Greg Adams

Greg Adams is a social worker at Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH) where he coordinates the Center for Good Mourning, a grief support and outreach program, and works with bereavement support for staff who are exposed to suffering and loss. His past experience at ACH includes ten years in pediatric oncology and 9 years in pediatric palliative care. He has written for and edited The Mourning News, an electronic grief/loss newsletter, since its beginning in 2004. Greg is also an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas-Little Rock Graduate School of Social Work where he teaches a grief/loss elective and students are told that while the class is elective, grief and loss are not. In 1985, Greg graduated from Baylor University majoring in social work and religion, and he earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Missouri in 1986. One answer to the question of how he got into the work of grief and death education is that his father was an educator and his mother grew up in the residence part of a funeral home where her father was a funeral director. After growing up in a couple small towns in Missouri south of St. Louis, Greg has lived in Little Rock since 1987. He married a Little Rock native in 1986 and his wife is an early childhood special educator and consultant. Together they have two adult children. Along with his experience in the hospital with death and dying and with working with grieving people of all ages, personal experiences with death and loss have been very impacting and influential. In 1988, Greg’s father-in-law died of an unexpected suicide. In 1996, Greg and his wife lost a child in mid-pregnancy to anencephaly (no brain developed). Greg’s mother died on hospice with cancer in 2008 and his father died after the family decided to stop the ventilator after a devastating episode of sepsis and pneumonia in 2015. Greg has a variety of interests and activities—including slow running, reading, sports, public education, religion, politics, and diversity issues—and is active in his church and community. He is honored to have the opportunity to be a contributor for Open to Hope.

Articles:

What Comes Next After Death?

The Next Place? Sometimes in grief support groups for adults or for teenagers, a question like this will be asked: “When you think about your special person who died, where do you imagine them to be, if anywhere? What comes next?” As you might guess, the answers are varied. Some say heaven or with God. Others say “somewhere” but are not sure where. And some don’t imagine their dead to be anywhere. In the group, we try to make safe space for people to have different feelings in their grief, different opinions about what is helpful and what is not, […]

Posttraumatic Growth? When Loss Has Meaning

Posttraumatic Growth is Possible “Nothing good comes from cancer. Nothing ever will.” I read those words written by a local newspaper columnist when I was working as a social worker in the world of pediatric cancer. During that time, I would sometimes look out the hallway window in the cancer unit and see the cars going back and forth on the interstate. I would think that somewhere out there are four or five families that have no idea that in the next month they will be here on the unit, their lives turned upside down. Earlier in the day, maybe […]

Grieving Children, Teens Have All the Feelings

Grieving People Have All the Feelings Sometimes a death impacts a school or community organization, like a church or Boy Scout troop. A child or teacher dies, and I am invited to facilitate a one-time grief support discussion with children or teenagers. It’s a very condensed experience. I start with establishing rapport and gradually (but also quickly) move into talking about death in movies and books, the difference between grief and mourning, and the person who died. We start with the person and their life because while their death and how they died was very important, even more important is the […]

Boycotting the Grief Olympics

Boycotting the Grief Olympics Mostly, we humans love comparisons and competition. Around the world, there are competitions going on all the time. Who bakes the best cake, spells the most words, designs the best product? Perhaps nowhere is competition more focused and organized than in sports. Who runs the fastest or jumps the highest? Or who puts the bouncy ball more often through the metal hoop, in the back of the net, across the goal line, or over the net and in the court? And winter brings even more creativity with skies, skates, sleds, and brooms and stones (search the […]

Master Class in Helplessness: When a Child Gets Cancer

A Master Class in Helplessness I was talking with my wife not long ago, and I shared that I had been talking with someone the childhood cancer world. In my previous conversation, I had described that experience as a “masterclass in helplessness.” My wife looked at me and said, “There’s your next essay.” And not for the first time, she was exactly right. One of those days in the childhood cancer world, I was on the inpatient unit talking with one of the many impressive-as-all-get-out nurses. We were going through a rough patch of newly diagnosed patients, relapses, and deaths. […]

The Pros and Cons of Emotional Shields

‘Shields Up!’ What if the emotional shields we use to protect ourselves from pain get stuck in the upright position? What happens then? Can we get them unstuck? Is lowering our shields even a good idea? In the popular TV and movie series, Star Trek, from the 1960s to today, one of the consistent features in the starships used to travel the vastness of space is that they have invisible shields. When a starship is under attack, the captain orders, “Shields up!” to protect both ship and crew. The shields are not perfect protection, however, and part of the drama […]

After a Major Loss: So, Now What?

Many questions compete for attention when death comes and life changes. Among the many, there is at least one question that stubbornly remains as the numbness fades and our awareness of what has happened increases. So, now what? Part of us knew this day was coming, but we tried not to think about it. Or at least not think about it all the time. Another part of us hoped for a miracle. Another part said, “Maybe they’re wrong.” Other parts took us to other places—other thoughts, other things to do, anything else. Who can live with every moment thinking of […]

No Freeway Between the Mind and the Heart

Sometimes I come upon a passage in a book that on its own feels worth the price of the book. Here is that passage in That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by palliative care physician, Sunita Puri: “There is no freeway between the mind and the heart; a statement of medical facts didn’t lead easily to acceptance. Acceptance is a small, quiet room, Cheryl Strayed wrote in an essay that I read and reread somewhere around the start of fellowship.” No freeway between the mind and the heart. That feels so true. The mind takes in […]

The Gravity of Black Grief

Let’s be clear right up front. For so many things in the grief and loss world, I just don’t get it. I have never been pregnant, felt the movement of arms and legs inside of me, and then felt the terrifying absence of movement. I have never had to tell my children that their mother is dead. Never have I had military personnel on my doorstep asking to come in to deliver bad news. I have never felt the horror and loss of sexual assault. I have not experienced the loss of family or friends when I “came out.” A […]

Grief in the Absence of Physical Presence

Physical presence means so much. Phone calls are good. Video connections can be better. But there is nothing like experiencing physical presence with the potential or reality of a hand on the shoulder, a hand in another’s hand, and a body-to-body hug. But now we live in a strange and stressful time of necessary physical distancing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In these days and weeks (and months?) when we feel frightened and worried, the gifts and resources of presence are limited and restricted. We connect by phone, text, social media, and video—and thank goodness for these options—but we know they […]

Open to Hope is an online community offering inspirational stories of loss, hope and recovery. We believe hope is the bridge between loss and recovery.