Jennifer Levin
Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the pain from a sudden death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin, and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death. In today’s podcast I interview Dr. Donna Shuurman who is the senior director of advocacy and education for the Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children and Families. Dr. Shuurman also served as executive director of the Dougy center for approximately 25 years and was instrumental in growing and shaping the organization into the amazing resource it is today. The Dougy center is a nonprofit organization based in Portland Oregon and their mission is to provide grief support in a safe place where children, teens, young adults, and their families can share their experiences before and after a death. The Dougy center also provides support and training locally, nationally, and internationally to individuals and organizations seeking to assist children who are grieving.
In addition to her work at the Dougy Center, Dr. Schuurman is an international expert on children’s grief, and she has worked extensively with children, teens and families in grief both after expected and unexpected loss. She also has extensive experience working with families and communities after large-scale tragedies and natural disaster including the Oklahoma City bombing, Japan’s Great Hanshin Earthquake, the attacks during 9/11 and the Sandy Hook school shootings. After following Dr. Schuurman and the Dougy Center for so many years, I was excited to have an opportunity to spend time together to understand what led her to specialize in children’s bereavement, learn about her personal experiences, and provide her with the opportunity to share Dougy Center resources with this audience.
So Donna, thank you so much for joining us today. And why don't you start off and just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Donna Schuurman
Well, thanks, Jennifer, it's my privilege to spend some time talking with you today. I am currently, wow, 33 years into my work as a staff person at Dougy Center, the National Grief Center for Children and Families in Portland, Oregon. I was a volunteer for about six years before that. So I took that job 33 years ago, thinking I'll give it three to five years. And you know, it can't be that big a job, then here I am, you know, 33 years later. Unfortunately, I think that in some ways we've grown as, as a nation, and as a world, like understanding that, yes, children are resilient, but they're not resilient in a vacuum. It's not like, oh, there'll be fine, don't worry about it. So we've recognized that grief loss, death, the advanced serious illness of a family member really can have long term implications. But unfortunately, I still hear kids talking about things like whatever, a teacher saying you need to get over this, or a therapist saying, you have to take all the photos of the person down. Or recently, someone, a parent told me that her therapist that she only saw one time, asked her how, what was helpful to her after her husband's death. And she said, well, at night before I go to sleep, I talk to him. And I just kind of share my day. And the therapist said, you know, in some cultures, that would be considered holding the spirit of the person back when they really need to be released. And this is in 2023, not 1923. So I mean, you know, it's like, we've, we've made progress, but we have a lot, a lot more to go. And I just I've had the privilege of working these 33 years, with Dougy Center traveling around the world to both human caused and natural disaster areas. Multiple times in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea. Unfortunately, after school shootings in the United States, and just that there is a commonality to grief. Yeah, and there are certainly cultural differences. But there's there's we we all we all do grieve.
Jennifer Levin
Are you native to the Portland area?
Donna Schuurman
No, I'm not. I actually grew up outside of Northeast Philadelphia. So you know, 3,000 miles away from, from my home town. The rest of my family now, well my mother died, actually, three years ago, on two days from now, three years ago, during the pandemic. She was in the Baltimore area. And so I do still have some relatives back in Baltimore and New Jersey, Florida. I get back on the East Coast occasionally.
Jennifer Levin
What brought you to Portland.
Donna Schuurman
I was actually, I was living in Chicago, where I went to graduate school, Northern Illinois University, got my doctorate in counseling there. And by the way, I had a half an hour on grief and loss in a doctorate in counseling in the School of Education at Northern Illinois University. But I was working for International Relief and Development Agency in the Chicago area, World Relief and I was recruited to Portland to work for another one Mercy Corps. And so I worked for Mercy Corps a few years then I went to Outward Bound for two years just to kind of a different part of my brain and, and use my body more. Yeah, it's a great program. And then Dougy Center.
Jennifer Levin
So what led you into the field of grief and loss and more specifically children's grief?
