How This Kerala Mother Supports Mothers Raising Children with Disabilities

When Sheeja Sandra's husband left after their daughter Sandra was born with microcephaly, she did not find a community waiting to catch her - so she built one. What began in hospital waiting rooms, where she kept noticing mothers sitting alone beside children with disabilities, became Snehasandram Charitable Trust, a network run exclusively by and for women who understand one another without explanation. The trust offers livelihood training, emergency aid, and the kind of steady presence that Sheeja once had to go without, because, as she puts it, "We are mothers who have failed life's tests again and again - but every time we manage to help one another stand, that is a small win." Today, more than 200 mothers across Thiruvananthapuram are part of that standing. Sheeja has since added Sandra's name to her own - a quiet act that says something about how survival, when it is shared, can become something closer to wholeness.