Mourning can be a fragile process that everyone will experience in their lives. Some people are stuck when a loved one has passed away, not knowing what the next steps should be for them or even how to help the people around them with the same situation.
Jessica’s House is a non-profit organization that will openly and warmingly welcome people into allowing them to come together and support each other in a safe environment. It’s a home for grieving children, teens, young adults and their adult caregivers to come connect and support each other.
Kris Pettit, founder of Jessica’s House, first got the idea when he got in touch with a contact on a pamphlet at his school and the voice who spoke back to him was “warm and empathetic.”
Though they focus on the death of a grandparent, sibling or parent, they occasionally provide other grief support groups as well.
The other support group is “Heart Strings”, which supports families that have been through being affected by a pregnancy/infant loss. “Hope after Homicide”, which supports families that have been affected by a violent death and “Hope after Suicide”, which supports families that have been affected by a completed suicide.
What Jessica’s House tries to do is to create a #MeToo moment where people can understand that they are not alone and there are people out there in the world who have also experienced something like their situation or close to that.
Megan Vaughan, who is the Program Coordinator, likes to put it this way: “They are not the only 16 year-olds who had their dad died. They’re not the only 14-year-olds whose sibling completed suicide or the only four-year-old whose grandpa, who is like a father figure, that they were really close to…”
According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which conducted a National Vital Statistics Report in 2015, the age-adjusted death rate was 733.1 deaths per 100,000 U.S. standard population.
Jessica’s House believes in one of the most powerful things for people who come in, and it is to understand that they are not alone, trying to have them rebel against one of the things that many grieving families experience, isolation.
Eric Nelson, who is the Executive Director of Jessica’s House, said that “We are here to provide free peer support for as long as a family needs our services. Our program is built on a 30 year model that builds strength and resiliency into the lives of children and families after a death.”
Yvonne Clickenbeard, Grief Coordinator, explains their flexibility: “We’re open-ended, so there really isn’t a start. So families have had a person die two years ago and they are now just coming in or maybe it was less than two weeks ago.”
The House holds support groups in the center during the afternoon and evening, and offer supports groups at schools around them from Monday through Friday.
Their evening groups focus on losses of parents, sibling, and grandparents, and they have families meet other families in the program twice a month for an hour and a half.
During the day, they provide services having staff members and volunteers do eight-week sessions at different schools around the community, such as the Turlock Unified School District, Ceres and Denair.
A therapeutic and trauma-informed space for people to express themselves is another thing that Jessica’s House has to offer.
This includes doing therapeutic sensory-based activities, such as art, music, play and writing, along with coping skills like practicing self-regulation strategies such as breathing, mindfulness and rhythm.
They are connected with the National Alliance with Grieving Children (NAGC), in which their staff attends their annual conference and online conferences to learn more about different activities that they can incorporate in their programming.
Taylor Eldridge is a volunteer at Jessica’s House and enjoys the human interaction that is involved.
“The best part of Jessica’s House is learning and connecting with the people,” Eldridge said. “Everyone in the House makes your heart swell with such love because the staff exudes so much warmth, yet connecting with the families who allow you to experience their grief is unparalleled.”
If a student is interested in being more involved with the community and being a volunteer at Jessica’s House, they are encouraged to apply online.
After applying online, they would go through a reference check, background check, drug test, get fingerprinted and attend three days of training.
One of the training days is an evening training every other month throughout the year, and it’s similar to a two and a half hour orientation. In January and August they hold their biannual, two day training which is usually from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
