Greg Adams

Greg Adams is a social worker at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) where he coordinates the Center for Good Mourning, a grief support and outreach program, and works with bereavement support for staff who are exposed to suffering and loss. His past experience at ACH includes ten years in pediatric oncology and 9 years in pediatric palliative care. He has written for and edited The Mourning News, an electronic grief/loss newsletter, since its beginning in 2004. Greg is also an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches a grief/loss elective and students are told that while the class is elective, grief and loss are not. In 1985, Greg graduated from Baylor University majoring in social work and religion, and he earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Missouri in 1986. One answer to the question of how he got into the work of grief and death education is that his father was an educator and his mother grew up in the residence part of a funeral home where her father was a funeral director. After growing up in a couple small towns in Missouri south of St. Louis, Greg has lived in Little Rock since 1987. He married a Little Rock native in 1986 and his wife is an early childhood special educator and consultant. Together they have two adult children. Along with his experience in the hospital with death and dying and with working with grieving people of all ages, personal experiences with death and loss have been very impacting and influential. In 1988, Greg’s father-in-law died of an unexpected suicide. In 1996, Greg and his wife lost a child in mid-pregnancy to anencephaly (no brain developed). Greg’s mother died on hospice with cancer in 2008 and his father died after the family decided to stop the ventilator after a devastating episode of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015. Greg has a variety of interests and activities—including slow running, reading, sports, public education, religion, politics, and diversity issues—and is active in his church and community. He is honored to have the opportunity to be a contributor for Open to Hope.

Articles:

The Rent We Pay for Living and Loving

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child’s perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here–the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as […]

Grief—the unwanted Hero’s Journey

Sometimes, we are called to a new journey, and we don’t want to go. And why would we when the call comes in the form of a loss? Loss of health with a new diagnosis. Loss of certainty about the future. Loss of faith. Loss of life for a family member or friend. Such significant losses call us to leave the life and places we knew into a journey toward the unknown. Resistance to this call is understandable, sometimes for as long as we can. This journey offers no guarantees except uncertainty and distress. To accept the call and begin […]

Collateral Blessings

We grieving people know a lot about collateral damage when someone we love dies. It’s not just the loss of the person in our lives, although that would be enough. There are other losses, too. Death doesn’t happen in a vacuum. While the death of our person may be the headline, there are other related stories and losses. Death doesn’t come alone and doesn’t leave empty-handed. Our grieving lives are like having a home that has clearly been robbed, but we don’t know what all is missing. It can take a long time to discover all the valuables that have […]

The Second Year of Grieving

How many times have we heard it, or perhaps we’ve even said something like it ourselves: “Oh man, the first year after they died was hard, but I think the second year, in some ways, has been even harder.” It doesn’t seem fair, and how can it be fair that the second year of grieving can feel more challenging than the first? If and when that happens for us, it can feel rather crazy-making. Did I do something wrong? Is this normal? How can this even make sense? Good questions, and the answers to the first two are likely “no” […]

A Different Kind of Animal

One is a cat owner, and the other has a dog. Both recently shared how difficult it will be when their pets die. They will need some downtime and space to adjust and grieve. Both thought that it might not be possible to return to work the next day. In another conversation, a man older than me shared how he still misses his dog. They had a routine, and he misses that routine along with his dog’s presence in his life and home. There was a younger woman, younger than me, who talked about how the death of her cat […]

When It Feels Like You’ve Got Nothing Left

“I’ve got nothing left.” Have you ever felt like that? If you have, you have lots of company. When someone who meant the world to you dies, it can feel like all the good in your world has died, too. It can feel like everything precious has been taken away, leaving you with empty arms and grasping hands. You can feel like there is nothing left. Well-meaning friends and family try to remind you otherwise: You still have people who love you. Maybe you still have your spouse or partner. You have your memories. Perhaps you have other kids. You […]

Why the Death of a Child is Unique Among Losses

The Death of a Child is Unique When Ruby Cooper was 16 years old, she gave birth to twins, and she told this story as part of The Moth Radio Hour podcast, https://themoth.org/stories/giving-and-receiving. One baby died at birth and the other was a boy later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. In was 1960, and her son’s doctor recommended that Ruby place her son in an institution so that he could be “with his kind.” Ruby responded that she was his mother and thus “his kind,” and she would raise him herself. Overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising a son with special […]

The Helplessness of Grief

The Helplessness of Grief Maybe your family is like mine. When a crisis strikes, you go into action to make things better. First, you want a better understanding of your situation, so you’re off to search the internet. After a good deal of searching, you go through your mental rolodex (remember those) to ask for additional information and suggestions. After making your contacts, you’re on your way to developing your “to-do” list of how to get a handle on the situation, or better yet, how to whip it into shape. A good crisis knocks us off balance and perhaps even […]

Hope is a Muscle

Hope is a Muscle Nicholas Kristoff doesn’t look away. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes about people all over the world who experience great loss. He interviews people in the middle of their suffering and shares what he has learned with the rest of us. And despite witnessing some of the worst of what humans can experience, he is not a pessimist. In a recent podcast episode of “Everything Happens with Kate Bowler,” he was asked if his family had a motto, and if so, what would it be? His response, in part, was this: “I think that […]

Not Censoring our Grief Stories

Not Censoring our Grief Stories I was recently in a bookstore on vacation with my wife and adult daughter. As we sat at a table drinking our afternoon pick-me-up beverages, both asked if I had seen a particular book on the shelf with books signed by the authors. I had not and went over to look. It was a grief book, not surprisingly, and I brought it back to the table for review. I liked the chapter and section titles and descriptions. I liked the people listed in the acknowledging of “grief guides.” And I liked the title and the […]

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