New Hope, 'New Normal'
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Each camp treats 15 children to pet therapy, a mobile marine museum, art, music, games and the priceless gift of listening. "The camps are small in number, but they are huge in the effect," Beeney says. "New Hope is a very passionate organization, and we're passionate about grieving people of all ages."
While the groups have been successful, Beeney notes a need in Long Beach for a centralized grief and loss center – facilities that have proved to be valuable in other communities across the nation. With the help of a grant writer, New Hope could grow and eventually fund the center, she adds.
The organization currently has a large base of individual donors – 98 percent of whom are people who have never been through the program, Beeney says.
"At first, that was an enigma wrapped up in a mystery for me because you would think people would give back. But you see, we set them free to grieve, and that takes time….They're just trying to make it through the next moment," she explains. "But others around them want to help. And through giving of the support, the funding, the personal donation to New Hope, that's how people can help another person – because there are no words, only actions that say, ‘I care,' ‘I'm sorry you lost your baby,' ‘I'm sorry you lost your brother.'"
While some may associate death and grief with an older age group, Beeney notes that the average adult in a typical grief group is actually 38 years old.
"The older generation is coming to grips with and facing end-of-life issues. It's the younger generation that is being hit hard with grief and loss," she says. "We're getting an awful lot of calls about suicides. We're getting calls from young families that are suffering cancer deaths from the husband or the wife. And of course there are always child losses of all kinds."
New Hope likens the grieving process to a journey and bases its services on the model of grief developed by Dr. J. William Worden, who noted four tasks of mourning: accept the reality of death; experience the pain of your grief; adjust to an environment in which the deceased is no longer present; and emotionally relocate the deceased and move on with life to a "new normal."