Americans All’s mission to help individuals record and share their life’s experiences and accomplishments supports what Dr. Atul Gawande and other scholars in this field call “the “dying role” and its importance to people as life approaches its end. They want society to realize that people, as their life approaches its end, want to share memories, establish their own legacies and ensure that those who are left behind are okay. One way this can be accomplished is to enable individuals to have a direct role in recording their stories. It also helps ensure that they will be remembered as they wanted to be.
As a continuum to our mission, HealGrief.org begins were Americans All ends, continuing the legacy of one’s life story told by those left behind.
Who Is HealGrief
In 2013, HealGrief.org launched as a virtual platform where individuals can communicate and celebrate the lives of those gone before them. They are committed to providing an understanding of grief by increasing universal awareness and education, while offering resources to support a healthy grief recovery.
Their vision is to remove the taboo regarding death by creating conversation about an inevitable part of life’s cycle and to validate the feelings and emotions associated with bereavement. They believe it is vital to remove the stigma and misconceptions about grief and to ensure a more compassionate world that recognizes, “time won’t heal” and no one will “get over” a loved one’s death.
They provide a more meaningful way to recognize and honor loved one’s and by doing so, they take the place of the traditional newspaper’s obituary notice. Taking advantage of technology and social media, they provide a modern approach to the way individuals communicate a death. Their no-cost platform enables users to create obituaries, light virtual candles in memory of loved ones, and create memorials—without being subjected to commercial advertisements or fees. In addition, they host extensive information on how to financially, emotionally, and socially cope with a loved one’s death, as well as resources to help plan funerals, estates, and living wills.
HealGrief.org participates in community activities that create awareness and support the need for one’s healthy grief recovery. One such program is the “Lost Project,” a merging of psychology and photography—an artistic exploration of the human condition—with the theme of loss. These environmental portraits, taken in areas of the subjects’ homes—which are most reflective of their personalities—honor the subjects’ feelings and emotions about their losses. The “Lost Project” is a statement that everyone, young and old, grieves something or someone.
In 2017, HealGrief.org adopted a new program, Actively Moving Forward, which supports college students grieving the death of a loved one or a loved one’s terminal illness. “AMF” campus chapters are at college and universities nationwide. These groups connect and empower grieving college students to support one another and participate in community service in memory of their deceased loved one.
HealGrief.org, 501(c)3 organization, is run entirely by volunteers and we are supported solely by donations.