Grief and Loss

The Dougy Center was created to provide grief support to families. This website is available in different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. The Dougy Center’s website has grieving resources for individuals of all ages, from kids to adults and caregivers.

Dr. Joann Cacciatore is a bereaved mother who offers support for families struggling with traumatic grief. She provides support packets and resources for parents, grandparents and siblings.

Kelly Farley is a bereaved father who lost two children over an 18 month time span. His website, Open to Hope, offers articles, podcasts, and books to help aid in recovery after experiencing a loss.

The Center for Prolonged Grief offers resources to understand what prolonged grief is and provides resources to help you or a loved one who may be experiencing this type of grief.

There is no such thing as “getting over” your child’s death. The grief is crushing and I don’t believe will ever fully go away. But it doesn’t have to destroy you. Knowing HOW to move forward is important. After all, no one is prepared for the passing of their child. But those of us who have endured this crushing trial can share what we have learned about moving forward.

Since the passing of my daughter, I have tried many ways of finding hope, purpose, and peace, as I’ve moved forward and into what seemed an impossible future without my daughter.

I wrote this short booklet to share what I have learned and what I am still doing so that I can move forward. While the pain and grief hasn’t gone away, I have found that it is possible  to breathe again, to live in peace, to hope, and to smile again.

Here’s to a day where you can too.

In 2016 after the death of my daughter, I wanted a way to raise awareness about LQTS. I became involved with the SADS Foundation to educate myself. I discovered a community of people in which to learn from and to share my experience with. This led to my writing, Choreography of Grief. As a hospice chaplain I looked for ways to support other families who have suffered loss due to SADS conditions. In an Amazon review a reader states, “The book is beautiful. I smiled, cried my eyes out, and smiled again.”

Amy Wright Glenn is a birth doula and hospital chaplain who has witnessed loss and grief alongside the patients she has served. In this book she reflects on her experiences as well as provides space to explore life and death. Here is an excerpt of her powerful book:

“And to hold space well requires a willingness to accept and integrate our own anger, regret, and sorrow. It obliges us to honestly apologize when our actions cause harm, and to fearlessly own the darkest corners of our life’s stories. In doing so, we gain the capacity to be present for others as the journey”

Megan drew on her own experiences as a counselor and someone who experienced the loss of her partner to write this book to try and debunk the myth that grief is a disease that needs to be cured. This is an excerpt from her book:

“When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. “Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form,”. “It is a natural and sane response to loss.”

Angela Miller wrote this book to help in the grieving process of mothers and caregivers everywhere. Here is an excerpt of the spirit-lifting and healing book:

“You didn’t choose this. You didn’t want this to happen. You didn’t do anything wrong. It just happened. To you. Despite your begging, pleading, praying, hoping against all hope it would not. Even though everything within you was screaming no, no, no, no, no.”

New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant provides readers with an honest and raw look at her own journey, navigating relationships, life and death, generational trauma and more. This is a great book to help you understand, reflect, and connect difficult times in your life in order to discover the way to healing. Here is an excerpt of her book:

“When you feel unprotected, unsupported and unprepared to take care of yourself, your insides will feel as if you have been through a train wreck. The best way to describe this experience is that you are having a head on body collision between your wannabe and your can never be.”

Psychotherapist Francis Weller provides a guide for working through grief and loss. Weller emphasizes the power and depth of community in the process of healing from loss. He stresses the importance of welcoming grief instead of fearing or running away from it. Here is an excerpt from Weller’s book:

“Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force…. It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul.”

is committed to providing resources and local support for those who are supporting children who are grieving.