Healing Hearts With Care And Compassion

By Nancy K. Crevier

Terri Nackid holds a cracked clay pot in her hands. It is marbled with lines of heavy-duty glue that hold the pieces together. Each piece is painted with pictures or inscribed with geometric designs, and scribbled with words like “confused,” “just okay,” and “hopeful.” On one side, a gaping hole remains.

“At the Healing Hearts Center, we try to offer activities to children and teens that facilitate healing,” she explains. The clay pot activity is one way that the young people, all of whom have suffered a loss of some kind, can express feelings, learn that the pieces of their lives can be put back together again, and begin to heal.

Ms Nackid is the director of community relations and development for Healing Hearts Center in Danbury, a program of Regional Hospice of Western Connecticut that offers free support groups, workshops, and programs to assist people in dealing with losses.

Founded in 1995 when the board of Regional Hospice realized there was an ongoing need for support to the bereaved, often well beyond the 14 months of support offered to hospice families after a death, and desperately needed by many who were not hospice clients, Healing Hearts Center for Grieving Children & Families moved to its present quarters at 73 Stadley Rough Road in 2001. There, families and children are offered the support of a professional staff and trained volunteers as they cope with loss.

Housed in a small clapboard cape in a residential neighborhood, Healing Hearts provides a variety of rooms that offer comfort, sanctuary, and relief to the varied clients.

Teens sink into overstuffed beanbag chairs and take part in group activities in one small room where client-created murals and artwork decorate the walls. Younger children gather around a table to work on crafts, read books, or take part in group work to identify their feelings, while the youngest children role-play with puppets and a giant “television” in which they are the “stars,” each group overseen by one of the 12 Healing Hearts professionals skilled in bereavement counseling.

The “Volcano Room” allows the bereaved to physically work out the overwhelming emotions that can accompany grief. The padded walls and floor invite body slams, a punching bag and gloves are there to take on the feelings of anger and hostility, and piles of foam blocks are built into towers that can be tumbled to the ground with one big sweep.

In the meeting room, families gather to open up and talk about the emotions and fears that have brought them to Healing Hearts.

Many Types Of Losses

“There are so many types of losses where people are needing support, that [Regional Hospice] recognized a need for grief support,” said Ms Nackid. “I think that Healing Hearts has made a powerful difference in the community by offering a broader range of support,” she said, adding that the organization continues to add workshops and support groups as the need is identified.

In the recently published 2009 spring/summer guide for Healing Hearts Center, more than two dozen support programs are offered. Programs designed for children and their particular needs, for teenagers, and for adults provide loss-specific programs: When a Grandparent Dies; Talking With Kids About Death; Groups for Children, broken down by age groups; Young Widows and Widowers; or the Motherless Daughters Group among them. The center also runs a weeklong summer camp focused on age-appropriate fun, as well as remembrance activities.

The Healing Hearts Center also dispenses care to those suffering from losses other than death. “We look to fill any needs not being met,” said Ms Nackid, and in doing so, the center has recently offered a program on coping with job loss and has continuing support groups for children and teenagers mourning the divorce of their parents.

More than 900 clients were served in 2008, including over 150 children, said Ms Nackid. She and Kendall Palladino, the director of bereavement and spiritual services, and a graduate of Harvard and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, are not surprised that the clientele continues to grow each year.

“I’ve given a lot of thought as to why we need grief counseling today,” said Mr Palladino. He believes it is the changes in our society that have made death a more feared and unfamiliar territory for many Americans.

“There is an increased mobility of our society,” he said. “People no longer stay in the same region as their families, they don’t have the extended support system of a village or nearby relatives,” said Mr Palladino. As society has become more pluralistic, there is no longer a “set assumption on how to grieve. [Americans] are not as ritually oriented as some other cultures,” he explained, and with more people living longer and dying in hospitals, people no longer have the hands-on education about death that was common one- or two hundred years ago when death and burial preparations took place at home. “Death is more mysterious in our culture,” said Mr Palladino, “and we are less equipped to deal with it.”

In some ways, he said, Regional Hospice and its programs are a return to that previous era, as patients, families, and medical personnel recognize when aggressive treatment has “a diminishing return.” Healing Hearts, said Mr Palladino, continues to build on the hospice mission of compassion and care, educating people about death and helping them find “the new normal” in their lives.

Not everyone who suffers a loss needs counseling, admitted Mr Palladino. How a family or individual deals with loss is particular to that person or unit, and some are well-equipped to move gracefully through the period following a loss.

“Grief is a natural process after a loss of any kind,” emphasized Mr Palladino. “Our hearts attempt to heal after an unwanted absence of someone or something that we love. Grief is not a ‘problem’ to be solved.”

If there is a block to successful grieving it can lead to problems, said Mr Palladino. The role of the staff at Healing Hearts is to facilitate the process of grieving for those who can benefit from additional care.

“When one is feeling a deep sense of profound loneliness, or a sense of sadness that is hard to share, those can be signals that additional help could be useful,” he said. Intense feelings of guilt or anger may also be a sign that outside intervention is needed in processing a loss, and these feelings can appear in any order, at any time after a loss.

“We tend to disenfranchise people’s grief,” said Mr Palladino, “when really, the process takes much longer than we might think.”

Healing Hearts Center has been the recipient of two prestigious awards this past year. In fall 2008, the organization received Honorable Mention for the 2008 Family Caregiving Awards sponsored by MetLife, and was honored as a finalist in the 2009 Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Awards.

“I’m proud that we have been able to expand and respond to the needs that are out there,” said Ms Nackid. “People may not recognize the long-term impact of grief.”

The new brochure listing workshops, camp dates, support and social groups, as well as a list of additional resources is available by calling 792-4422.

Healing Hearts Center relies entirely upon public donations to cover the $200,000 annual operating costs. All programs are free. Tax deductible donations may be mailed to Healing Hearts Center, 73 Stadley Rough Road, Danbury CT 06811.

Upcoming fundraisers include a May 31 benefit performance of Camelot at the Theater Barn in Ridgefield. Tickets are $60 and include dinner. On June 12, the Art of Caring at Boehringer Ingelheim in Ridgefield, a gala arts festival and cosmopolitan buffet, will benefit all of Regional Hospice’s program, as will donations raised at the Newtown Chapter Regional Hospice Breakfast to honor volunteers on June 17, at the Waterview in Monroe. Tickets for the Art of Caring are $100 per person. A poker run for motorcycle enthusiasts will be held August 23, beginning at New Milford Cycles and ending at Bennett Park in Bethel. Registration is $20. For more information, contact Terri Nackid at 739-8312.