Death By Design

It was April of 2017 when Garrick and the late Kinsloe Kelley Colwell, LMFT, invited over 20 Austin area healthcare professionals to meet and discuss ways in which they could assist the Central Texas community in becoming aware of the importance of completing their advance care directives. 

Over the next few months, the group met and decided to offer educational programs and resources through a non-profit organization they would call Kitchen Table Conversations. They felt the name of the organization would encourage people to have the end of life conversations in the comfort of their homes instead of during a medical crisis in the ICU. 

July 1, 2017, this web site was launched. The first workshop was offered the following month. In October, AARP of Central Texas began sponsoring The 3 Ds of Advance Care Planning: How to Decide, Discuss, and Document Your End of Life Wishes workshops. 

In 2020 AARP will sponsor four such webinars that will reach thousands of Central Texans.

These workshops are facilitated by Garrick Colwell, President, and CEO of Kitchen Table Conversations. Garrick has been a Hospice Volunteer since 1987, serving as an on-call hospital and hospice chaplain. He is a Respecting Choices® Person-Centered Care 

First Steps® Advance Care Planning Certified Instructor and Facilitator. 

As a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist, he co-created with Hospice Austin Conversations On Grief, a monthly online grief support program. As a volunteer, he co-facilitates drop-in and loss of spouse grief support groups.

Garrick has completed over 200 hours of study with a grief expert David Kessler at grief.com. David is the author of five bestselling books on grief. His first book, The Needs of the Dying, is a #1 best-selling hospice book praised by Mother Teresa. He co-authored with the 

legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD, both On Grief and Grieving and Life Lessons. David's most recent book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, was published in November 2019.

Recently, Garrick completed 240 hours of training with the author, educator, and griefcounselor Alan Wolfelt, Ph.D., CT, and holds a Death and Grief Studies certificate from the internationally recognized Center for Loss and Life Transition, a private an organization founded by Dr. Wolfelt that is dedicated to furthering our understanding of grief. 

In 2020 Kitchen Table Conversations began offering their Grief Education webinar series. Topics, dates, and times can be found on our Home Page; click on Grief Education.

Garrick can be reached at 512-787-3402 or

[email protected]  

Host a Kitchen Table Conversations Webinar, Activity, or Event

If you're interested in hosting a FREE workshop, activity, or event on Advance Care Planning  for your company, faith community or special interest group,  please call us today at 512-787- 3402.

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HOPE EDELMAN has been writing, speaking, and leading workshops and retreats in the bereavement field for more than 25 years. She was 17 when she lost her mother to breast cancer and 40 when her father died, events that inspired her to offer grief education and support to those who cannot otherwise receive it.

Her first book, Motherless Daughters, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and appeared on multiple bestseller lists worldwide. Her work has been translated into 14 languages and published in 11 countries. Hope is the author of seven additional nonfiction books, including Motherless Mothers and the memoir The Possibility of Everything. She was the recipient of the 2020 Community Educator Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling and has won a Puschcart Prize for her creative nonfiction.

In addition to writing and speaking, she is a certified Martha Beck Life Coach and also leads nonfiction workshops to help writers tell, revisit, and revise their stories of loss. Hope lives and works in Los Angeles and Iowa City.

Drawing on her own encounters with the ripple effects of early loss, as well as on interviews with dozens of researchers, therapists, and regular people who’ve been bereaved, New York Times bestselling author Hope Edelman offers profound advice for reassessing loss and adjusting the stories we tell ourselves about its impact on our identities.

With guidance for reframing a story of loss, finding equilibrium within it, and even experiencing renewed growth and purpose in its wake, she demonstrates that though grief is a lifelong process, it doesn’t have to be a lifelong struggle.

https://hopeedelman.com/books/the-aftergrief/

We don’t ever ‘get over’ the death of a loved one.

But we do eventually ‘get on‘ with living in a world without this essential person by our side.

It takes time to learn how to live in this new world. It takes time.”