Donna Schuurman
That's a great question. I think my answer to that is on several different levels. So one is a door opened and I walked through it. I had moved to Portland, and read like a paragraph in the Lake Oswego Review newspaper about this program for grieving children. It just sounded interesting. And I met with Bev Chappell, who was the founder. And it was she, there were no paid employees at the time. It was very, very small, very grassroots. And I just wanted to be helpful. I thought it was a great cause. And I think I was probably 10-15 years into doing this work and people would say, what got you interested? I've always been interested in death. I'm not sure why. But I, again, I'm, like, 10-15 years into this, and I'm thinking it's June. And I remember growing up, my father would say, you know, your mom's gonna be depressed, just kind of stay under the radar till the Fourth of July. Something about the baby. And just kind of leave her alone, avoid her stay under the radar. So I had two older brothers, the three of us, were just kind of like, okay, we'll stay under the radar. And we knew that their first child, a girl died shortly after birth. But it was never talked about never mentioned, we had no details, nothing. And so well into my 40s. Again, in this work, and I call my mother who is Irish, you know, doesn't wear our heart on her sleeve kind of buck up generation. And I said, Mom, I don't know if you want to talk about this. But if you do, I'd like to hear the story about my sister. And I got off the phone three and a half hours later. And my mom told the whole story, I thought she was maybe going to hang up on me or something. And during it, I said to her, how come I don't know any of this? What, who have you ever talked to about it? And my grandmother, my father's mother, she talked to who also had a daughter die at 16, her only daughter. But what she said was no one ever asked. You know, so I think Jennifer, one of the commonalities like we all have whoever's listening, all of us. We all come from a long line of dead people. And some of them we know about and others we don't know about. And our family trees have gaps where maybe there was the suicide death of an uncle, or maybe a miscarriage that was embarrassing, because my mom said it was, to lose your child at five days old. My mom was 19. Her Catholic father told her it's because she married a German Methodist. I think a little part of her carried that throughout her life, til her death that 91 and a half. And, for me, the things we don't talk about and the things we bury and the things we can't, we can't do something with. They don't just go away. They manifest in relationships, in you know, self harm and isolation. Because I think a lot of my experience, personally, when I have grieved my father's death, my mother's death and several friends over the last couple of years during COVID and my brother died of COVID, six months after my mother died. And is it's inherently isolating. And I think so many people don't know what to say. That even being, sometimes being around people, just feels painful and awkward. And most people aren't in a place of well, I'm going to educate people about how to help me. You know, so when we most need social support, we're perhaps less inclined to be able to access it. And then it has the potential to become increasingly isolating. It doesn't have to be, of course, but but it has that potential. And certainly that's what happened with my mother. I mean, she didn't talk about it for like, 60 years, or 40 years. So I just think it's important to punctuate these life and death events in our lives. To have ways to, and I think that was really challenging for me during the pandemic because my mother died November 2020, November 15, we couldn't have an in person service. You know, my brother died May 15th, the following year, we still couldn't have an in person service. So with some help of dear friends, I was able to, to get a virtual service to happen with photos and music and something my mother, and I think my brother, would have appreciated, but it wasn't the same as being able to be in person.
Jennifer Levin
Absolutely. So many people have struggled with that during that time.
Donna Schuurman
Well, and we're hearing from our families at Dougy Center, that the other, you didn't get the same social support, because on some level, everybody was grieving something. And the person didn't get what they deserved to be honored at their death. And, you know, you can't, you can't just go back and do that.
Jennifer Levin
No, no.
Donna Schuurman
So, yeah, it's been hard. It's been hard for families. And also, there was a bit of a stigma. I know, I do training all the time, like, what do you say to people who are grieving and just don't make your first question was he vaccinated? You know, like, I heard your brother died. Was he vaccinated?
Jennifer Levin
Right. Same thing with lung cancer. Were they a smoker?
Donna Schuurman
Yeah, or you know, and I hear people who have someone murdered, for example, that they don't get the same level of support, and people say, Oh, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it may be no, they were in the right place, the person who perpetrated was in the wrong place.
Jennifer Levin
Such complex issues.
Donna Schuurman
Very complex, and, you know, people, children, adults, we carry this stuff with us. And, you know, it's, it's pretty easy to be helpful on it's, but it's also apparently pretty easy to not be.
Jennifer Levin
Let's step back for a minute. Whenever I think of children's grief. As far as I'm concerned, the Dougy Center is the gold standard. And I have been referring families and clinicians to the Dougy Center for over 20 years. And for those listeners who are not familiar with the Dougy Center, can you just take a minute and describe this amazing resource that you have been affiliated with for 33 years and have helped grow and thrive and directed and some of the services offered so that some of our listeners can take advantage of it?
