Community Service

Life today is overwhelming, complicated, and changing too quickly to keep up with. The future of work is changing as questions about remote jobs, labor movements, and the use of advanced AI create a new economic landscape. Our planet is getting hotter, and natural disasters are more frequent. We don’t have enough housing. It’s hard…

Earlier this year, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy advised that loneliness is a public health epidemic that causes lasting harm to physical and mental health. We are missing out on important social connections, and so are our kids.  “1 in 2 adults report measurable levels of loneliness, and the group that’s actually most lonely…

Last week, Hearts of Hope celebrated the end of summer and the 10th Anniversary of our Newtown Chapter with the fourth and final event in our Senior Paw Project Summer series. We teamed up with the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary to host a series of Paint with a Purpose events throughout the summer, where…

by Judith A. Pedersen, Thanatologist, MSW, FT, Hearts of Hope Foundation Founder, Board President, and Executive Director Grief is a BIG Deal. I’m often asked, “What is grief?” When I hear this, my mind often thinks of questions like, “How big is the ocean?” or “How vast is the sky?” That’s because grief truly is…

Our children and students are in a mental health crisis. The isolation, stress, and loss of the COVID-19 pandemic compounded already rising rates of mental health challenges. In the last decade, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness—as well as suicidal thoughts—increased by 40% in young people. Hearts of Hope created a program called GRIT to…

Mary Kaminsky was a hospice worker in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and remembers the first patients coming into the facility where she worked. “They didn’t have visitors a,nd their food was brought up on cardboard trays, then thrown into a biohazard bag,” she said on the latest episode of The Grief to…

When Lisa Boehm’s vibrant, hard-working daughter Katie died in a car accident at 17-years-old, Lisa knew right away that she didn’t want Katie’s life to be in vain. “From the very first moment that we lost her, I always wondered, what is (Katie) thinking when she watches me?” Lisa said on our newest episode of…

Have you ever woken up with your heart pounding and thoughts racing in the middle of your grief and wondered, am I the only one who feels this way? Have you gone through the motions of a day, numb and in a daze, and thought, is this normal? Have you replayed your loss over and…

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth." - Muhammad Ali More than 300 student-athletes sat with rapt attention in a Baltimore convention center this weekend at the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Forum, watching the Hearts of Hope team begin their presentation with this Muhammad Ali quote. After learning about…

JD Hawkins was a beloved high school teacher and coach in New Mexico when one of his student athletes fulfilled the dream that every coach hopes for them—he was recruited to play football at the collegiate level. JD and the school community cheered this young man on as he went through the recruitment process. But…