How long does it take to “get over” grief? Everyone who has gone through a loss knows that is an impossible question to answer. You might feel most of your grief before an ill grandparent dies, or the grief of being estranged from a parent might not hit you until years after the loss. There […]
Kids today are in a mental health crisis. Over 40% of high school students experience signs of depression, and a third of adolescents struggle with anxiety. Many factors in a changing world are impacting young people’s mental health, but we often overlook how significantly kids are impacted by their parents and adult caregivers. The kids […]
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 […]
None of us can imagine the pain of losing a child until we’ve lived it. But even though this nightmare is a reality for thousands of parents, there is very little research on the grief experience of fathers. We still fall back on old stereotypes as mothers being more bonded to their children and fathers […]
“I didn’t talk to my daughter for more than five years. I didn’t know what hit me. I kept thinking about her and wondering where she was. My granddaughter was born, and I never knew. We are trying to ‘fix’ things now, but it’s different than before. I still miss what we used to have.” […]
