Franklin Cook

Franklin Cook is the creator of a peer grief support telephone service called Personal Grief Coaching (http://bit.ly/copewithgrief). He blogs at Grief after Suicide (http://www.personalgriefcoach.info), and his complete, up-to-date bio is available at http://bit.ly/biofjcook. Franklin is a survivor of his father's suicide in 1978.

Articles:

Loss of a Parent Through Suicide with Franklin Cook

At the 2015 Association for Death Education and Counseling conference, Dr. Gloria Horsley discusses loss of a parent via suicide with personal grief coach Franklin Cook. “My dad died of suicide in 1978,” says Cook, which began his interest in the field but it took two decades before Cook was fully immersed. He was in his early 20s when his dad died, and it wasn’t until his 40s that he began actively volunteering in suicide bereavement organizations. Now, he’s been doing peer support for those who lost a parent to suicide. Cook’s father took his own life by cutting himself […]

Franklin Cook: Suicide Survivors and Grief Coaching

Franklin Cook specializes in suicide prevention project management via a coaching business. He offers one-on-one support for those who are grieving after losing a loved one to suicide in a process he calls personal grief coaching. “People are very much in shock after a loss from suicide, and so one thing they need is good, compassionate care from those who respond, whether it’s first responders or it’s the minister” or anyone else. However, there are unique “must haves” when it comes to consistent caregivers over time. Getting the “right match” can make all the difference. “The reason why” is a […]

Sheryl Sandberg Redefines Empathy in Eloquent Reflection on Grief

Sheryl Sandberg and Dave Goldberg Sheryl Sandberg’s recent Facebook post (bit.ly/sandbergempathy), written a month after her husband died, is a wise reflection on the rawness of grief — and a testament to the resiliency of those who grieve. Her heart-rending story gives us a hundred gifts, perhaps the greatest of which has not as much to do with the extraordinary things she says as it has to do simply with the fact that she is able to stand before us, plain and real, and share: This is how it is for me. Where she takes her stand, she makes room […]

Suicide Grief Is Unique Because Death by Suicide Is Unique

Perhaps the word unique is too restrictive in a discussion of universal phenomena such as death or grief, but according to new national guidelines* for responding to suicide, considering such a perspective … … opens the door to asking not only “What makes grief after suicide different?” but also “How does the distinctive nature of suicide itself affect the bereavement experience of survivors?” Responding to Grief, Trauma, and Distress After a Suicide: U.S. National Guidelines suggests that death by suicide can raise questions about the deceased’s volition and whether the death was preventable as well as about the role of stigma […]

Historic Guidelines Focus on Helping the Suicide Bereaved

After 15 years of advocacy and work in peer support and training as a survivor of suicide loss, I am pleased to announce that a dozen of my colleagues and I on a blue-ribbon task force* have completed a historic document, Responding to Grief, Trauma, and Distress After a Suicide: U.S. National Guidelines. The Guidelines were announced earlier this month at the Association for Death Education and Counseling conference in San Antonio and at the American Association of Suicidology conference in Atlanta. I will be sharing on Open to Hope the content of an upcoming series of posts from the Grief […]

What Do Men Bereaved by Suicide Need?

What Do Men Bereaved by Suicide Need? Men have a chance to answer that question themselves in an anonymous, confidential survey that is available online until Jan. 31, 2014. If you are a man 19 or older who has lost a family member, friend, or colleague to suicide, please go directly to the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MenBereavement. And whether or not you are someone who fills out the survey, please consider sharing the link with men you know who have lost a loved one to suicide — as well as on appropriate email lists. The survey was designed by the leaders […]

After Suicide, Transforming Grief into Peace

I was consumed by guilt for a long time over my father’s suicide, in 1978, mainly because I thought I was helping him. I did not understand the nature of his illness, so some of the things I did were actually harmful to him (for example, trying to talk him out of his delusions). Most importantly, I failed to recognize that he was in a life-or-death situation, and to this day, it still seems to me that my failure to help him contributed to his death. But through compassionate retelling of the story of his death, I found freedom from […]

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