DEDICATED TO YOUR HAPPINESS, SUZANNE CARTER, L.P.C.

From:  Suzanne Carter, M.A., Grief and Loss expert

1890 Gaylord , Denver 80206

720-480-6521      720-540-6738

To:  Standley Lake High School                              January 27 2014

I want to express my condolences for the tragic incident your school experienced on January 27, 2014.

I know that many of your staff and students are in shock.

I am a psychotherapist with specialties in helping children, families, couples and adults. One of my certifications is how to help humans learn how to deal with grief and loss. I have been working in this field for 35 years and have become an expert in helping people deal with the initial shock that results from a tragic event. Then, I am highly qualified to enable individuals or large groups of people heal from the loss.  Our society has incorrectly taught us that there are certain losses that we can never heal from. This is inaccurate.  The problem is most people do not know how to deal with the loss and therefore think they will never get over it.

I am certified by the Grief Recovery Institute in California and I am licensed as professional counselor in 3 states.  Through the Grief Recovery program that they have created, I am helping individuals heal from loss and grief so that they can move forward to a new life.  The willingness to deal with the loss actually helps them become stronger so they reach out in ways that they may not have done before the loss.

There are a few myths about how to deal with grief and loss that I always debunk with people who are courageous enough to deal with and heal their losses. Here are a few of these myths that the Grief Recovery Institute has identified:

Time heals all wounds:  Time does not heal any wound of the heart….It is what we do in time that heals the wounds.

Keeping busy helps one heal their heart:  Keeping busy may make one think they are feeling better but it is simply a distraction that can lead to an addictive activity level if one is not cautious.

Don’t feel bad:  Actually I heard this stated in a different way right after the tragic incident at your school by a licensed Psychologist. This person said:  “Don’t let your kids be immersed in their emotions….”  I almost fell off my chair when I heard this. This statement is what prompted me to contact you.  The truth is that when we go through a tragedy, we are immersed in our emotions and it feels bad.  It would be like telling our children to not get wet when they go swimming.  Being immersed in our emotions and feeling bad are natural reactions to loss………  And, our society needs to be educated on how to “be present” to emotions.  When one is present to another’s grief, the healing begins.

I would like to offer my skills and expertise in the following ways:

Please keep my name and number on file in the future so we can begin to get the correct information out on how to correctly deal with grief.

I would be delighted to do a 2 hour seminar at no charge for your community so your community can begin to correctly deal with this tragic incident.

Finally, I would love to facilitate a community forum on how we can get beyond these types of losses in general.  I am aware of several teens   who have slipped over the edge following other tragic school incidents.  Often their families and the schools do not know what to do other than to give them platitudes, medicate them, minimize their feelings or ignore them.

I would be happy to facilitate this forum at no charge if you were to host it.

Please let me know how I can be of service to help your community learn how to deal with grief and loss. Truly, almost every challenge one faces will have at its beginning, a loss of some type.  The experience of loss and the resulting grief following any type of loss is universal; it is the human condition.  However, humans have not learned how to deal with loss and thus the woundedness from loss goes unhealed and people “act out” their pain.

Then, we have either a situation that you are dealing with where someone harms themselves at school or  unhealthy individuals go into our schools and harm our children. It does not need to happen this way.  I believe that if the individuals who either cause harm to themselves or others had been able to deal with their own losses, then they would not have had to act out this wounding on themselves or those around them.

Sincerely, and gratefully to have the chance to help,

Suzanne Carter, L.P.C.

1890 Gaylord Denver 80206

VM:  720-540-6738   Cell :720-480-6521