Shiyonne Chester is an angel mom. Her angel is her son, Dallas, whom she lost in 2011 to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The long-time maternal health advocate is taking that loss and turning it into something positive by launching a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that provides grief counseling and other services to other angel moms, or women who have lost children.
This summer would have marked Dallas’s 15th birthday. To honor him, she named the organization the Dallas Lamar Project and is planning to launch it in Brooklyn as a resource for parents who must navigate the challenges that come with those she has faced.
“My experience during that time around grief and not having access to the resources and the grief support that I needed then kind of led me on the journey of wanting to start a Dallas Lamar Project,” said Chester, 40. She said the organization will provide grief support therapy and community-centered resources for families and parents who have experienced losses of pregnancy and infants.
Native American and Black infants were highest among SIDS and sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) rates when compared to their white counterparts, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2017 through 2022.
Chester plans to outfit her nonprofit with Black and Brown therapists and psychiatrists who can assist angel moms with grief counseling, as well as create a network of doulas and midwives for those looking to have more children after a traumatic experience. Her future goal is to partner with other entities to raise public awareness about infant mortality and the importance of Black maternal health.
“Those are the services that we’re going to be providing, ensuring that families that look like myself, and families who have experienced this loss, do not have to go looking for the support that they need,” said Chester.
Chester was born in Guyana and lived there until age 15. She migrated to Brooklyn with her mother in 2001, fascinated by how different the reality of America was from what she was used to seeing on TV. She attended Sheepshead Bay High School and then Brooklyn College before transitioning into healthcare.
After the loss of her son to what is commonly referred to as “crib death” when he was just 3 months old, she remembered feeling alone.
“I must say that my family and my friends were a great support up until the extent of what they could have given me at that time,” she said, “but talking about the death of a child, especially within a Black and Brown and a West Indian community, [is] a conversation that we don’t really talk about. Grief and death are conversations that we normally keep quiet within our communities, and it can be a very isolating place.”
Few places to turn
Chester actively went looking for help, but often found that the support groups she was in were just as isolating. She also didn’t consider the spaces she did find as very culturally sensitive.
SIDS doesn’t have a known cause, so at the same time she was struggling with her grief, she was dealing with the weight of the investigation into her son’s death.
“It took three months,” said Chester. “They have to rule out every possible thing before they can say it’s SIDS … my son passed in October and they did not get a ruling of SIDS until February. Until they can rule you out as someone who did not hurt your child, you’re identified as a person of interest. That means from October until I finally got the documentation that said I didn’t do anything to my child, I had to answer the question every day by the detectives. By social workers. We lived that day every day.”
To start rebuilding toward some semblance of normalcy, Chester began a small celebration on what would’ve been Dallas’s first birthday. She used the virtual event to discuss SIDS education with community members. This became known as Dallas Day and sowed the beginning seeds for her organization.
“Unfortunately, I wish there was a full idea as to what you can and cannot do,” Chester said. “There’s so many different studies as to [what to do]: ‘Don’t lie the baby on the stomach … put the baby on [their] back … ensure that there’s nothing surrounding the crib … avoid cosleeping — make sure that the baby sleeps by themselves,” said Chester. “Those are the important ones.” She is now encouraged by her ability to help others, while remembering the blessing of her son. Chester said she is taking the opportunity to turn a sad event in her life into something positive. “The intention of this space and this organization,” she said in a video introducing the nonprofit, “is to be rooted in compassion, connected through community, and guided through healing.”