Remembrance event on Pensacola Beach helps grieving families of lost loved ones

CLOSING CIRCLE AT PENSACOLA BEACH

VALERIE’S HOUSE PENSACOLA FAMILY

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. -- One in 11 kids in Santa Rosa and Escambia counties have lost a parent or a sibling.

Valerie's House in Pensacola says that's about 9 ,000 kids between the two counties. They offer grief counseling to kids and family members who've lost a loved one.

Since they opened three years ago, Valerie's House has helped 330 families and their numbers are growing.

They held a remembrance event on Pensacola Beach Thursday night. Families came together to honor and remember those they've lost.

Each of them had horrible stories of loss, but say Valerie's House has helped them overcome that grief.

"We help the kids identify some of the feelings that come up with grief," said Jennifer Elzweig, program manager at Valerie's House. "It can’t be messy whether you’re five or 50 and once they are able to start talking about some of those feelings we try to teach them some coping skills that they can use that can last them through their entire life. We do that by showing them that they’re not alone and introducing them to children who have similar experiences.”

Young Caysen lost both of his parents. Bennet and Asher lost their father in February.

10-year-old Frankie suddenly lost her mother when she was 7.

Her family says the loss has been hard. Her grandmother Tess now raising Frankie and her younger brother.

"Frankie came home from school ,her mom wasn't at the bus stop and they went in and unfortunately found her deceased," Tess Pease said. "Julian was there with her and it was really tough for all of us."

"It's really hard to talk about it, but it got better," Frankie Pease said. "I'm glad I came."

Linda Joiner lost her daughter Kayla Atwood to domestic violence. She was murdered back in January.

Joiner says the loss has been devastating.

"I couldn't breathe," she said. "I couldn't believe the way things happened."

Each of these families going through grief -- and each of them chose Valerie's House to help them.

The families say they feel a sense of community knowing they're not alone in their grief.

"I hope that they just feel a sense of community," Elzweig said. "I know that we’ve created space for them to grieve together because it’s a very human experience."

"To know I'm not by myself, I'm not the only one," Joiner said. "There's somebody else just like me that felt the pain and the loss that I feel."

Valerie's House offers free services.

Read the full article here: https://weartv.com/news/local/remembrance-event-on-pensacola-beach-helps-grieving-families-of-lost-loved-ones

Mentoring program at Valerie’s House Naples helping people grieve

Reyna Zwanenburg and Ashley McNamara have a special place in their hearts for Valerie’s House in Naples.

“In 2018, my mom passed away,” said Zwanenburg. “I was 11 years old. She passed away from glioblastoma, multi-form, which is a very rare type of brain cancer.”

“My mom also died when I was 10 from the same type of cancer, glioblastoma,” McNamara said, “and that’s kind of one of the reasons that I felt that I would be a great mentor for Reyna. We were around the same age around the same time the year that our moms passed.”

She came in shy and guarded, but with the help of her friends at Valerie’s house, Zwanenburg has learned to share her grief with McNamara.

“Definitely, you know, growing older, also maturing kind of makes you realize that it happened in the past and you just get over it,” Zwanenburg said. “It’s a hard thing to get over, obviously, but, you know, finding someone that had something extremely in common with.”

Valerie’s House is a lifeline for many kids in the community, often teaching them how to deal with intense emotions surrounding their grief.

“It’s not like having a parent either. It’s like less than a parent but also a guardian, so it’s like you don’t have that awkwardness,” Zwanenburg said.

Families at Valerie’s House constantly feel the absence of their loved ones but say mentors like McNamara help fill the void.

“Someone that they can almost trust and feel that they can just say what’s on their mind,” McNamara explained, “and also have fun to going out, right? Going on shopping trips, you know, so someone that can be there, and someone they can actually overlay on, depend on.”

Valerie’s House encourages anyone that is looking to be a mentor not to hesitate.

They say you can always make time to be with someone and believe it’s an opportunity to learn and help the other person grow.

