Heidi Gessner

Heidi Gessner, MDiv, BCC, BCC, is an Ordained United Church of Christ Minister who serves as the palliative care chaplain and bereavement coordinator of University of North Carolina Hospitals, a level one trauma center. As the bereavement coordinator, her main priority is connecting with the family members who have had a loved one die in the hospital. Her specialty is connecting with these family members, staff, as well as community members, and helping them feel they are not alone. For in her deepest suffering after her father died, she experienced the presence of Love. She was so overwhelmed by this sense of a benevolent Presence, it changed the course of her life. The awareness of being cared for and connected to something bigger came suddenly, and helped her want to share this feeling with others. Heidi is also a certified life coach, who creatively cultivates hope, nurtures growth, and encourages people to be good stewards of their grief, and to learn from it when they are ready. She helps them harness the transformational power of loss to become their wisest and most compassionate selves. Heidi is also a wedding officiant at heidigessner.com

Articles:

Five Ways to Get Through the Holidays (When You’re Not Feeling Ho Ho Hopeful)

Five Ways to Get Through the Holidays Holidays can be difficult when someone you love has died. Or you’ve lost your job. Or an important relationship has ended. It can be hard to watch others being joyful and merry while your life feels joyless. You may need to be more intentional about your plans this year. Here are 5 innovative ways you can get through (and maybe even enjoy them). Light a candle. Engage in a meaningful ritual. Set aside some intentional quiet time to think of your loved one (and your life). Perhaps write a letter letting him or […]

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Four Things that Helped Me When my Friend, Sarah, Died

“If I had a flower or every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.” — Alfred Tennyson “I have some sad news about my sister and your old friend, Sarah. Last Friday she lost her two year battle with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I didn’t want you to find out on Facebook or randomly months later.” That is the recent text I received from Sarah’s brother about my childhood summer friend. I didn’t know Sarah was sick. We were supposed to get together last summer while I was vacationing on Cape Cod, but I canceled. Too much […]

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Don’t the Dead Take their Time Leaving?

After my father died, I became fascinated about where he went. Someone came to take his body out of our house and to a funeral home. He was cremated and his remains were put into an urn. But he was gone. Gone where? Where was the essence of him? I remember my siblings, mother and I all gathered around his hospital bed in our den. His yellow face dropped to the side as he took one last sucking inhalation. We waited for another one, but it didn’t come. His mouth was still partly open. One thing I knew—he was no […]

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Father’s Death Helps Woman Find God and Vocation

I am the Palliative Care Chaplain and Bereavement Coordinator for The University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. My interest in working with the dying and bereaved began with my own father’s illness and death in 1994. My story is one of transformation, when for the first time God’s presence was palpable. God found me on my way to visit my ill father. A strange and holy presence arrived in my Honda that afternoon and stayed right beside me. Besides feeling this presence, I also experienced multiple synchronistic events through friends, music and books. Someone was directing […]

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