— HOPE EDELMAN

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Join us for a live performance of Elizabeth Coplan's play Untold, and join Dr. Jillian Tullis, University of San Diego, to discuss communication challenges and grief that arise after a stillbirth.Veteran Grief Dialogues actors (Left to Right) Gretchen Douma, Shane Regan, and Joanne Burger perform in this live performance.

Following the performance, Dr. Jillian Tullis will discuss the communication challenges from witnessing a baby’s death. Is it truly "the smallest yet most powerful thing we can do."

Jillian A. Tullis, Ph.D. (Far right) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Diego. Her teaching and research interests focus on health communication, specifically communication about dying and death in healthcare settings. Tullis’ scholarship used qualitative methods to study such topics as hospice team communication, tumor boards, spirituality, dying, death, quality of life, and a “good death.”

Warning: The play contains scenes of childbirth and may trigger feelings of depression and grief especially among those who have suffered miscarriage, stillbirth, failed IVF, and/or unsuccessful adoption.

 https://letsreimagine.org/58851/untold-creating-space-for-loss-after-stillbirth

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Eileen Robertson Hamra is the woman you meet—at the gym, in the coffee shop, or dropping off the kids at school—with a story that draws you in the minute she begins to tell it. At age forty-one, after losing her husband in a plane crash, she became a single mother to three children aged eight, seven and four. Overnight, the man she thought she would spend eternity with, the literal pilot of her family’s wonderful life, was gone. When everything seemed broken, the future she dreamed about now impossible, Eileen had to make choices she never imagined making.

What she did choose to do was peel herself out of bed those first few weeks of mourning, and with constant love and support from family and friends, she found a well of inner strength and she dipped down into it. Working through her own grief and the grief of her children, Eileen experienced a gradual spiritual awakening. The result? On the other side of tragedy, she found new love, gave birth to a miracle child, and rediscovered her calling: to build stronger, loving and ever evolving families.

Eileen believes we don’t always get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose the story we tell when asked, “What happened?”

With the intention of helping others tap into their inner resilience and reimagine adversity as an opportunity for growth, Eileen shares her story of loss and rebuilding in her memoir, Time to Fly. Because of her story—thanks to her story—Eileen has dedicated her life’s work to carrying on the legacy of the family she grew up with, the family she created with Brian and the family she continues to grow with Mike.

Eileen holds transformational retreats in Chicago, Los Cabos and elsewhere. As a public speaker, certified yogi, holistic nutritionist, and life coach with an MBA, Eileen brings a practical, holistic and humanistic approach to everything she does. From creative advising to impact investing, to building strength emotionally or physically, Eileen holds space to stay focused on what she believes matters most—family, friends, and community.

https://www.eileenrobertsonhamra.com

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The Connecticut Association for Healthcare at Home is the largest member group of home health & hospice leaders championing home-based solutions as vital to better health in CT. Through networking, education and advocacy leadership, the Associations is helping those in the CT healthcare continuum get connected, be informed and create change.

https://www.cthealthcareathome.org

Tracy Wodatch

President & CEO

Courtney Verissimo

Membership & Events Manager

Doreen Napoli

Education & Events Planner

Alison Clark

Operations Manager

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Olga is a death educator, certified in Thanatology, the study of death, dying, loss and bereavement. She is the founder and director of DyingMatters.ca and provides educational presentations and workshops on death, dying, loss and bereavement. She is one of the founding faculty members of the BEyond Yonder Virtual School for Death Midwifery in Canada. Olga has over 20 years of experience in health care, serving as a regional Hospice Palliative Care Planner, community palliative care nurse and healthcare educator. Her educational history includes a bachelor degree in Anthropology and Psychology, a Master’s degree in Religion and Culture, and an interdisciplinary certificate in palliative care. As a death educator Olga continues to gain knowledge in the field of spiritual care, death, dying and living. Olga is thrilled to be part of the We Can Die Better movement in Canada, contributing her experience, knowledge and passion.

