|
|
GROWW E-Mail Newsletter |
|
|
15April2004 |
Circulation: 922 |
Volume 2, Number 6 |
|
Editor · Pat Sirni Associate Editor · Margot Hill Newsletter Staff · Angela Dyer · Lori Petersen GROWW Officers · Anne D’Ambrosio, Executive Director GROWW Staff · Libby Morningstar, Director of Branches · Pat Sirni, Grief Recovery Room Manager · Rachel Frank, Message Board Manager · Phil D’Ambrosio, Director of Security
|
Message from the Executive Director - Anne D’Ambrosio April showers are here and the flowers are starting to come up depending on where you live. Here in the southeastern US the colors are beautiful and reminds me that we are alive everyday, with that comes the green stuff on our cars, something I never saw before I lived here, pollen, wow, it’s everywhere, we like the April showers here because it gets rid of the pollen.
Now on to business, beginning on the 15th the day you all receive this newsletter, we will begin the process of passwording the GROWW Message Boards, EVERY GROWW message board will be passworded, you will only need to sign up once to get a password and then you will have access to ALL of the Boards. Fortunately we don’t normally have a problem with people responding to any of the boards, but SOME groups take offense to people whom “don’t belong” posting on “their” boards, If you are not sure where to post start on the main Grief Recovery Board, everyone is welcomed there. If you would like to start a nice thoughtful thread, please do it on the board you belong to and the Grief Recovery board, do not post it on every single board. If you have any questions regarding the new message board processing, please contact Rachel@groww.org she along with NancyP have worked very hard at making sure we have a smooth transition. Please be patient with us at first, we will TRY to get the passwords entered and sent back to you ASAP. It is EXTREMLY important that you provide the correct email address or you will NOT receive a password. Please allow 1-2 days for a reply, if you do not receive anything within that time period please let us know at password@groww.org in case there was a typo in your email address. We hope that this will take care of the insensitive posts that have seemed to consume our boards in the past few months.
I would like to thank Barbara Felps and her Daughter Teri Folkes for the Pampered Chef fundraiser they did for GROWW in November. They raised $80.00 for GROWW!! Thank you and a big round of applause for those who were kind enough to help out with that fundraiser. Teri has a new website www.pamperedchef.biz/terifolks and I will add a show each month with your name on it, so that if anyone wants to order and have 10% donated to GROWW they can do it online! They will just have to enter you as the host. :) They can also still do the product Fundraiser (the form one) anytime between now and June.
If you have any complaints OR compliments please send them to staff@groww.org we can only reply to complaints made to us directly, we cannot have 2nd or 3rd party information. Please remember to use our overflow rooms for times when you just want to chat with your friends. The main overflow room is http://www.groww.org/chat/homegrowwn.htm please feel free to use it. It is an unhosted room but still a GROWW room so the same rules apply, if we find that it is being misused we will be forced to close it, please don’t make us do that. We want you all to be comfortable and safe at GROWW.
I would also like to say at this time we are having some trouble with out credit card provider and we are unable to accept donations made by credit card. I hope to have this rectified and working by the time the May Newsletter goes to press.
New Host
I missed the deadline somehow last month to introduce our very FIRST JRHost in Guiding for Youth chat room. Many of you know her from GR as nobodyreal, to us she IS REAL! JRHostReal will be co-hosting with Taryn on Thursday nights in the Guiding for Youth room; sorry I missed it last month. Welcome (((((((((((((( V ))))))))))))) we know you’ll go a fabulous job.
Until next month, Good Grief
AnneGD
Meet Your Host by Pat Sirni Hugs to all. This month instead of interviewing one of our hosts, I thought I would take some time to talk to you about our hosts and hosting in general.
GROWW hosts are a very special group of people. They volunteer their time, often many, many hours per week. Their mission is to give back to you what was given to them; love, understanding and guidance on the path to healing from loss. They are your hosts, but always remember that they were and are, members first. They too have their rollercoaster days, their ups and downs on this path that we walk together. While they are further down the path than many of you, they never forget the reason why they are here, the reason that brought them to GROWW and to the committment that they have made as hosts.
Many have asked how we choose our hosts. Basically, we observe a member's interaction in the chatrooms. We look for those who are well into their grief process, who have been visiting with us for many months, and who show compassion and understanding for others in the room. We look for people who offer encouragement and love to others. It takes a very special person to be a GROWW host, and staff is committed to inviting only those who demonstrate all of those qualities to join our family of hosts. After we invite someone to host, we send them a Promise Letter, which they are required to sign and return.
