Ep 22: Support for grieving parents and children - Tears in Heaven - with Michelle Goins and Ryan and Melisa Larkin
This week, we explore support for bereaved parents, grieving children, and teens, highlighting the work of the Charlotte-based nonprofit KinderMourn. We’re joined by Michelle Goins, grief therapist, who shares about her experience working with grieving parents and children at KinderMourn and spreads the word about KinderMourn’s annual duck race. We also welcome Melisa and Ryan Larkin, who share about their experience as parents at KinderMourn and the loss of their child, Sean. We reflect on these themes along with the music of Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven and Semisonic’s Closing Time. Support KinderMourn at https://www.kindermourn.org.
So that we can play the music of the 80s/90s right in the episode, we are releasing our podcast on Spotify. Get Spotify Premium to listen along with the music mid-episode.
Key Takeaways
By age 18, 7% of children will experience the loss of a parent or a sibling, making family loss a significant concern for public health and child and family wellbeing.
Empathy is feeling with people. Empathy seeing something from another’s perspective and being able to identify and describe how another is feeling. When supporting someone who is grieving, resist the temptation to “solve” a problem and focus on being present to the person through empathy.
We live in a death-averse society where conversations on death and dying are often avoided. Talking about death can be a helpful starting point to remove the stigma associated with death and dying.
There are healthy and unhealthy ways of grieving. It can be good to encourage those who are grieving to seek out healthy grieving practices.
Parents who have suffered a pregnancy loss have unique experiences of grief and may benefit from opportunities to share their loss with others in both informal and formal settings.
Rituals can provide opportunities for individuals to help remember their loved one and to help make meaning from their loss.
Grieving families need community. Events like the KinderMourn annual duck race provide an example about how nonprofit organizations can build connections for and with the communities they serve.
Resources and Links
Schonfeld, D. J., Demaria, T., Council, D. P. A., Yogman, M., Bauer, N. S., Gambon, T., ... & Committee on psychosocial aspects of child and family health (2016). Supporting the grieving child and family. Pediatrics, 138(3).
Dowdney, L. (2008). Children bereaved by parent or sibling death. Psychiatry, 7(6), 270-275.
Cacciatore, J. (2010). The unique experiences of women and their families after the death of a baby. Social Work in Health Care, 49(2), 134-148.
Our Guests
Michelle Goins is a grief therapist at KinderMourn who provides counseling services and oversees all offerings for grieving parents, including individual counseling, quarterly workshops, and Empty Arms, a special program for parents who have lost a baby from pregnancy through newborn. She also oversees the clinical management of all services provided by KinderMourn.
Melisa and Ryan Larkin currently reside in Lake Wylie, SC. Melisa runs a non-profit that repurposes and sells furniture to benefit Levine Children’s Hospital. Ryan is an attorney with a large financial institution. Their beloved son, Sean, suffered from a rare form of epilepsy and passed away in 2020 at the age of 9. Melisa is co-chair of the Family Advisory Council at Levine Children’s Hospital and a volunteer in the NICU at the hospital. Both Melisa and Ryan are members of the Hope Floats Duck Race Committee.
