Category: Giving Back

Fran Solomon’s 20 years of working in bereavement care began with an intense personal experience. “My father died in 1998,” she said. “His death was the first of a significant person in my life. I did what I think many people do. I grieved through the funeral, and then I had to get ready to return to work on Monday. “So I put my grief into a box, tied a pretty bow on it, and stuck it on a shelf. I thought I was going to get over it, move on, and with time, forget.

“Fast forward to 2002, my daughter was born. Somehow this beautiful life that had entered mine was accompanied by profound sadness. A friend sat with me and listened to all the reasons for my sorrow. Then there it was. The last thing I said encompassed all my grief,” Solomon said.  “I was grieving that my father wasn’t here to see the one thing he had wanted more than anything —to have a granddaughter. Until that moment, I had no idea that the loss of my dad had had such a profound impact on me. It had resurfaced now many years later, as I welcomed my daughter.”

It ended up impacting Solomon’s own relationships going forward. “Because of my friend’s willingness to sit and listen, I was given an invaluable gift. I was able to understand the association between my sadness around the birth of my daughter and my father’s absence. Had that not happened, my relationship with my daughter could have become a resentful one, resulting from my having displaced my emotions. Through that experience, I came to understand the importance of bereavement care for support, understanding, and appreciation for what grief really is.”

Solomon founded HealGrief.org, a non-profit website that provides the tools, resources, and information to guide one’s journey after a death, through grief and into a healthy post-bereavement equilibrium. It also provides a place to celebrate the lives of loved ones, including pets.

The site provides these tools through offerings like a podcast archive, featuring interviews with a wide array of people who have survived the grief process themselves. The podcast, Let’s Talk Death, can be accessed as a printed transcript, as audio only, or viewed. Central to its mission is removing the cultural taboo that has surrounded death. A virtual support network connects people who are grieving with others who have lost loved ones too. These connections help to dilute the feelings of isolation often associated with grief.

Philanthropy has been a long-term commitment for Solomon. She has been a member of the Cedars Sinai Medical Center Board of Governors for some 20 years. Simultaneously, for a decade, she served as a member of the Board of Directors, as well as the Chair for Our House Grief Support Center, a community-based agency located in Los Angeles.

Now a certified grief-recovery specialist, Solomon lives in LA with her husband, Rick, and their three children, Matthew, Alex, and Lianna. Solomon’s husband serves on the HealGrief.org Board of Directors. He has long supported her work, she said, because he’s realized how much it has enriched her life and the life of their family.

During her work with Our House, Solomon’s focus began to expand beyond community boundaries. She realized that grief is universal. She perceived the need for a place where people across the world could come to celebrate the lives of those they love. She realized that this place also would need to provide resources to help those who are struggling with grief to recover.

Actively Moving Forward is another HealGrief program. Best known as AMF, it began with college students supporting other college students through their grief journey. It evolved into a program supporting all young adults, allowing them to communicate with each other in a way they communicate best—digitally. It’s an app that is a hybrid of a social network, database of resources, and a notification center for daily inspirational quotes. It also offers a community board for posting.

The app since has extended to people of all ages, hosting separate and distinct communities for young adults and for those who are over 30. App members can participate in regularly-scheduled virtual support groups and in book clubs.

“It’s such a gift to hold a safe and sacred space for people to share their most intimate feelings about something so deep within them. And it’s a gift to witness deep friendships emerging from this thing called grief,” Solomon said. “None of this costs our members anything. They can sign up for as many kinds of virtual support as they like.”

“Our members have learned that although grief has a start date, it doesn’t have an end date. Grief is an uninvited companion that we somehow learn to take with us through the rest of our lives,” she observed. Solomon says her work in bereavement care “teaches me to live life to the fullest, to never wait for tomorrow. To tell my family and those I love how much I love them and how important they are to me. It’s a daily reminder of how precious life is and how important it is to be present for those we love.” The site averages about 10,000 new visitors each week, according to Solomon. Poignantly, she reports that the most-visited page by far is “Death of a Child.”

Services are offered at no cost to the site’s users. Solomon reports that HealGrief.org, as a 501c3, accepts donations and has received grants. One was from Funeral Service Foundations, who recognized the importance of the app. Traditional bereavement care was disrupted during the time that Covid shutdowns were most intense, according to Solomon. People who work in bereavement care were unsure of the best ways to serve their clients during that time, so many referred them to HealGrief.org.

“Being virtual, we were in a prime position as the continuum for serving those in need,” Solomon said. “In-person care for many will always be necessary, however we have found that people tend to be more comfortable and share more from the comfort of their own homes,” she explained. “We have been able to serve in new ways. People with disabilities or who don’t have transportation, for example, now can access the support they need too.”

“Support is crucial,” Solomon reflects. “Lack of support can lead to poor coping skills, which can lead to addictive behaviors, suicidal ideology, etc. Grief can change the trajectory of a person’s life. We find that when people try to put their grief into a box or shut down their feelings, this tends to trigger displaced emotions and manifest in ways that they themselves often don’t understand. I was a clear example of this.”