Link to article: https://winknews.com/2024/07/18/valeries-house-naples/

Tour of Valerie's House Fort Myers with Monica Villa

Thank you to Monica Villa, Realtor, for showcasing the beauty of our Lee County Family Is Forever Home in her American Dream TV segment! 🏡

In the video below, Monica tours the facility with JJ, a former teen in the Valerie's House program. She also sits down with Founder & CEO Angela Melvin to discuss the mission of our organization. Thank you, Monica, for highlighting the work we do to support grieving families in our community.

New home is a respite for children after the loss of parent or sibling

WGCU | By Sandra Viktorova

Published May 20, 2024 at 2:18 PM EDT

Dealing with the death of a loved one is life changing for anyone, but it’s especially tough when children are the ones left behind.

Angela Melvin knows that grief firsthand. She was just 10 when her mom, Valerie, was killed in a crash in Fort Myers.

“It's just so painful,” said Melvin.

Making it tougher was not having a way to share that grief.

“We didn't know how to talk about my mom. And we didn't know if it was okay. And a lot of people in our lives didn't really have the words to help us,” said Melvin.

This lack of support was the inspiration for Valerie’s House, a non-profit which provides grief support programs to about 1,000 Southwest Florida children who have lost a parent or sibling. The organization just expanded its services to a growing population by building their first house in Fort Myers. Their days of renting a space are over thanks to the help of donations.

“It's hard to put into words what we're feeling except for just absolute gratitude,” said Melvin, founder and CEO of Valerie’s House. ”We needed a house so desperately for our children and families to come to a place to call their own home away from home. A safe place that could never, ever be taken away from them. “

The new home is much bigger than anything they’ve had before.

A large playground in the backyard is adjacent to a wildlife preserve. On the front porch, big stuffed bears on rocking chairs welcome visitors and long farm tables in the kitchen are full of food and snacks. The home is specially designed to support bereaved children.

“They get to run up there when the night begins and they get to join with their friends. And each room has its own theme. Some of the themes are focused around memories. We have a wall that's just all pictures of our lost loved ones that we can talk about and bring the pictures down and share about them,” said Melvin. “We have a room in the house, called the volcano room, where they can just kick and punch a heavy, heavy punching bag if they want for the night.”

The mission of Valerie’s House idea is to support children working through their grief with help of those who understand what they’re feeling.

When asked what could have made it easier for her, Melvin said the support of another child.

“If someone asked me about her, if I was able to find another little girl in sixth grade that's mom had died. And we could know each other and depend on each other," she said. "If my dad knew how to talk to us. If he had other men that were going through this to lean on. And that's what we do at Valerie's house, we lean on each other. So we're not doing this alone.”

An estimated one in 11 kids in Florida loses a parent or sibling before the age of 18. She hopes more will take advantage of the peer support offered at Valerie's House so they’ll have a safe way to process their grief.

From mental health professionals with expertise in grief to extra outlets for art and play time, the home provides an opportunity where kids can openly express their confusion, worry, pain and loneliness.

“The last thing we want is for children and families to stuff their emotions inside and then it comes out in other ways down the line, as we know that so many of our incarcerated children are bereaved and grieving," she said. "We know that many grieving children and families without the right help and support will turn to other coping skills that aren't so great. Drugs and alcohol and, and maybe even crime, just a way to try to deal with the life now that has been presented to them. And it's not fair. It's not right, these kids should be growing up with the people that love them.”

Melvin says about two to three kids in an average classroom are dealing with this type of loss. That’s why Valerie’s House is also trying to educate pediatricians and teachers to recognize that grief can look a lot like ADHD and make it tough to learn at school.

Melvin said they’re trying to improve the way we cope with grief as a community.

“There are adults that come to me in their 60s and 70s and will share that they lost a parent when they were young, and no one asked them how they felt or even bothered to look their way as a child. You know, oftentimes children don't have a voice,” said Melvin.

Valerie’s house now has homes in Charlotte County and the Florida Panhandle, as well. The organization hopes to transition from a rental property to their own home in Collier County soon.

Valerie’s House is offering support services to local companies to help employees cope with the loss of an employee, too. They’re also part of a coalition to create federal policy to improve national bereavement leave.

WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.

Link to the article: https://news.wgcu.org/mental-health/2024-05-20/new-home-is-a-respite-for-children-after-the-loss-of-parent-or-sibling

There's a new building in Ft Myers built to help heal thousands of families.

By: Anvar Ruziev Fox-4 News

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Thanks to the generosity of the community and strategic partnerships, including a symbolic $1-a-year lease agreement with the City of Fort Myers, a new $3 million facility now serves as a home for grieving families.

Valerie's House has woven itself into the fabric of Southwest Florida over the past nine years, offering a sanctuary for families grappling with a loss of a loved one.

It's a place where stories of pain and resilience intermingle, like that of Kari Cardisco. With her voice trembling with emotion, the Valerie House mentor told her Ft Myers Community Correspondent Anvar Ruziev how she suddenly found herself on the other side, as a grieving mother.

"Unfortunately, we got the news almost exactly three years ago that his dad died, and he was fourteen at the time. That news rocked our world," Cardisco recounted as she stood next to her son.

But Valerie's House was there to help Cardisco, and it has helped more than five thousand children and families across Southwest Florida, like Jacqueline Virtue, who has left her mark on the very walls of the new facility.

Virtue, who painted a large mural inside, told me, "It's therapy for grieving children, and so as their caregivers, we benefit because we get therapy and we know how to help our grieving child so within that, we all get help. The benefit affects the whole family."

In Florida, one in eleven children face the loss of a sibling or parent before they turn 18, according to Childhood Bereavement Estimation Models.

Angela Melvin-Churchill, the Founder and CEO of Valerie's House, described the importance of community awareness. "We have a lot of families that learn about us through the school system," she said, highlighting how schools play a crucial role in connecting families to Valerie's House during their time of need.

As Valerie's House looks to the future, plans are already underway to expand the facility to offer even more support to families.

Naples grieving middle schooler finds Valerie’s House, learns the tools to cope with her loss

12-year-old Maddy ​Benner found out this week she’s been selected to sing the national anthem at the spring training Red Sox game in Fort Myers.

“I’m looking forward to getting this amazing opportunity, for so many people to hear my voice, maybe to touch other people and bring joy to them,” said Benner.

Maddy has been coming to Valerie’s House in Naples for the past year and has found her voice, literally, amidst her grief.

“It’s become a definite lifeline for me and to open me up and to get me to feel my feelings instead of just bottling them up inside, which is not what I should have been doing before,” Benner said.

Maddy’s lost her grandma Carol and her pop pop Jay. Her dad, David, died on December 10th, 2021, and her teenage cousin Cali, who was like a sister, died several weeks later.

“They mean so much because they made me what I am today,” Benner said. “My dad gave me hope and just helped me to get all my singing stuff and help me believe I can be where I am right now. And Cali, she was always there when I needed to talk about something or to hype me up.”

Holidays are traditionally a time for us to gather together, but families at Valerie’s House are feeling the absence of their loved ones in a deep way.

Maddy came in shy and guarded, but with the help of her friends at Valerie’s House, Maddy has learned to talk about her grief and realizes she’s not alone.

“Most people don’t lose our father, dad at my age. So, I felt like no one could get me. And then coming here. So many people had the same thing happen to them,” said Benner.

“We believe that our children and families we serve are not limited by their loss,” said Sarah Andrus, director at Valerie’s House in Naples. “The loss doesn’t have to limit their dreams, and Maddy is a shining example of that for all of us here.”

Maddy is a source of inspiration for both kids and adults at Valerie’s House, as she uses her voice to give her pain a purpose.

You can hear her sing at the Red Sox spring training game in Fort Myers on February 29th.

Street dedication ceremony held in Fort Myers for Valerie’s House

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The City of Fort Myers honored Valerie’s House with a street dedication ceremony on Thursday.

A portion of Veronica Shoemaker Lane will now be known as “Valerie’s House Way”. More changes are coming to the street as well. A brand new house is expected to be open along the roadway in January.

Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson, city council members and Valerie House’s founder, Angela Melvin, were among those attending the unveiling.

Valerie’s House opened in 2016 in honor of Valerie Melvin, Angela’s mother, who died in a vehicle accident in 1987. The organization is dedicated to helping children deal with grief and heal through significant losses in their lives.

The day before my 17th birthday, my dad died. Here's how I cope on Father's Day.

Kaitlyn McCormack

The Naples Daily News

Kaitlyn McCormack

—

I'm sure anyone who loses a loved one comes to the realization that life keeps going, even if we are not ready for it. Some cope with this truth better than others. I lost my father the day before my 17th birthday. I can’t say that I coped well, but I do know the reality of his death hit me so intensely I was left stunned.

I remember the day the first signs of my dad’s cancer showed. He had been coughing for months and had pain in his throat, but he put off going to the doctor with a long list of excuses and self-diagnoses as to why it would eventually pass. I remember one specific day, I called my dad and learned that he was in the hospital because he wasn’t feeling well. He wouldn’t give me any other information. I was angry. He had been perfectly fine a few hours earlier.

I didn’t know my life would soon be changing forever. I went from a normal Junior at Barron Collier High School to a teenage girl with a dad dying from cancer. I grieved for him even though he was still alive as I watched the man who raised me slip away from me with each day that passed. Anyone who knew my dad knew he always had a joke to crack, and he loved to play his guitar. Toward the end of his life, there were no more jokes made or melodies played. He wasn’t himself anymore. His sickness made him unrecognizable. I try not to remember him that way.

In March of that year, the day before my 17th birthday, my father died. I was holding his hand when he passed away in the living room. I didn’t know I could cry so much in one day.

My dad would do anything for me. As a very creative child, my dad always did his best to keep my imaginative mind entertained. One year for Christmas, my dad gave me a video camera. With dreams of becoming a journalist, I thought it was the best gift anyone had ever given me. I wrote scripts for us, and we used my new camera to record our skits. A couple of days after he died, I looked through the footage on that camera. I found one of my favorite videos where we pretended to be enemies in battle, as “The Eye of the Tiger” played in the background.

Now that it has been a little over a year, things from that time feel more in perspective. Living it felt exceptionally fast but very slow at the same time. I don’t remember much from my junior year. I realize now that was probably because of stress. In order not to get overwhelmed, I tried not to feel much at all, and I spent most of my time alone. After he died, my mom and I found a community of others grieving at Valerie’s House in Naples. Valerie’s House is a special place in our community where families like ours learn the tools to cope with our grief.  I rarely miss a group night. I learned it is important to spend time with people that I love, do things I enjoy, and work hard for what I want. I don’t have to feel guilty about it because that is not what my dad would want for me.

Every day I wish my dad was still alive. I miss him more than I would be able to articulate with words. His death will never make my life easier, and it is going to affect all the biggest events of my life. This realization hit me the night of my high school graduation when I broke down in tears because he wasn’t there to see me. I can only imagine how proud he would be.

Kaitlyn and her Dad

Even though I am sad he can’t see my achievements, I’m not going to stop working towards them. I think about how happy he would be to see me now. I miss my dad every day, but I continue to move forward for him.

This Father’s Day, I will spend time with my mom, and we will visit my Dad’s grave. I like to sit by him and talk. Sometimes I’ll write letters to read.

For those of you who know a family grieving the death of their Dad on this Father’s Day, please reach out to them and let them know you care. Recognize they might want to just stay home and let the day pass by. That’s ok. I learned from Valerie’s House that all of us grieve differently, and we grieve at our own pace. 

My advice for other grieving children and parents without Dad this Father’s Day is that it’s going to be hard, but it will get better. It’s important to stay focused on things that benefit your life and make you happy. Without your person, you can feel lost, but they are always with you. With a day like Father’s Day, for those of us who don’t have a Dad, we can honor another male figure who has made our life better. We also have teens at Valerie’s House who choose to honor their mother or caregiver who has also been in the role of a father because Dad is gone. This day can be anything you want it to be. 

