Neil Chethik

Neil Chethik is an author, speaker and expert specializing in men's lives and family issues. He is the author of two acclaimed books: VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment (Simon & Schuster 2006), and FatherLoss: How Sons of All Ages Come To Terms With the Deaths of Their Dads (Hyperion 2001). Previously, Neil was a staff reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat and San Jose Mercury News, and writer of VoiceMale, the first syndicated column on men's personal lives. His writings have appeared in hundreds of print and web publications. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Ky., where he lives with his wife, Kelly Flood, and son, Evan. Reach Neil at: Neil@NeilChethik.com 121 Arcadia Park Lexington Ky. 40503 859-361-1659 Neil appeared on the radio show “Healing the Grieving Heart” with Dr. Gloria & Dr. Heidi Horsley to discuss “Men and Loss.” To hear Neil being interviewed on this show, click on the following link: www.voiceamericapd.com/health/010157/horsley121307.mp3

Articles:

Creating Your Own Ritual for a Loved One’s Death

Excerpted from FatherLoss, by Neil Chethik. FatherLoss is available here. After a loved one’s death, we don’t always have the opportunity to hold a funeral. Over the past year, for example, the pandemic has prevented or delayed thousands of funerals. This is the story of one man who could not have a timely funeral for his father. He had to find another way to honor his dad and get on with his life. Frank Hernandez was thirty-two years old when he took his father, who was suffering from emphysema, into his home for the last two-plus years of the older […]

Read More

Viewing the Body: Does it Help or Harm?

excerpted from FatherLoss, by Neil Chethik, available here. Should you view the body after a loved one’s death? Immediately after the father’s death, one important question for sons was whether or not to view the body. In my FatherLoss Survey, among sons eighteen to fifty-five at the time of the death, 85 percent said they viewed their father’s body before it was buried or cremated. And more than 75 percent of those men reported that seeing the body was helpful later in coping with the death. A disc jockey who was thirty-seven when his dad died told me the viewing […]

Read More

Chuck Overton: Spiritual Journey

Open to Hope recently spoke with Chuck Overton, a Spiritual Director at Caris Healthcare in Knoxville, Tennessee. As a chaplain, Overton has worked closely with grieving families as they learn to navigate life after losing a loved one. One of the biggest hurdles, Overton explains, is “their experience with feeling abandoned.” This can include by God, their spiritual community and of course the loved one who passed. It’s common to feel isolated from even a well-established spiritual community, whether it’s by their pastor or their close “church friends”—and this abandonment could have threads of truth or not. It’s common for […]

Read More

Barb Petsel: Talking with Children about Death

The Executive Editor of the Open to Hope Foundation recently spoke with Barb Petsel, author and therapist at Healing Transitions Counseling, during the 2015 Association for Death Education and Counseling conference. As the author of Remembering Grandma’s Hugs, Petsel delved deep into the how’s of talking to children when their grandparents die. “I wrote (this book) because many years ago my father died. He was visiting my brother and his children, and died suddenly of a heart attack in front of them.” However, the family was at a loss. They hadn’t discussed how to talk to their children about death […]

Read More

Galen Goben: Putting Words to Grief

The Open to Hope Foundation spoke to the Grief Support Coordinator at Forest Lawn, Galen Goben, about the challenges of putting words to grief after a death. Forest Lawn is an organization throughout southern California that helps with full planning of a death, including funeral, crematory and cemetery services. Goben has been serving as a grief supporter professionally for eight years with Forest Lawn, but also has 15 years of experience as an ordained minister. “Grief (can be) a completely overwhelming experience,” says Goben, and that can make it difficult to speak and listen in the language of grief. “Giving […]

Read More

possible from new writer, Mike Russell

The Three Points   When life is framed within the confines of grief, it can be limiting in choices for the survivor.  I think that the rest of the world thinks that choices are easy, or they want that for you as the survivor.  My experience tells me otherwise.  While grief is different for everyone, there seems to be commonality in the questions that I hear from people.  How do I move forward?  How do I survive without my spouse?  Why does grief take so long to get over?  What does normal look like now?  These are just some of […]

Read More

Father’s Day After Your Father Has Died

It’s Father’s Day, and for more than 100 million Americans whose fathers have died, it will be a day of missing Dad. What can these fatherless Americans do to make the holiday meaningful? For my book, FatherLoss, I interviewed several hundred people about the death of their dads. And some were actually a little relieved on Father’s Day after their dad had died. This was especially true if they had a troubled relationship with their dad. After he died, they didn’t have to come up with a gift for him, or send him a card – or apologize for not […]

Read More

Chuck Overton: Spiritual Journey

The Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference brings together Chuck Overton and Neil Chethik from Open to Hope. Overton is one of the spiritual directors at a care center in Tennessee. As a chaplain, he finds that the biggest concern for those on a spiritual journey going through a loss is feeling abandoned by God. Sometimes they feel abandoned by their spiritual community. They feel isolated from the pastor, members of their church, and even their friends and family. The long-term continued support can fade away after a short amount of time. That’s when difficulty really occurs. This […]

Read More

Father’s Day: The Many Aspects of Loss

The Open to Hope show’s Father’s Day special provides a number of tools for handling one of the most difficult days of the year. Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley welcome guests Neil Chethik (Executive Editor for the Open to Hope Foundation and author of Father Loss: How Sons of All Ages Come to Terms with the Deaths of Their Dads), Jenny Wheeler (author of Weird is Normal: When Teenagers Grieve), and Mitch Carmody (author of Letters to My Son, Turning Loss to Legacy). There are many complicated matters in father loss, explains Chethik. The younger the child, the greater the […]

Read More

Sheryl Sandberg’s Public Grief a Gift to All

Facebook executive and author Sheryl Sandberg used her personal facebook account today to speak out about the pain of losing her young husband last month and to thank friends and fans for their support in the aftermath. In a poignant 1,700-word post, Ms. Sandberg also took the opportunity to provide a virtual checklist of lessons about the grief process. “I have lived thirty years in these thirty days,” she wrote a month after her husband, David Goldberg, died suddenly at the age of 47. “I am thirty years sadder. I feel like I am thirty years wiser.” At 44, Ms. Sandberg […]

Read More