Donna Schuurman
Yeah. Happy to. So Dougy Center was the first children's peer support program that we're aware of, in the United States and beyond. We're, I think, 42 or 43 years old this year. And we work with children starting at age three up through, we used to work up through teens 18. And then we kept getting requests from 19 year olds and 20 year old, three year olds and 28 year olds and what about us, and so we started young adult groups as well. And even when we started the young adult groups, they were originally 18 to 24. And then we'd get like 28 year olds and 32 year olds, so now we have young 18 to 24 and 25 up and our groups at any point in time - right now I think we have about 80 support groups that are ongoing for three to five year olds. Sometimes we have a four to eight year old group, we have six to 12 year olds, 10 to 14. So there's some overlap of ages, teen groups and young adult groups. And while the children's groups are meeting there's also an adult caregiver group for parents or adult caregivers, sometimes it's a grandparent, an aunt an uncle, another adult may be supporting the child or the teen. And the groups are open ended, meaning there's, they're not time limited. So families can attend for as long as they wish to. I think the last time we looked at the average length of time was about 15 months. There is no fee to the family, they are 100% supported through donations from the community foundations, individuals, companies, and the groups are divided by parent death or sibling death. Especially for adults, it's very hard to be in a group where you've lost your spouse and someone else has lost a child. You know, there's grief overlap, but there's also some very different aspects to those deaths. And then we have specific groups for after a suicide death, groups for after a violent death or murder. And families don't have to go into those they can go into a parent death or a sibling death group. But I will say that because of the additional, sometimes media issues or stigma issues, legal issues, I would say the majority of families who've had a suicide death, a murder, drunk driving crash death, choose to go into those specific groups because again, there are additional issues related. We also have, I think we're about I'm gonna say 10 years into providing groups for children and families who have a family member with an advanced serious illness like brain tumor, ALS, some condition that is likely to take their life.
Jennifer Levin
So anticipatory grief.
Donna Schuurman
Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of that term, just because yeah, I'm not a huge fan of it. Because I think it, I was writing an article one time called anticipatory grief mornings foreplay. Mourning, because I think in some definitions of anticipatory grief, and again, if you Google that you're gonna get thirty different, same with grief, you Google grief and most of the definitions out there, including American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological, they all focus on emotions. So grief is an emotion, anger, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, what about the physical, the spiritual, the relational, the social, that the contextual? You know, all of that. So, that's my problem with some definitions of anticipatory grief that it minimizes the experience of anticipating, but that's because of the definitions that I have the problem with not the concept. So. But then again, I think, grief is challenging to really capture in words. Not impossible. We try we use a lot of metaphors. But I think grief is deeper than words can capture. And I'm a word freak, like I love words. I was an English major in college. I value language so much and yet, grief is more than is capturable in words.
Jennifer Levin
A little bit about your groups. Are they in person or online?
Donna Schuurman
Well, the majority are in person, the vast majority. We have a few that continued virtually after the pandemic because we went 100% virtual for a period of time during the pandemic, which is incredibly challenging with three year-olds.
Jennifer Levin
I can only imagine. And the only reason I asked that is are they limited to people in the Portland geographic area?
Donna Schuurman
Well, we have, we have a geographical range for virtual groups. Otherwise we'd be running like 8000 groups. We have three physical locations. Southeast Portland, Hillsboro and Canby area for any listeners who know Oregon at all. But we have helped to start hundreds of other programs throughout throughout the country and actually into other countries including Japan, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Rwanda. And those links to those programs are on our website at Dougy.org in other states, and we maintain close ties with them through an association that I was one of the founding board members. I'm gonna say 27 years ago, called the National Alliance for Children's Grief. And we meet annually. Next, well, in 2024 it'll be in Denver, in June, sponsored by Judy's House in Denver. And we get together regularly to share research, share ideas. And the Dougy Center model has been replicated and used throughout the country and beyond. But it's not a franchise, so they're not all called Dougy Centers there. We really wanted people to adapt the model to their own circumstances. So there, there are foundational principles, but you know, do you meet weekends, do you meet evenings, meet daytime, those kinds of things. But for us, it's it is very important to have it be open ended groups and not and also not curriculum driven. So our groups are, are what the youth want to talk about. And we may have prompts. We may have exercises, we have at Dougy center, we have various play rooms, we have a music room, a high activity room with foosball and a punching bag. And there's a volcano room, which is about big energy, like being able to throw things. We have a dress up room with a little stage to do little plays if kids want to develop those and put them on, art rooms. Just because not everybody talks. You know, Shakespeare famously said give sorrow words, but he was a writer. So, you know, we need to give sorrow, sometimes things to throw and break. We need to give sorrow dance and music and, and silence. And so the idea that families attend for as long as they wish to is recognizing everybody's grief is different. There may be similarities, but you know, the relationship with the person who died, the kind of social support or lack of support, they have, unfinished conversations, all of these factors and there are few things as disempowering as having someone die and not being able to do anything about it. And so to be given the choice of I can be here for as long as I need to be is in itself empowering. And it's also not It's not grief school, so we don't say, Okay, today we're talking about the funeral. You know, kind of whether you like it or not. You know, and I been in groups. I love one classic example. I was in a sibling death group and they were all new kids. So starting out all new kids. It was in September. In our pre meeting I suggested to the volunteers, we have 100 over 100 trained volunteers who helped facilitate all the groups with our master's level and above staff. We ask how has it been to go back to school? And we put that question out there in the first teen, a 15 year old boy says, I don't want to talk about that. I have something else I'd like to ask. And I said, Great. What is it? And he said, Did you see the dead body of your sibling, of your brother, your sister, your sibling? So even, we were assuming because they're new, they wanted to maybe ease in and talk about less threatening things. And this, this kid wanted to jump right in. And it led to some amazing conversations.