Respect of others in the chatroom is very important. Our hosts respect every member, acknowledge their losses and their pain, and commit to maintaining a safe and healthy chatroom environment. Many times, in a crowded chatroom, a host will focus on a newcomer. We ask that our membership be supportive of what the host is doing, and always remember that we strive to make the newcomer feel welcome and to allow them time to share their pain. A host is also trying to get to know the newcomer, because unfortunately, this is the Internet and we do have people join us for reasons that are not appropriate. Experience has taught our hosts warning signs and they will spend a little bit more time assessing the validity in some cases. Please remember that they are doing this to keep GROWW the safe and supportive place that it is. We understand that you as members want to support the newcomer as well, but we do ask that you not take that person into private chat until they have been visiting with us for awhile. If you receive an unsolicited private chat, please report it to Staff@Groww.org.
One last thought on how you as members can help out a host. The chatrooms can become very busy at times, especially the main room, Grief Recovery. It is very difficult to host a crowded room and focus on those who need some immediate TLC and support. We understand that many of you have made some wonderful friendships here and that you come to the room to share fellowship with your friends. We would like to remind you that HomeGROWWn is an unhosted room, always available for camaderie and fellowship for those who are not so new and raw in their grief. When the main room is especially busy, we would appreciate you inviting your friends to visit in HomeGROWWn, to lessen the load on the host. HomeGROWWn can be accessed from the Site Navigation menu on the main GROWW page.
Where has this year gone......already it is April 15, 2004. As we look outside we see where new growth is happening. Flowers are beginning to bloom, trees are budding, days are getting longer. If we take this analogy to our life as it is now, some can see pain, very raw hurting pain, but others are seeing that pain start to subside and they are beginning to develop a renewed strength and love of life. You say how can this be? I hear people telling me that with time and a lot of grief work I can move on with my life. I promise you this is true. GROWW begin as a mission started by Judy Divers and has now continued since her death on December 5, 1999. I am very proud to be a small part of it's continuing growth. GROWW offers many their only opportunity for support of their grief, while for others it offers supplement support to their outside support group. WE have many many good people who have experienced the death of a beloved one. It doesn't matter if it was the death of a child, a spouse or significant other, a parent or grandparent, a sibling, or a good friend, the pain is very real to me, the individual. We are not professionals, but are friends helping friends. I think sometimes in our grief we can forget this. It is my hope that GROWW will continue long after I am gone to be a blessing to others who are in such pain that they just don't see how life will ever continue for them. Through GROWW's chat rooms, message boards, we have a wonderful opportunity to give back to others, to offer them hope for the future. Lets continue to be a support for others. Also, remember our wonderful hosts, they are members first. They have chosen to give back to what has been freely given to them. GROWW was my very first chat room....and OMG this is the internet.......BUT to my surprise what I found were wonderful friends for life. One more plug for GROWW. While we do not ask for funds, they are very important in keeping GROWW alive. We are trying to obtain grants to help with the costs of the rooms among other behind the scenes cost. For those who wonder, everyone associated with GROWW is a volunteer. There is no paid staff. All funds raised go right back into the operation of our beloved site. If you could find it in your heart to help out please take the time to check out HelpGROWW. We are looking forward to seeing many old friends and many new friends in July. Check out the gathering page for Michigan Gathering July 16 - 18, 2004. Write mi2004gathering@yahoo.com for registration information. Until next month take care of YOU, Libby
Guest Column I’m Vi Wisdom from Boise, Idaho and I’ve been coming to GROWW for a little over 2 years. As most of you know, I lost my 18-year-old son, Phil, to suicide on 2/12/01. In my 50 years of living, I have not arrived at this point in my life without losing loved ones, friends and acquaintances in death. For many explainable and unexplainable reasons, I do believe that losing my youngest son was the most difficult thing I have ever lived through. It was so unexpected. Nothing could have prepared me to deal with this monumental tragedy that I didn’t think would ever happen to me or my family.
I came to GROWW not knowing what to expect. I had never been in a grief chat room before (or any chat room, for that matter) and I was unfamiliar with how a person just blurts out their whole life story to people who are virtual strangers. As I began to join the room on a regular basis, I discovered that I was not alone in my grief and that there were many caring people who felt like I did. I gained a measure of comfort from coming to GROWW because I was allowed to give voice to my grief without fearing that I was treading on anyone’s toes. In return, I found that I had a common bond with many and sharing my grief took on a feeling that I was not only helping myself to heal … but helping others as well.
