Help available for those experiencing loss
If you live long enough, you will have something to grieve.
“Grief is not really a mental health problem,” Rick Gillert, the founder and president of nonprofit Angling in Grief said.
But grieving people still need help.
Angling in Grief provides both education on grief, fly-fishing and fly-fishing activities. Science has shown that fly-fishing can have mental health benefits, Gillert said.
Doing something relaxing in a peaceful location can help bring peace to those grieving.
“Occasionally, a client comes in and says, ‘I’m grieving, make my grief go away,’” he said. “That’s not how it works. You have to travel through.”
Gillert has a lot of experience with grief. After a decade as a hospice chaplain, he has gone through the grieving process with 5,000 families.
“It’s something we all go through in life,” he said.
To help keep Angling in Grief’s prices low, the group depends on public fundraisers.
That’s why Gillert has started the 1135 Campaign fundraiser.
He chose the fundraiser’s name as a reference to the Bible verse John 11:35.
“Jesus wept,” the verse reads.
This verse comes from a passage in the Bible where Jesus’s friend Lazarus dies. Although Jesus brings Lazarus back to life, he still mourns his death.
“He knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, but he still grieved his loss,” Gillert said.
People often imagine that grief means mourning someone who has died, Gillert said. But that definition is too small.
Grief can come from loss of a person, emotional loss and medical loss.
In Gillert’s view, grief from a lost connection is the most difficult to experience. Divorces, estranged family and other loss of relationships all fall into this category.
“Those are hard to deal with because you’re grieving somebody who is still there,” he said.
The goal of the campaign is to collect 1,135 donations.
“We’re trying to keep the cost of grief affordable,” Gillert said. “We only charge about half of what it costs us to provide the services.”
To meet this goal, Angling in Grief needs help from donors.
Gillert plans to continue the fundraiser until National Grief Awareness Day on Sunday, August 30.
Those interested in giving to Angling in Grief can go onto the group’s website at anglingingrief.org/give-today.
Several local businesses are also collecting donations.
“We don’t make grief go away,” he said. “We help people find a healthy way to go through it.”