What makes Olga a great mentor is her ability to recognize that we all posses our own inner wisdom when it comes to death, dying, loss and bereavement, and that being a mentor is to assist in the expansion of that wisdom by offering new information, knowledge and insight. “I have learned much from my own mentors, teachers and guides, and strive to provide a non-judgemental approach to guide anyone in their own personal learning.”

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Olga is a death educator, certified in Thanatology, the study of death, dying, loss and bereavement. She is the founder and director of DyingMatters.ca and provides educational presentations and workshops on death, dying, loss and bereavement. She is one of the founding faculty members of the BEyond Yonder Virtual School for Death Midwifery in Canada. Olga has over 20 years of experience in health care, serving as a regional Hospice Palliative Care Planner, community palliative care nurse and healthcare educator. Her educational history includes a bachelor degree in Anthropology and Psychology, a Master’s degree in Religion and Culture, and an interdisciplinary certificate in palliative care. As a death educator Olga continues to gain knowledge in the field of spiritual care, death, dying and living. Olga is thrilled to be part of the We Can Die Better movement in Canada, contributing her experience, knowledge and passion.

What makes Olga a great mentor is her ability to recognize that we all posses our own inner wisdom when it comes to death, dying, loss and bereavement, and that being a mentor is to assist in the expansion of that wisdom by offering new information, knowledge and insight. “I have learned much from my own mentors, teachers and guides, and strive to provide a non-judgemental approach to guide anyone in their own personal learning.”

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Hunter Doherty "Patch" Adams (born May 28, 1945) is an American physician, comedian, social activist, clown, and author. He founded the Gesundheit! Institute in 1971. Each year he organizes volunteers from around the world to travel to various countries where they dress as clowns to bring humor to orphans, patients, and other people.

Adams is currently based in Urbana, Illinois. In collaboration with the institute, he promotes an alternative health care model not funded by insurance policies.

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Mariah Riess tells her story:

On any given day, from my practice in Dover, MA, I speak with weight management clients from Seattle to Baltimore who seek compassionate support and expertise. Via phone, Skype or in person, I help many do the seemingly impossible: lose weight and develop skills to prevent weight gain.

On a parallel track are clients who have experienced heartbreaking loss: both human and four-footed. Grief is an experience deserving compassion and expert care. If dismissed, suppressed or silenced, a world of pain may remain. In a culture that is ever hesitant to truly acknowledge the oh-so-human phenomenon of mourning, I have dedicated myself to providing a home for a different, kinder path.

I discovered my constellations of callings through a series of events over the course of life.

I began working with overweight patients in 1982. As an early stage employee of Health Management Resources, a Boston based start-up committed to providing effective, high quality behavioral treatment for overweight, I became Director of Overweight Treatment. HMR, a company on the rise and requiring many hours of dedication from each employee, was the perfect training ground as I was determined to make a difference with a population in despair. In my role, I co-led teams of trainers who implemented the program nationally, rapidly sharing and bringing this effective treatment method to many.

Fast-forward fifteen years, while raising two children, Kerrin and Devon, and wanting to spend more time closer to home, I launched my private practice in Dover, MA. Bringing a compassionate, effective approach that would have a lasting impact requires teaching clients skills for weight loss and the prevention of weight regain. Working closely with my clients and having an appreciation for the deep challenge health management represents, allowed individuals and families to re-set, attaining lower weights and establishing healthier lifestyles. My practice quickly grew.

While working closely with my clients on weight over many years, I also shared their personal losses - a parent, a child, a friend. In addition, I experienced the illness and passing of several dear to me. As a result, in 2013, I began to explore the profound challenges related to the process of mourning. This path included post-graduate training and many hours as a hospice volunteer. With these experiences and training, I incorporated grief support counseling into my practice.

https://www.mariahriess.com/my-story

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In her 40’s, Gabrielle went back to school to become a hospice nurse. She shares her difficult journey in her book “Soft Landing”. Becoming a hospice nurse opened her eyes and changed how she saw her world. She discusses some of the wonderful people she cared for until they passed, and the lessons she learned about life through death.

https://www.thehospiceheart.net

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