New Hope for Kids is located in Central Florida and has been helping children and their families since 1996. The goal of New Hope for Kids is to help children and families cope with grief and loss after the death of a loved one and grant wishes to children, up to age 19, diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Learn more about New Hope for Kids’ celebration of Children’s Grief Awareness Day–Hope for the Season–by reading the following article written by a student from Rollins College.
Children’s Grief Awareness Month: Power In Numbers
By: Jamie Cozette
November 25, 2019
Orlando, FL. — As the month of November comes to a close, the beginning of the holiday season is right around the corner ready to greet us. It’s during these times that we all come together as families and friends to give thanks and celebrate. But November is a month that observes much more than just the holidays – it is also Children’s Grief Awareness Month.
For Tamari Miller, national Children’s Grief Awareness Month was a way for the New Hope for Kids’ director to combine the acknowledgment of the month with the acknowledgment of the holiday season in the annual Candlelight Walk. At New Hope the candle-lighting is a precursor to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, with the goal to honor and memorialize those loved ones who are no longer here.
According to Tamari, the holidays are the most difficult; because, other people, society, the world as a whole are engaging in the holiday festivities such as the shopping, the decorating of the tree, the preparing of the turkey, sitting down together as a family for a meal, or engaging neighbors in the whole ambiance of the holiday season. And grieving children and families are now spectators to those traditions and those memories that other people are continuing to create and make, without their loved ones. At New Hope, we want to just take a moment to pause, and acknowledge, that we know how difficult this season is, and that we remember those that used to be with us and are no longer; and that we honor their grief and we honor that person’s life as well as their death and how it’s impacting the kids. Of course not just during the holiday season, but it’s an especially appropriate time for the candle lighting just because of the hustle and bustle of the world when this time of year comes around.
“My first year working at New Hope for Kids, I had just started the day after Christmas of 2000 – I’d literally drove here Christmas day. And I was invited to be one of the guest speakers for one of the first candle lighting in my position as the Director at New Hope. As the guest speaker I was able to talk about my own grief journey in having my mother to die when I was 17. And, the impact that it has had on me was that it was that first, ‘oh my god, I cannot believe that I am speaking at Lake Eola to like 400 people and I just started this job and I hadn’t even been here for a full year’.It was such an amazing opportunity for me to honor my mother’s life and her death, that’s what propelled me to even apply for this position. I definitely had a counseling degree, I had my masters degree in community agency that was valuable as a resource, as a tool for the logistics, but the heart piece of it for me, is that I am these kids, you know, I am always gonna be a grieving child because my mother died when I was not yet out of high school, when I had not, you know stepped out of the doors of her home and known what it was like to live life as an adult without her. I’d got to learn that, unfortunately, sooner than later and so it was just, the honor in it was just an amazing time to gather and to know that it’s a shared experience.”
With the hustle and bustle that the holidays bring the candle lighting is a special time for people’s hearts to gather together and remember and celebrate their individual loved ones during this time; but also when 300 families come together and are remembering their loved ones together – it just multiplies. There’s that power in numbers to honor.
Check out Children's Grief Awareness Day via New Hope for Kids' Social Media Pages!
