Kreeti Mitra Bhatia, Founder & Awesome Auti-Mom ‘The Special Mom’
4 min read
Autism does not come with a manual. It comes with a parent who never gives up. Gurgaon-based Kreeti Mitra Bhatia is one of those kinds. The mother of two was completely at a loss when her first born was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. She had two choices – either lose hope in despair or take it up as a challenge and raise a happy child with special needs. The fighter in her chose the latter. And after becoming an autism strong mother, she went on to create a platform for other mothers with special needs children to be there for each other. The idea to form a community came from the pain of another mother of a special child. “That mother poisoned her child, and then killed self. The news disturbed me to no end. I have lived and felt that pain over the years and could relate to what that mother would have been through to have taken that drastic step. I realized that it is imperative to create a strong community of fellow mothers, not to educate each other but to lend that patient ear and crying shoulder, and so The Special Mom was born in the midnight of March in 2019. The guiding thought behind this community is to find happiness for all of us. By doing this, my pain will reduce in some measure,” says the mother of an eleven-year-old boy with autism. The community brought together mothers to share their joy and griefs, good and bad experiences, inspire and motivate, and above all stand for each other. Kreeti loves to hear the words, “Yes, I can do it with a smile” and with The Special Mom, that is what other mothers are trying to do. “The Special Mom is a safe space where mothers of children with special needs vent out their thoughts & feelings without any hesitation. It is a place to have fun, cry and talk your heart out and let your hair down and then walk ahead with a renewed vigor. Before pandemic struck, these wonderful women met once a month and those few moments of zaniness energized and prepared them to face their daily struggles. It is also a source of drawing strength from each other and working towards their common goal of raising happy children with special needs,” says Kreeti, adding that the best way to deal with stress and manage it is to talk about it. “This platform does precisely that. It turns stress into a manageable daily task,” she says. This platform innovated completely the approach towards special need parenting and is constantly curating important programs to empower the parents, especially the mothers.
In this pandemic, The Special Mom successfully rolled out online programs to tackle the daily challenges and saw close to 170 parents attending every program. They forayed into building “Samaavesh” meaning inclusion, to showcase the brilliance of their children. This particular platform is created especially to exhibit various talents of the children and to help them find their niche thus paving the way for their independence and invite collaborations.
The platform has successfully launched a Dad only exclusive WhatsApp group as well. And along with this its running specific interest groups across WhatsApp & Telegram for parents & caregivers.
The community has grown to 5000+ members across all platforms and is one of fastest growing online parent support community.
Kreeti believes in the power of coming together “We use the word community a lot nowadays, but what is a community? When you come together to address specific goals and try finding answers as one team, that is community and the strength of coming together is pretty evident in the recent times as we are grappling with the new normal”. Last couple of months Kreeti drove a volunteer group to help special need families who were in need due to the second wave of covid.
The only advice this special mother has to share is, “you add value to get value,” and she lives with this thought every moment. Her own journey as a mother works as a huge motivator and she is just unstoppable. “When you have so many people showering affection on you and believing in your vision, that makes all this toil worthy”. She is in love with her ‘Special Mom family’ and she will continue to do everything she can to help them in this unpredictable journey.
For her immense & commendable efforts, she received Gurugram’s Achievers Award in 2019 and She The People TV’s 40 over 40 awards in 2020.
The Special Mom just announced its association with the parent support group of Bhutan, PHENSEM. They will be helping the parent community of the sister country with specially curated sessions and online consultations.
Kreeti dreams of a future where everyone is co-existing with happiness, understanding & acceptance. Her next goal is inclusion & acceptance of all the children thus helping the future generation of people to live in a beautiful world where special need children are understood and welcomed. She is grateful to her mentors, friends & her family for the strength and support.
The Special Mom is constantly striving to uplift and empower families and has lots of action planned for 2021-22.
Find them on
Facebook : Facebook.com/thespecialmom
Facebook.com/groups/thespecialmomgroup
Facebook.com/groups/thespecialmomsamaavesh
Instagram : @thespecialmom2
Twitter : thespecialmom2, kreeti