Losing someone to suicide is a very complex situation. Most everyone I came across was compassionate and supportive. But as with many things in life, there are always a few who march to the beat of a different drum. They freely voiced their opinions in spite of how I would receive their words. This is when I became aware of what the stigma of suicide involved. It was painful, distasteful, and something I wanted to avoid altogether; and yet here it was on my plate regardless. I turned to books to understand what I perhaps “had missed”, by some people’s account. Hour by hour, I read through pages and pages describing other suicide survivors’ stories of how they had lost their loved one to this “beast” as I would later call it.
In my quest for answers, I learned that depression is a very real illness and it can drain the life out of someone you love … right before your very eyes and you may not recognize it for what it is. I also learned that depression is not a matter of occasionally having “the blues” as I had previously been taught. In fact, I began to learn that depression and mental illness are very closely linked and that not only was there a stigma that existed for suicide survivors, but there was also a stigma that existed for those needing help to escape the clutches of this illness. In this discussion, I use the term “suicide survivor” and I mean it in the sense that a person survives someone else’s suicide as opposed to their own attempt.
As the veil of ignorance began to be stripped away from my eyes, I realized that suicide is one of the leading causes of death among the young right on up to the elderly. No one is immune from having it happen to the people they know and love. As I learned these things, I wondered why it seemed to be such a “curable” illness and yet, so elusive for people to be able to reach out and get that help. I became angry that a cure wasn’t to be had for my son. I was angry at the world for “everything” they had done to Phil and for “nothing” that they had done. All I knew was Phil was gone and I would never know if he had reached out for help, whether it would have saved his life or not. He was a very proud young man and I don’t think he wanted to be perceived as weak and not able to be in control of his life. I would like to believe that he would not have been perceived in this unfavorable light and yet some of the things I have come to know tell me that life isn’t as fair as we would like it to be.
I choose not to have anger at Phil for what he did. Many survivors do have degrees of anger and I can understand where they are coming from. For me, I only have deep feelings of sadness that Phil had inner pain that he felt he could not talk about. I also feel that he chose not to tell me in order to spare me the anguish of not being able to “fix it” for him. His request was that I would love him for who and what he was and I tried to the very best of my ability to give him that much … in life, as well as in death.
As the years roll by (3 now), I find that I miss Phil more than ever. I have so many memories of things we did together and little did I know “then” that we were making memories, but I am glad we were. I will forever hold them dear to my heart and remember that I was blessed to have had Phil with me as long as I did. Just this weekend I stood on the sandy area along the Salmon River where we used to go to fish and play in the sun when Phil was a boy. I could picture him playing in the sand and while reality suddenly reminded me that it was only a memory, I can still see his smiling face reassuring me that he had many happy times in his all too short life.
I have made many friends at GROWW and so many of you said “just what I needed to hear” when I came with a heavy heart. I hope I can do the same for the new ones who join us on this journey through grief.
WOW!! I wasn’t aware of all the information that’s available on the GROWW website. Yup, I’m as guilty as the rest of ya. Easter Sunday I had some time to “veg”. I de-fragged the puter and was cleaning up some stuff when I clicked on the GROWW web site. Rachel, our web mistress is doing an incredible job with the day to day operation. The only part of the site I usually see is when Anne is monitoring the message boards. I didn’t realize how extensive the Resource portion of the GROWW website was. As well as providing message boards for visitors to share, special areas are provided such as, "EMail to Heaven", where visitors can "send" (verbalize) messages to lost loved ones. Linkage is provided to extensive libraries of additional resource sites and services. Visitors may obtain information or link to governmental, educational, health, medical, financial, and social services. Most of these sites offer linkage to GROWW. I even learned something. What the GROWW logo means. For those of you like me I have copied it below;
The Olive branch symbolizes peace. The Laurel branch symbolizes success and strength. The Willow Tree, chosen as our GROWW tree, the "umbrella" that embraces the tears that brought us together, the butterfly to symbolize the change in each of our lives, the sunrise for the hope that tomorrow may bring, but most of all the love and support as our Angels, the trunk of the tree is what GROWW represents. See, who says ya can’t teach old, I mean experienced dogs new tricks. Rach, I promise I will check it out more often. Talk to ya in May……
Phil Ps…Ms Nancy, thanks for all you do too!!
|
|
|
GROWW, INC.© Judy Divers 501(c)(3) Non-Profit EIN: 59-3445877
|
Recipes From Members Roasted Roma Tomatoes (very easy) :
If you would like to submit a guest column, recipe or poem for publication in this newsletter, please send your submission to newsletter@groww.org
To unsubscribe to this email click reply with UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject Line. For questions about this Newsletter or to submit an article, email newsletter@groww.org |
|