Jennifer Levin
Kids have a way of getting right to it when they're ready. And it sounds like that's the space that you've created at the Dougy Center. And I love all of the space. Um, I, you know, I was doing some reading over the weekend and read something that I like of, you know, trauma, being preverbal, and, and all of those different rooms, gives the kids and the children that you serve a space to express that, especially those who are experiencing a sudden or unexpected death. And have that traumatic grief. I'll have the space to, you know, be nonverbal with the...
Donna Schuurman
Exactly. And, you know, Jennifer trauma is an interesting word the comes from a word that basically from the Latin that means wound. You know, so. I just, again, I'm a big advocate of language and, and not apologizing people who are grieving for their behavior or their feelings or their experience. As if there's one right way or one length of time or how deep you can grieve before it's, and I'm not saying that people don't struggle. I'm just saying, let's not pathologize them for struggling.
Jennifer Levin
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. What are some of the biggest milestones or achievements? I know, You've had many positions, or roles, I should say, within the Dougy Center, which you talked about. But you know, you were the Executive Director for 25 years, you volunteer, and now you're serving as the Senior Director of Advocacy and Education. What are some of the milestones or achievements that you're most proud of during your time? And how have they impacted you personally, as well?
Donna Schuurman
Well, oh, I would say when I started, again, really young organization, grassroots, dedicated people, dedicated volunteers, I think it's harder to do that now. And there was so much passion and so much dedication in the early days, and I mean, there still is, but a lot of passion and energy and excitement doesn't necessarily build an organization, in and of itself. So I was really privileged to have a lot of people along the way, nothing I did was on my own. Michael Hubbard was our board chair at one point. We were really struggling financially. I said, Michael, I don't know what to do. I can't keep, you know, wondering if at the end of the month, we can make ends meet. He said, you know, what, what do you need? And I said, $500,000. And he said, Give me two weeks. And he came back with $500,000 from some stock sales. Gwynyth Campbell Booth who was an advocate, Chris McClave, people showed up in the community and cared. And one thing I really clearly stated and have all this time, strongly believed that whenever I - so I was the executive director for 25 years. It was my goal the entire time that nobody leaves because I leave whenever I leave the organization nobody in it leaves because I leave. Because it's not about me, it's about the mission. And I have seen organizations fall apart after a longtime leader leaves, because some people are like, well, I'm going to follow them and well, then you should follow them. But also it's some, our executive director now Brennan Wood, who asked me to stay three to five years when she assumed the role of executive director. It's been 8, she asked me to stay three to five, she's my boss. I knew her when she was 12 years old when she came through the Dougy Center when her mother died of breast cancer. And she was on a team panel with me and Alan Wolfeld out of the Center for Loss and Transition in in Denver. And she was asked, What do you want to do when you grow up? Where do you see yourself? And she said, she looked at me and she said, Someday I want her job. She went away to college, Montana. You know, graduated from college, did some work, came back as our receptionist. And that was 17 years ago, worked her way up and with the blessing of the board after a national search, and also all of our staff, except one person who's not on it anymore wanted her. And I could have left at that moment. Or anytime that I do, knowing it's in the best of hands. So for me, that's the biggest blessing is knowing that nothing falls apart when I leave.
Jennifer Levin
You've really created with your team a self sustaining agency. Not a lot of places can say that.
