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How to Recognize Your Coping Style When Dealing with Loss or Change

Posted on June 29, 2016 - by Gloria Horsley

If you are struggling with an addiction (of any variety), it may well be that you have not yet fully developed the coping strategies that provide a way to handle various stressful situations. Certainly everyone handles loss and stress differently – and this way of doing things is known as their coping style. If you are falling apart and screaming because you can’t find your keys in the morning, chances are that you have not been employing effective coping strategies in your life to keep you and your life balanced. Then, when (not if) a true life changing loss occurs […]

Lynne Ann DeSpelder: Death Rituals

Posted on June 25, 2016 - by Heidi Horsley

Lynne Ann DeSpelder talks with Dr. Heidi Horsley about death rituals during the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference. DeSpelder is a counselor, professor of psychology, and co-author of the book The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying, which is now in its eighth edition. A leader in the industry, DeSpelder got into the field of death and dying like many others: It stemmed from first-hand experience. Rituals that are rooted in history are rich in our society today. In a recent visit to the Smithsonian, DeSpelder discovered that making a memorial quilt has been in practice for […]

‘Mort for Short:’ A Bereavement Tale

Posted on June 24, 2016 - by Morton Chethik

This is an excerpt from a book in progress about how play can help children communicate their thoughts and feelings, including grief. The action picks up in the therapist’s office. Nickie, at 8 ½, was not at all happy about seeing a “shrink.” “It was pathetic that they sent me here.” She hated her life. She had lived in a beautiful house before, and now she was squeezed into a small bedroom. Her new stepmother asked her what kind of curtains she would like, and she told her she wanted rags. The street was “pathetic,” the neighbors were “pathetic”. How […]

Coping With Sibling Loss

Posted on June 23, 2016 - by Beryl Kaminsky

Houston, Texas counselor Beryl Kaminsky shares tips for handling sibling loss during the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference. She wrote Mending the Broken Heart: After Your Child Dies, which is also an audiobook. Working through the loss of a sibling can be traumatizing. Growing up in the shadow of sibling loss can put too much pressure on a child, which Kaminsky experienced first-hand as an adolescent. Your parents are grieving, the rest of your family is grieving, and siblings can feel pressure (imagined or not) to keep everyone together. Then, at 27 years old, Kaminsky also lost […]

Jon Reid: Becoming a Grief Counselor

Posted on June 22, 2016 - by Jessica Tyner Mehta

Dr. Heidi Horsley talks with Dr. Jon Reid, a Professor of Psychology and Counseling at Southeastern Oklahoma State during the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference. He’s a certified fellow in thanatology from ADEC and shares his experience about becoming a grief counselor. There were a few key events that inspired Dr. Reid to pursue this career path. As an adult, he lost his father and realized he didn’t know what to do or what to expect. Feeling totally unprepared, he realized this situation and topic is one that’s uncomfortable yet common for many people. Dr. Reid attended […]

Isabel Stenzel Byrnes: Facing Mortality

Posted on June 21, 2016 - by Gloria Horsley

During the 2015 Association for Death Education and Counseling conference, Dr. Gloria Horsley connects with Isabel Stenzel Byrnes about finding hope and balance while living with an illness. Born with cystic fibrosis, Byrnes wasn’t given many years to live—but she has proven doctors wrong again and again. She attended CF-related camps as a child and then retreats as an adult. She cites her peers as giving her the support she needed to fight the disease. However, every year she loses friends to this illness and has seen how she will eventually die of CF. It puts her in touch with […]

Shep Jeffreys: Helping Grieving People When Tears are Not Enough

Posted on June 21, 2016 - by Dr. Gloria and Dr. Heidi Horsley

Open to Hope Foundation’s Dr. Gloria Horsley interviews Shep Jeffreys for the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) organization. What happens when tears aren’t enough to help you grief? Jeffreys is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. He’s also a psychologist and grief counselor with a private practice. He’s also the author of Helping Grieving People – When Tears Are Not Enough, which just released its second edition. Helping grieving people usually comes with “normal” customary things, but that doesn’t always work for everyone. Many times tears can greatly help a griever—as can friends, church groups, […]

A Young Father’s Murder

Posted on June 17, 2016 - by Jill Smoot

I met Randall when he was just six years old, the youngest of three siblings, one brother Mickey, and older sister Nancy, who was to become a lifelong friend. But at thirteen, we rarely thought of the future. It was fun to go to her house. Since I was an only child, I thought her little brothers were funny and cute. But time moved incredibly fast, and the little kid Randall grew up, married, and was now a young father himself. Nancy and I also had established homes of our own, and we remained close friends. As I reflect back […]

Father’s Day: A Duel Between Happiness and Sadness

Posted on June 17, 2016 - by Bart Sumner

The first Father’s Day I remember was when I was 8 or 9, and my dad and I were on an “Indian Guides” camping weekend with our “Tribe.” “Indian Guides” was a father and son organization run by the YMCA, and that weekend lots of fathers and their boys went camping in cabins, roughing it, and bonding. The Sunday morning that weekend was Father’s Day, and I had, with the help of my mother, hidden a pair of socks, wrapped neatly in my bag, so I could surprise my dad with a present when he woke up. Turns out, I […]

Fathers of Faith

Posted on June 15, 2016 - by Dr. Jane R. Westerfield

The hymn, Faith of Our Fathers, inspires the worshipper to be true to our forefathers’ Christian faith and to lead others to Christ through the example we set in our own lives. As Father’s Day approaches, it is with gratitude to God that I remember those whom we have “loved and lost awhile” as well as those who are still blessing our lives here on earth. I’d like to share three brief profiles of Fathers of Faith, men who have blessed my life. Bishop Frank Lewis Robertson My father was a United Methodist minister serving churches throughout South Georgia. He […]