Our Vision:

A world where children coping with loss can grow up to be emotionally healthy and productive.

Our Mission:

To normalize grief in our communities through education, advocacy, and year-round support group programs for grieving children, teens and adults.

Who We Serve:

We provide services to children, teens and young adults who have lost a parent or sibling to death. We also provide services for the children's surviving parent(s) or caretaker.

 Good Grief Principles

We believe . . .

Grief is a natural reaction to loss

We all have within us the natural capacity to heal after a loss

The duration and intensity of grief are unique to each individual

Caring and acceptance assist in both the grieving and healing processes

We accept and affirm all feelings in our Support Circle

We provide caring support and serve as companions on each individual's unique journey through loss

We are empathetic listeners and compassionate witnesses, we listen with our hearts, eyes and ears

We believe every person has the right to be heard and understood

We gather as a grieving community to honor each other's stories and to hold hope in the presence of suffering

We care for ourselves with compassion and understanding so that we may do the same for others

History

Good Grief, Inc. was founded in December 2003 when a group of volunteers came together as a result of their concern over the lack of on-going, effective grief support services and grief education in New Jersey. Since day one, Good Grief has been a community effort working towards making a big impact for New Jersey's grieving children.

This group of volunteers, the founders of Good Grief, Inc., held a three day Future Search^TM Conference in April 2004 with over 60 grief professionals, teachers, parents, children, nonprofit leaders and concerned community members to create a future vision and actions for helping children and families in grief. The two primary goals for action that came out of the conference were first to create educational programs for the adults in children's lives and, second, to provide accessible year-round direct service through a grief support center.

It is from that conference, the mission and the vision of Good Grief were created.

Two months after the center opened in 2007 it became the fastest growing children's grief center in the country and it has remained as such since its birth.

Today, community members throughout NJ are invested in the success of this essential resource to the more than 20,000 children in NJ who will lose a parent this year.

Support Center

On September 11th, 2007, the Good Grief Center opened at Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey, offering year-round peer support groups for parents and their children, ages 3-18, and young adults, ages 18-29. The groups are facilitated by highly skilled volunteers who have attended our 35-hour training program and ongoing educational workshops. The volunteers are supervised by Good Grief staff. In April 2011 Good Grief moved into its new home in Morristown, an 11K sq. ft., beautiful children's grief center. As of June 2011 we serve approximately 400 individual participants a year from 76 towns throughout New Jersey on four Nights of Support. We are the fastest growing children's bereavement center in the country as a result of the caring and safe community we provide grieving families. Additionally, Good Grief also provides educational workshops at the center and throughout New Jersey, within community, school, and corporate settings.

©2011 Good Grief | All rights reserved.