Donna Schuurman
And again, so many people, and some of them are people who experienced the death of a parent or sibling when they were children and wish there had been something like this for them. Others just recognize the impact, even though it's not personal for them, that unaddressed grief can have on children throughout their lives. And notice I'm not saying unresolved. I don't even think that's a goal. Like to resolve grief. Like it's some faux we have to battle. I'm trying to think of who it was who said, Oh, I think it was Voltaire. No, it wasn't Voltaire, who said only the shallow know themselves. You know, sort of like there's always other layers to peel off. And I think that there's something about that relating to grief. My father has been dead 20 years. And I still have moments, a lot of times where I'm thinking, Oh, I wish I'd asked him this. Or a memory of playing kickball. Or, and that's great. To keep the memory of people in a society that wants us to close the door and move on. Put this behind you. Or pathologize it was a big movement in the field to diagnose people with prolonged grief disorder.
Jennifer Levin
I was going to say I can tell you are not a fan.
Donna Schuurman
I'm not a fan. And even the terminology. Prolonged grief disorder says right in the term. You're taking too long. And like who? Who made that up? Well, I know who made it up. But yeah. I just completely disagree with it.
Jennifer Levin
What do you see as some of the biggest challenges today that children and families struggle with? When it comes to grief, the times are changing so much technology, all of that stuff?
Donna Schuurman
I find it interesting. Again, we went virtual for a while. And a lot of teens for example, middle school age and and older high school teens are very savvy with obviously with Zoom, with all of that. And yet, when they come to their in person groups, they're relieved to like put their phones down. Be in person I'm not saying virtual groups can't be helpful. But there's, there's something about being in person that for the majority of, of kids who come to Dougy Center would rather be in person, there's something really important about that. I think the challenges, some of the challenges are managing social media, with youth in ways that are helpful and not harmful. So lots of things can go out on social media about a death that are hurtful. And, uh, even everybody, a lot of people say, well, everybody's doing the best they can. But that's not true. Like our kids still get teased. Maybe that's the best some kids can do. But they're still made fun of, you know, I heard your dad shot himself. No wonder I would too, if I had a kid like you. I mean, kids can be cruel, adults can be cruel. And I think that is a concern, and has been a concern of mine for a long time. I think we're not making progress as a society on depression, and hopelessness among teens. And coping with failure, coping with loss, even how schools respond to suicide deaths in their school community, whether it's a student, or a faculty or someone who worked at the school. There's still a lot of fear based response rather than open response, open, caring, compassionate response. So I think we have a long way to go there. And I do think just social disconnection among youth is a is a big problem, it was certainly was made worse by the pandemic. And I know that there are some kids out there and some adults out there who say like, it was actually helpful because it brought our family closer. And I while I can recognize that that is the case for some people, I think for a lot of youth, it it became very disruptive in terms of social bonding. And the importance of that for children and youth. And particularly, well, all youth, but teens who often rely on their peers as their social support system, increasingly, kind of developmentally appropriately. Not disattaching from but shifting relationship with adults with parents. So I think those are challenging things.
Jennifer Levin
Yeah. Thank you very, that was very well said. I'd love to talk to you sometime about your proposed solutions for that, because yeah, those are really, it's a trying time, right now. It really, really is.
Donna Schuurman
So there's so much polarization too, and meanness. And a lot of that is perpetuated by adults, and then kids pick up on it. My friends who are teachers and work in schools say, post pandemic like, social kindness is not lacking, but it's, there are more fights, there are more outbreaks of things. And I think that's a reflection of a lot of what's happening politically and throughout the world at this time. Not that this is the first time this has ever happened in the world. But it's notable in our time, and I think escalated because of the pandemic and everything that happened around that.
Jennifer Levin
I couldn't agree more. What advice do you have to families who are just brand new and struggling with the grief and pain after a sudden or unexpected loss and have young children?
Donna Schuurman
I do recommend that they reach out to get support. And there are programs throughout I mean, many many programs, there are parents of murdered children groups, there are the Compassionate Friends international program that reaches out to parents who've had a child of any age die, including adult children. They have chapters throughout the United States, there are virtual programs that are in person. And I would recommend they look at if they're looking for something in their own area, go on the Dougy Center website, dougy.org and there's an area where you can look up by state what programs are available in your area. I think the the most important thing is to find those people who can truly be supportive to your family. Some people find that in their spiritual community, some people find it in sports, in youth programs and other kinds of communities. And unfortunately, some people don't find that. You know, they actually, grief is one of those things where you find out who can be there for you and in what ways. And I think most of us who have grieved the death of someone in our lives, recognize people show up in incredibly beautiful ways. Some people show up that we wouldn't have expected to, people disappear that we wouldn't have expected to. And occasionally people can be unkind and, and downright cruel. So there's, but you, you find out whether people who say things like, let me know if you need anything, whether they really mean it or not. And it's a good...I think we are sort of when we're grieving, we're kind of broken open in that way that time changes. So we're not living in linear time like other people are. It feels short, it feels long. It feels like yesterday, it feels like a year ago. We're also I think, more receptive to what matters, like what really matters, you know, our BS detectors are on high alert.
