Adaire House is dedicated to the honor and memory of my wife, Andrea Adaire Fischer.
The Adaire House programs are part of an integrated support system that is ultimately about helping to heal lives. Our purpose is not only to help bereaved spouses and partners through their grief journeys, it is about helping them through their healing journeys as well.
Adaire House is a concept and a place where we begin by talking about grief and about how we might support spouses and partners as they make their way through their grieving. We also simultaneously help them to build environments where they can come together and learn to socialize and build community.
Adaire House is not a counseling center. It is a peer-led, integrated support system for helping build new lives out of the ashes of our grief and addresses how we might do that together with fellow travelers on the road to hope, healing and wellness.
Our main goal is to help bereaved spouses and partners construct the lives they will live going forward. We will provide places and programs to allow them to find “friends in grief” with whom they can share the next part of their lives. This is about bringing bereaved spouses and partners together who all know what it’s like and how it feels to have experienced the passing of a spouse or a partner and so have a powerful commonality on which to build.
Our programs provide education on grief and grieving that is included in our discussion and support groups. We also strongly encourage people to actively work on not only their grief, but on themselves; to actively go from “feeling less” to learning to “become more”.
We encourage and provide ideas for helping bereaved spouses and partners to build the next parts of their lives by finding ways to honor their loved ones in how they grow and what they become as they move forward towards healing and wellness. We encourage and create opportunities for people in our programs to find new meaning and purpose in their lives and to look at building lives of service, especially within the community of the bereaved.
Adaire house will also help people who inquire about bereavement support to find support programs in the northern Colorado area. We will help to direct inquiries to not only our own programs but to other group support programs, social support groups, individual counseling sessions, online social media groups and others that might help the bereaved community as well.
All support staff will be volunteers. There will be no charge for any of our services. All of our activities will be peer-led. All those facilitating our group activities will be from the community of the bereaved.
The core of the Adaire House programs contain:
- A discussion format meeting that will present a topic selected from our Facilitators Guide and be presented by the lead facilitator at the start of each meeting. The remainder of the meeting will be an open discussion of the topic and questions presented by the facilitator or it may move to any topic that the group discussion leads it to. The notes for each discussion meeting will be available as a handout to all of the participants at the beginning of each meeting.
- A support format meeting that will not have a fixed topic nor a presentation by the facilitator; they are meetings that can address any issues or questions posed by the participants or they can address issues and questions from previous discussion meetings.
A support meeting will usually occur around two weeks after each monthly discussion meeting. Alternatively, it may follow two or more related discussion meetings and then the support meeting will address what the participants have learned or thought about or have questions about from the prior discussion meetings.
- A monthly potluck will be held at our facility for everyone in all of our groups, including facilitators.
- As part of our group activities, we will offer monthly opportunities to move into the local community and meet as a group at a social venue or restaurant to expand the socialization process that we begin with the monthly potlucks.
In addition to our core program, Adaire House will encourage and present a variety of creative and meditative activities and events to help promote healing as well as learning to be one pointed and mindful as an aid to navigating our grief.
Dr. Howard J Fischer: Director and Facilitator