Kaitlyn McCormack graduated from Barron Collier High School this past May.

Valerie’s House in Naples helps those grieving loved ones

May marks the start of mental health awareness month, and one group is working to help people understand how unresolved grief plays a role in mental health.

Haley Thalheimer spends a lot of time at Valerie’s House in Naples.

“My dad actually died when I was 11 years old.. and so, just kind of thought that someone was like, you need to hear about Valerie’s House,” Thalheimer said.

She’s on the advisory board and volunteers to help lead group nights at Valerie’s House. She told WINK News being the support system she needed when she was younger means everything to her.

“The subject or the stigma around death.. there’s a lot around it, in our culture, in our country, in society. As a child, I was fortunate enough to go to therapy and to be able to have that support, but it was just me. I had no one my age or no one in my grade, aside from family members, who understood what I was going through,” Thalheimer said.

Valerie’s House plays a huge role in helping people understand how unresolved grief can impact mental health.

“For these children to have a network of support, a network of their peers to support them.. is just incredible. And I really do believe it will change the course of their lives forever,” Thalheimer said.

“When you were sitting in a circle of peers, and they can say, me, too, yeah, I feel angry, too, yeah, I’m happy, but then I feel guilty that I’m happy, it’s powerful. So, then you know that you are not alone,” Sarah Andrus, the director of Valerie’s House, said

And that’s a gift that kids in grief can depend on.

The folks at Valerie’s House told WINK News they eventually plan to expand and offer grief support counseling in areas like Immokalee, Golden Gate, and Marco Island.

Link to the WINK News article: https://winknews.com/2023/05/01/may-is-mental-health-awareness-month/?fbclid=IwAR2vxF-gnOxbDLMjDcnu9IQx5x-7uC313HoiyfJzvCGVbOc0zbThFSCCi18

Valerie’s House helps grieving wife, mother, journey on

Cape Coral widowed mom of four works through heartbreaking tragedy to finish law degree for self and family

By DEVON CRUMPACKER | Apr 21, 2023

“I had to keep moving. Or else I just would have laid there. I had to keep moving forward,” said Rochelle Pitts from the front steps of a large, old Florida home in downtown Fort Myers, known as Valerie’s House. Rochelle was there to be sworn in as an attorney, having just passed the Florida bar. But she was thinking back on what it took, in the face of immense tragedy, for the widowed mother of four to get to that point.

Just before Christmas, in December, 2020, Rochelle’s husband, Jesse Pitts, died after a car crash on his way home from work. He was 32 years old.

Rochelle was 30.

The couple had three children together–two girls and a boy–and Rochelle was pregnant with their fourth, a girl. Rochelle was also days away from beginning her final semester of law school at Ave Maria School of Law.

Her husband’s healthy organs helped save the lives of four others on Christmas day that year, as he was able to donate his heart, liver and kidneys.

But, for Rochelle, a bleak new reality was beginning to set in.

And processing it all was nearly impossible.

She had waited by his side for three days as he lie in a hospital bed on a ventilator, waiting for the organ removal procedure. She already knew there was nothing else the doctors could do for him at that point. Still, she stayed with him those three days. She laid next to him. She held him. She placed his hand on her belly to feel their unborn baby. And then, eventually, it was over. And it was just Rochelle and her kids.

She couldn’t sleep. Guilt wracked her conscious. Her life didn’t seem real. It was a horrible dream. Everything was coming at her all at once, and she needed a way out, a plan. So, in a moment of despair, at 6 in the morning, crying, she called her old boss, Allan Parvey. It was Parvey who got Rochelle in touch with Valerie’s House.

Founded in 2016 by Angela Melvin, Valerie’s House provides open-ended peer support groups and activities for children and families in hopes of helping them heal after a significant loss in their lives. It seeks to provide a sense of community and a platform for individuals to come together, share, and mentor each other through their grief.

“It’s a place where people come to not feel alone,” said Melvin of Valerie’s House. “Grieving families can come together here, and bond, and become friends.”

