Adaire House is dedicated to the honor and memory of my wife, Andrea Adaire Fischer.
The Adaire House peer-led grief education and support program was developed from the observation that the healing process after experiencing the passing of a spouse or partner is not only a long one, but that it has multiple components that the bereaved need to learn to address, often simultaneously.
Our Mission is to provide education about the grieving process for Spouses and Partners and to provide activities to supplement that education including peer support and social activities, throughout their long and difficult bereavements.
The ultimate goal of our multifaceted approach is to help to promote learning, growth and healing in our participants by providing environments and situations that ultimately empower the creation of groups of friends within our groups who can move forward together with intent and purpose as they transition through grieving into living in the next part of their lives.
Our mission of education and support therefore, contains a number of components, some that occur together from the beginning and others that phase in as people become ready to address the different needs that their grief and healing journeys contain. Our participants can continuously find new opportunities to learn, grow and move forward through the multiple meetings and activities that we provide. The healing process appears to be strongly aided and often accelerated synergistically by all of these additions to traditional support group activities when they occur simultaneously.
These multiple opportunities for education and support currently include:
Our primary educational component is four monthly Discussion Group Meetings that provide education about understanding grief and the many ways it effects us. Instead of presenting this information to our participants in a concentrated set of classes at the start of the grieving process when their ability to process and learn is the most compromised by their grief, we have broken our educational component into small segments that we present as the topics for each of our Discussion Group Meetings. A secondary purpose of those meetings is to allow those attending to have dedicated time to discuss, question and comment on the topic of the main presentation.
A second opportunity for learning and healing occurs in our twice monthly Support Group Meetings. These are open discussions amongst the participants about any questions or concerns they may have about their grief and grieving. It is also an opportunity for them to tell stories about their lives and about their loved ones and share them with others who can empathize with the experiences and difficulties of the grieving process. These meetings contain opportunities for the participants to learn from and about each other as they try to understand what is happening and changing in their lives.
In our model of grief support, sociality is a powerful part of the healing process and strongly adds to that healing when it simultaneously develops along with our support group activities.
To support the growth of a new sociality in our participants, we host a monthly potluck at Adaire House to provide an opportunity for participants as well as facilitators to get together in a safe, quiet, semi-social environment to begin to learn how to socialize again on their own. The potlucks provide a place where people can get to know each other and where they all understand and accept the feelings and emotions that often accompany and express during their grieving, especially during the early part of the grief journey. The potlucks greatly help to encourage and build community within the group.
Another part of building sociality and community that we sponsor includes weekly group get-togethers out in the community at local restaurants for those participating in our support programs.
As an additional component of what we do, we have creative and meditative activities available to our members to help them learn relaxation and concentration as well as finding meaning and purpose in their lives going forwards. Our Mindful Healing sessions contain gentle chair yoga, guided meditations and listening to crystal sound bowls. We also offer a “Zen Writing” workshop to teach and encourage journaling as a part of the learning and healing process.
We have seen repeatedly that this unique combination of education and community significantly aids and enhances the healing process for grieving spouses and partners.
Dr. Howard J Fischer: Director and Facilitator