The Circle of Hope

Amy Roberts
04/14/2025

How community service leads to personal healing

Hearts of Hope provides hope and healing to everyone involved, whether you’re receiving a heart from our organization or creating one for someone else.

 

At the Heart of It

• Our events provide healing for participants through therapeutic art and result in ceramic hearts that carry a message of hope.
• The recipients of these hearts also experience healing when they have physical proof that others are thinking of them as they deal with tragedy, grief, or loss.
• We call this cycle of healing the Circle of Hope.

 

When we hear from the people who receive our hearts, it’s often comments like “your gifts carried so much meaning and encouragement” and “our hand-painted hearts were especially moving” that make us feel that our efforts are all worth it. To receive such a gift makes people feel like they aren’t quite as alone in their grief as they may feel.

But grief is an experience as varied as those who live through it. Sometimes, it causes us to freeze in place; sometimes, to seek out ways to express ourselves. And still other times, we may wish to honor our grief with contribution and community, in order to feel as though we are making up for the loss the world has suffered at our loved one’s passing.

Often, it’s all three, and more.

That’s why we also hear stories of healing from those who made the hearts we send. Whether they attended a corporate event, went to a school function, or organized a small painting session for their own family, participants often walk away feeling grounded, inspired, and more hopeful. It’s easy to see from experience that volunteering our time and energy is connected to grief recovery.

But why is that? What is it about community service that helps us heal?

I was recently on a call with a volunteer named Stephanie, who told me that she got involved with Hearts of Hope after the passing of her son, Steven. She needed a way to connect, she said. To pair her grief with action and begin to fold it into her life, in order to accept it and move forward. So she attended a Hearts of Hope Paint with a Purpose event. She decorated a clay heart, choosing one color, then the next, then the next, all while thinking of her son and her own grief and knowing that this piece of art would be placed into the hands of someone else who was experiencing loss. 

This response makes sense. While working with their own volunteers, Mayo Clinic has taken the time to record some of the ways volunteer work affects us. They have reported that “by spending time in service to others, volunteers report feeling a sense of meaning and appreciation, both given and received, which can have a stress-reducing effect.” Spending time in service to others can:

  • Reduce stress
  • Provide a sense of meaning
  • Improve mental and physical health
  • Improve self-esteem
  • Nurture relationships

So it fits that those who attend Hearts of Hope events experience healing, and those who receive the hearts also experience healing. When she was finished with her heart design, Stephanie took a deep breath and left the Paint with a Purpose event feeling more connected to others in her community and a bit further along in her own grief journey.

We have a term for this at our organization. We call it the Circle of Hope.

But Stephanie’s story wasn’t over. A few months later, she found herself at a fundraising event for a local animal shelter with her daughter. She bought a small gift basket at random, not knowing what was inside. When she unwrapped it, however, what she found astonished her.

It was a Heart of Hope. 

Now Stephanie was on the other side of the circle. As a recipient, the knowledge that someone else in the world cared about her pain brought a different kind of healing—as well as astonishment at the unlikely unfolding of her experience. What were the odds, she asked, of being both a giver and a receiver of one of these small hearts? And how much deeper was the impact for Stephanie, when she knew that the person on the other side of the circle was experiencing a loss or hardship, just like she was?

Sometimes, in our journey through loss, we need to be a recipient of hope, to be reminded that others care about our loss. Sometimes we need to work through our grief with action, by reaching out and encouraging others. And sometimes we find stories of those who, like Stephanie, have walked the entire Circle of Hope completely by accident.

 

Pause for a Beat

• Have you ever experienced personal healing when you least expected it?
• What relationships have been most impactful for your healing process? How did they begin?
• What are some ways you can create your own “circle of hope” in your journey through grief and loss?

 

Hope and Healing Toolbox