Melvin was inspired to found Valerie’s House after examining her own experience with grief, having lost her mother, Valerie, to a car accident when she was just a young girl.

“In Fort Myers, we didn’t have anything like this back in 1987,” said Melvin of Valerie’s House to the crowd of friends and family gathered for Rochelle’s swearing in ceremony. “But we’re not alone anymore.”

Rochelle said she immediately took to the Valerie’s House style of coping with grief. She said there’s no placating, or patronizing at Valerie’s House. Grieving people are allowed to feel their feelings. Phrases like, you’ll feel better, or time will heal it aren’t part of curriculum.

“It was very validating,” said Rochelle. “If I feel like crying, I’m going to cry. I’ll cry right now if I want to.”

Valerie’s House also represented a small slice of normalcy for Rochelle and her family.

“I needed to find people that were similar ages, and people that actually understood grief,” said Rochelle. “It was the only place we could go and feel normal.”

Rochelle also credited law school and her legal studies in general for giving her life some structure during a time where everything seemed so chaotic.

“I needed someone to tell me, ‘Hey you need to be (in class) at 8 a.m.’ I needed it to function. I needed to be responsible for things.”

Rochelle went on to finish law school and pass the Florida bar exam, studying any moment she could. She would listen to lectures in her car on her way home from work. She would listen to more study material while she made dinner for her kids. She would stay up until almost midnight. She would even teach her kids the law as a type of study exercise on days and nights she wasn’t able to find a babysitter.

“I would sit there and explain the law to them,” Rochelle said. “Because, if I couldn’t explain the law to them, then I wasn’t going to understand the law myself.”

But, Rochelle has banked the hill now, as she was sworn in as an attorney on Friday evening at Valerie’s House by Lee County Circuit Judge Robert Branning. She will go to work at Aloia, Roland, Lubell & Morgan, PLLC, as an associate attorney specializing in personal injury law.

“Not one of us can profess to know what you have been through,” said the firm’s co-founder and senior partner, Ty Roland, who was at the ceremony. “But it certainly feels like it makes sense to be in a place whose mission is to … help people who have suffered unimaginable loss.”

Before the ceremony came to a close, Rochelle confirmed her intent to keep coming to Valerie’s House. She has no illusions about ever fully getting over the tragedy that befell her family. But she knows Valerie’s House can help with that, even if it’s an ongoing battle. That’s why she wants to be there to help others when the situation arises.

“Even if we grow in our journey, we want to keep coming back to help the next family that comes through those doors,” said Rochelle.

Naples Winter Wine Festival to benefit Valerie’s House, bereaved children

The Naples Winter Wine Festival kicks off this week, and 2023 focused on raising money to support children’s mental health. One of those groups helping Southwest Florida kids is Valerie’s House, a nonprofit that provides support for children grieving the death of a loved one.

The first things you notice when you walk into Valerie’s House at 819 Myrtle Terrace in Naples are the bright colors and a sprawling paper tree.

Mackenzie Francois added a green leaf and explained what it represented.

“All the kids come, and they write the loved one’s name on a leaf,” Mackenzie said. Her own leaf is in remembrance of her mother.

“It says ‘love you,’ and I wrote the letters of the song that she and I would sing when I was a kid,” Mackenzie said.

The song is “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion. When Mackenzie was 16, her mom suffered a stroke and died months later. Not only did Mackenzie lose the rock in her life, but she also had to move to Southwest Florida from the east coast to live with distant cousins, then enroll in a new school and start over.

Mackenzie describes that time as a blur.

“It was never, like, sitting down and processing, ‘OK, this is what’s happening; this is how we have to move on from this,'” Mackenzie said. “I don’t think that my body really or my mind processed how I was feeling at the time, and so I was kind of on autopilot.”

One month after her mom died, we went into COVID-19 lockdown and school went online.

“It was kind of just me being alone and grieving alone,” Mackenzie said. “And when we went back to school, my counselor told me about Valerie’s House.”

Sarah Andrus is the outreach director at Valerie’s House, which works with bereaved children from 4 to 18.

