Pamela Gabbay

Pamela Gabbay, M.A., FT, was awarded the Fellow in Thanatology by the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) and is a Certified Bereavement Counselor. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from California State University, San Bernardino and her M.A. in Psychology from Claremont Graduate University. Pamela is the Program Director of The Mourning Star Center for Grieving Children in Palm Desert, California and works extensively with grieving children, teens and their families. For more information, please visit www.mourningstar.org. In 2008, Pamela and the Mourning Star Center were featured on the National Hospice Foundation of America’s Bereavement Teleconference Living with Grief: Children and Adolescents. Pamela is the Camp Director for Camp Erin - Palm Springs, the first Camp Erin in California. Camp Erin is a free camp for grieving children and teens created in partnership with The Moyer Foundation. Pamela is also President of the California Chapter of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. ADEC So Cal is an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in death education. She is on the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Grieving Children. Additionally, she is co-owner of www.GriefPosters.com a poster company that produces sensitive and educational grief-related posters. Pamela appeared on the radio show Healing the Grieving Heart with Dr. Gloria and Dr. Heidi Horsley, to discuss Adult Children Losing Parents. To hear Pamela being interviewed on this show, click on the following link: www.voiceamericapd.com/health/010157/horsley111308.mp

Articles:

National Alliance for Grieving Children Helps Kids with Grief

Executive Director of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children, Dr. Donna Schuurman, talks with the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) about resources for children facing a loss. She’s joined by Pamela Gabbay, part of the National Alliance for Grieving Children. The two work closely with children who have experienced loss through death. They provide national resources and connect those looking for information with those who need information. Gabbay serves on the board of the Alliance, and works at the Morning Star Center in Palm Desert, California. The National Alliance is a membership organization which can be accessed by […]

Talking to Your Children about 9/11

It’s hard to believe, but this September 11th is going to be the 10th anniversary of 9/11. For most of us, this milestone anniversary is bound to provoke a lot of powerful emotions. As we remember back to that tragic day, many of us will be filled with images of fear, disbelief, and incredible sadness. In honor of the 10th anniversary, there is likely to be intense media coverage. In the wake of all of this coverage, how can parents help their children understand the significance of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 while at the same time reassuring them and […]

Skating for Her Mother

When most of us suffer a loss as great as that of a mother, we are left to grieve without the eyes of the world on us. We do not have to temper our emotions because we are in the privacy of our own homes, surrounded by the comfort and warmth of our family and friends. This week as I watched the Olympic ice skating competition, I wondered how Canadian ice skater Joannie Rochette was going to be able to compete with the world watching. Only a few days earlier, her mom died suddenly from a massive heart attack, just […]

My Parents’ House

Today, I drove past my parents’ old house. I was in my hometown visiting my best friend from high school and she needed to make a quick stop at her sister’s house. Her sister happens to live right around the corner from my family’s old home. As we drove toward her sister’s, my friend ever so casually mentioned that we would be driving down my parents’ old street. I didn’t have a lot of time to react. It has been quite a few years since I have been by the old place, and I figured that I would be fine […]

Helping Children Grieve During the Holidays

The holiday season is painful for adults after the death of a loved one, but it can be even more isolating and distressing for children if they are not given ample guidance from the adults in their lives. Here are some suggestions for how to help your children during the holidays: 1. Suppress the urge to ignore the holidays because they seem too painful to endure. It’s important that children are given the opportunity to celebrate the holidays without feeling bad or feeling guilty. After all, they still have a need to “just be a kid,” especially during the holidays. […]

Child Grief Camp Director Shares Activities that Work

I have just returned home from our third annual Camp Erin, a most magical place where children and teens can laugh and cry, celebrate and commemorate. Camp Erin is a grief camp that is held each year in the mountains of Big Bear in California. Kids from all walks of life come together with a common bond; they’ve all had someone very special in their life who has died. Some kids have lost a mother or a father, a brother or sister, a grandparent or a best friend. They come to Camp Erin not knowing what to expect. A grief camp […]

Telling a Child About Two Deaths in One Day

By Pamela Gabbay, M.A., FT — My mind was simultaneously racing around in circles and dull as a knife. She’s only four… four. I could not fathom how I was going to tell my four-year-old daughter that her beloved grandmother, my mom, had just died. Her grandmother, who called her “my little Meg,” and lovingly sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow to her;” her grandmother who swam with her and played hide and seek for hours. Four-year-olds don’t understand death. I don’t understand death. My mom was just 51. She had only been diagnosed with cancer two weeks ago and now […]

Woman Starts Grieving 12 Years After Mother’s Death

Cora writes in with this question: “I just started grieving about my mom this Christmas. She died in 1996. I thought about all the events and things we shared from age 6 to adult. It was like a series of flashbacks. I was in a depressed state for 4 days. Is that normal? Pamela Gabbay, certified bereavement counselor, responds: Dear Cora, I’m so sorry to hear about the loss of your mother. Whenever someone we love dies, we yearn for them and miss everything about them. We miss the sound of their voice, their touch, the smell of their hair, […]

Poem: 10 Thanksgivings

A poem by Pamela Gabbay –

Beginning Again After the Loss of Parents

By Pamela Gabbay — When I was 25 years old, I learned about life and death in the same month. At the beginning of July, I had my first child, a precious baby girl. By the end of July, my 49-year-old father was dead. He was a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel of his truck in the middle of the night. He crashed and died instantly. When he died, my world crashed in. I walked around in a stupor trying to make sense of this new, foreign world. I didn’t know what to feel. I didn’t know […]

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