Jennifer Levin
That is so well said yes.
Donna Schuurman
And there's, there's value in that, in the sense of life is short. I don't want to hang out with people that are draining or mean. And again, a lot of, I'm not a fan of telling people you need to find meaning in this. So there's a lot of emphasis on meaning making, which is a fine thing. But I remember one of the dads whose daughter was shot and killed in a Florida School shooting, did a podcast with Jana DeCristoforo on our Grief Outloud podcast, and he said, there is no meaning in my daughter's death. There's no meaning. I can find purpose in my life, and his purpose is trying to get gun legislation. But don't tell me I have to make meaning of my daughters. Now other people may look at it differently. But that's where the shoulds I like to tell people don't should on yourself
Jennifer Levin
Get off of Mount should.
Donna Schuurman
Yeah, exactly. Because it doesn't help us.
Jennifer Levin
Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Donna, for your time today. And I will definitely, we'll have that everything up for the Dougy Center on our show notes and in our Facebook group and all of the wonderful resources that you have to offer and such wonderful insight today. So again, thank you so much for spending time and sharing with us.
Donna Schuurman
Thank you for having me, Jennifer.
Jennifer Levin
You're absolutely welcome.
I was so delighted to have the opportunity to interview Dr. Donna Schuurman whom I associate directly with the Dougy Center. I have been referring to the Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children and Families as the gold standard for treatment and resources for childhood grief since I began working with grieving children and families.
Unfortunately, my experience has shown that so many adults and even professionals misunderstand the grieving experiences and needs of children and young adults which can be detrimental to their healing and physical and mental health in later life. The bereavement needs among children has become a national problem that must be understood and addressed. Thankfully, organizations such as the Dougy Center exist to provide services, training, and support for childhood bereavement.
Current estimates indicate that approximately 6 million children in the United States will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they are 18 years of age. This means that roughly 1 out of every 12 children will experience a death in their nuclear family of parents and siblings. By age 25, this number more than doubles to 14.7 million children and youth who will experience the death of a parent or sibling. These numbers come from the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model which is a tool that has been developed by Judi’s House and the JAG Institute, in partnership with the New York Life Foundation, that approximates rates of U.S. children and youth who will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they reach adulthood. This model can also estimate loss by geographic regions and among different ethnic groups. For more information on this model including downloadable resources please visit judishouse.org.
The death of an immediate family member in a young person’s life is one of the most commonly reported difficult childhood experiences. When not addressed, childhood grief and trauma can cause poor performance in school, mental health problems and even early mortality. Grief support and other appropriate services can decrease the risk for future problems and increase healthy adaptation and healing.
At the end of our podcast, Dr. Shuurman’s advice to families with grieving children was to get support. Even if you reside outside the Portland area, the Dougy Center website has a wealth of resources including their searchable World-Wide directory which lists organizations and grief groups including those trained by the Dougy Center. There are also online resources and worksheets for kids, teens, young adults, parents and caregivers, schools, communities, and resources in Spanish. There is information specific to relationship losses including siblings, parents, grandparents as well as information specific to how a loved one died for example death from COVID, suicide, homicide, accidents, and there are support materials for families who have loved ones who are in the process of dying.
Finally, the Dougy Center has an amazing podcast “Grief Out Loud” where listeners of all ages can hear the personal stories of kids, teens and adults who are also grieving. The podcast also includes tips for supporting children and interviews with professionals.
If you want an opportunity to connect with Dr. Donna Shuurman please join our Facebook group “Talking about the Podcast Untethered with Dr. Levin.” The Facebook group includes a direct link to their podcast, Dr. Shuurman’s bio and the of course information about the Dougy Center.
Our next podcast will be December 27th and will feature Dr. Robert Niemeyer, a clinician and researcher perhaps best known for his work on meaning making in grief. Dr. Niemeyer is also the Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the Pain After a Sudden Death. To learn more about hope and guidance after sudden or unexpected death please visit therapyheals.com and sign up for my monthly newsletter Guidance in Grief at www.therapyheals.com. Bye for now.