Mackenzie (Photo Credit: Kelly Jones Photo Naples Photographer)

“We can’t make mom or dad come back, but we can give them ways to still connect and express what they’re thinking and feeling,” Andrus said.

When Hurricane Ian hit, it took an already vulnerable group and ripped away the little sense of security they had left.

“The other layer of the damage, of just personal belongings that belonged to someone who died also being gone and taken away in the flooding and in the damage from the storm… it’s devastating,” Andrus said. “We had some of our caregivers, some of our moms, express [that] ‘We feel like our grief was taken away from us; now we can’t even grieve because we have to rebuild our home or figure out insurance.'”

An estimated 7,000 children in Collier County are grieving the loss of either a parent or sibling, and all those children have memories of their loved ones.

“Lives are changed here,” Mackenzie said. “Every single kid that’s ever walked through these doors… they never left feeling the way they did when they entered; they always left with a smile on their face, maybe a few tears.”

For Mackenzie, Valerie’s House became a home away from home that rooted her.

“I’ve met very wonderful people who helped me, who I would honestly, like, owe them my life,” Mackenzie said.

That’s why the now-college freshman still comes back to volunteer.

WINK News and Gulfshore Life are sponsors of the Naples Winter Wine Festival.

New Year, Same Challenges

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Chelsea Harper moved to Southwest Florida after being homeless in Michigan, not long after she met her husband, Tim.

They each had two children before, and after they married, they had two children together. Life as they knew it took a turn when their daughter was two.

“My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer, HPV positive,” said Harper.

Tim’s cancer spread to his stomach, abdomen, lower back, liver and lungs and his health continued to decline.

“Unfortunately, last year at Christmas time, on Christmas Eve, actually. His oxygen level was extremely low and his heartbeat was extremely high, as if he had been running a marathon. He was only sitting in a chair,” Chelsea said.

The following week he went in for a procedure and doctors nicked something. His lungs started bleeding and they couldn’t control it.

Doctors put Tim in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator. It was only supposed to be for a few days but Tim wasn’t getting better.

“On New Year’s Eve, last year was the first time they almost lost him in the middle of the night. He coded for 45 mins,” she said about her husband.

It happened two nights in a row and doctors couldn’t do anymore, so Chelsea asked if they could make Tim comfortable and let him go peacefully.

She said, “I stayed with him. I felt his last heartbeat, I felt his last breath and I dropped to the floor. I don’t remember much more of that night. It’s. Still, it’s so hard even a year later.”

It all happened around the holidays and the New Year. Three days after Tim passed, his good friend reached out to Chelsea and told her about Valerie’s House in Fort Myers. “We set up a time to meet and it was like immediate family, immediate family.”

It wasn’t easy after the loss she just experienced.

“Our first group night, I actually was going to bring them in and I was going to go sit in my car in the parking lot and wait. But I brought the kids in and we got our name tags and they went off to their groups and I went to my group instead of the parking lot. I was like, wow, they’re literally saying all the feelings that I’m hiding inside.”

When grieving, there are moments of strength and weakness, but because of Valerie’s House, it’s a benefit for Chelsea and her children.

“It’s amazing to watch my kids interact with other children knowing they’re going through the same thing.”

Just like adults, kids grieve too. This new year brings new or the same challenges for families like Chelsea’s.

“My youngest son really struggles. He’s been very angry since my husband passed. That’s just how he copes with it, my youngest daughter. She sings she will sing about anything and everything; she sings about her daddy being in the hospital and he went to heaven,” said Chelsea.

But now every time the holidays and the new year roll around.

“It’s been a year. It’s been over 367 days since my husband passed, and it feels like it’s been 24 hours.”

Her story is a reminder that even though it is the new year and a happy time for some, “I mean even this new year everybody at midnight was like Happy New Year on Facebook, I put “New year… not quite so happy”, because for some of us, it’s not.”

Chelsea says, look out for those who you know are struggling or going through something that’s life-changing like death in the family, loss of their home, the loss of a pet even. “Be there for those people and smile at everybody because you never know how a smile can change someone’s day.”