The organization provides training to university faculty, staff, and social work students. It works to help faculty become more grief-sensitive and to understand the needs of grieving young adults through its Grief Sensitive Campus Initiative.

“Many institutions offer bereavement leave to faculty,” she observed, “but not to students. Students have had to negotiate their workload with each professor, interfering with their need to be with families. And upon returning, grieving students can’t be expected to function equally with their peers.”

Christine Colbert holds a master’s in journalism. She has written for and edited varied media. Her preferred “beat” is good news.

When he was 8 years old, Andre Henry became an orphan after losing his parents. At the time, he had been living in the projects in Chester, Pennsylvania.

“Having to deal with that type of environment and living there on a daily basis was hard,” said Henry, 29, in an interview. The loss of his parents took him out of the projects and landed him in Section 8 housing with his grandmother where there was a silver lining.

“She lived in the predominantly white neighborhood of Upper Darby,” he said. “My professors, the friends I met, and the students in the school I attended were from a higher economic setup. They influenced me to become a better person and to learn and grow.” After attending Wilmington University, Henry became a corporate accountant and decided he would find ways to create change in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

“Some individuals are still stuck in the projects today,” he said. “I’ve got family and friends who deal with that environment on a daily basis. It hit me hard and, as I grew older, I felt like I had to find a way to give back and help those individuals in need.”

Henry’s fiancée, Ce’Aira Brown, 27, is a U.S. track athlete who has personally benefited from his accounting expertise.

“Being a professional athlete, I didn’t know a lot about taxes until I met my fiancé and he actually helped me get my finances together, which is something I wish I had learned when I was younger,” she said.

Brown was raised without a mother as a teenager and credits running track in high school for saving her from the pitfalls of young adulthood.

“After my mother emancipated me at 14 years old, I moved in with my dad, my grandfather, and my older brother,” she said. “It wasn’t Section 8 housing but we all had to sleep in the same room. It was crowded.”

Henry met Brown while participating in interstate track meets. “I ran for Upper Darby and she ran for Overbrook,” he said. “I was semi-pro and running at meets unattached. I saw Ce’Aira running track.” Eventually, they became a couple and now Henry and Brown lecture together to teens at public schools about financial literacy and mental health. Henry also maintains a 600-member chatroom online called The Wolf Pack teaching people about investing.

“I offer financial literacy advice on a daily basis,” he said. “I teach people how to invest in vehicles like 529 Plans, Health Savings Accounts (HAS) and self-directed IRAs. I try to help them understand finances overall.”

The couple’s chat groups take place on the Telegram mobile app.

“We make it all available there while we’re working on getting a platform up on our own social media prototype that we are now creating with a designer,” he said.

A former trader at JP Morgan in Newark, Delaware, Henry also created his own algorithm that identifies trades before they are posted.
“I do high frequency trading while some people do option or swing trading,” he said. “It’s all about what risk you are comfortable with.”
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) claims that anxiety around money is connected to financial illiteracy, destructive financial conduct, and lack of financial security, with the greatest stress about money expressed by single women and young adults.

About 53 percent said thinking about their finances makes them anxious and 44 percent said discussing their finances is stressful, according to a Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center study.

“Even prior to the pandemic, more than half of American adults were experiencing financial anxiety,” Annamaria Lusardi, Ph.D., academic director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center and University Professor of Economics and Accountancy at GW, said. “A multifaceted approach will be needed to address this problem; including a systematic increase in financial knowledge, which can happen through policy and programs.”

Brown, an 800-meter runner, separately manages an empowerment group made up of some 50 women nationwide between the ages of 22 and 35 years old called Buildup Women Group (BWG).

Her goal is to improve their self-esteem.

“I graduated with a psychology degree from Hampton University in Virginia so I teach them confidence, not to give up and not to compare themselves with others,” she said. “I mentor them daily and send affirmations. On Fridays, we meditate for 30 minutes.”

Because the duo have both overcome adversity, Brown suggested they write a book together. “From Orphan to Self-made Millionaire: The 10 Irrefutable Laws of Purpose” was independently published in May and has led to a chatroom of followers who aspire to write their stories and publish a book, too.

“We’ve both been through a lot and felt like we could help others,” Brown said in an interview. “Once we started writing, Andre expressed himself more than I did and other people are inspired by our success with publishing the book.”

The pair is now turning to what may be their greatest work of all.

“We’re getting married next April,” Brown said.

Juliette Fairley has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, Time magazine, the Chicago City Wire, the Austin-American Statesman, and many other publications across the country.

Daniel Garza often helps teachers and military veterans buy their first home. As a result, his real estate business has grown and now he’s committed to giving back.

Backyard Heroes is a monthly event in which military veterans submit their war service stories for publication on social media sites, such as Facebook. Military veterans with the winning story are gifted with a $12,000 barbecue accessory for their backyard.

“I wanted to give back to our Armed Forces because we’re losing some of our older veterans who are retired grandfathers and the whole purpose of the event is to recognize their service to our country,” said Garza.

So far, 200 stories have been submitted by email to Backyard Heroes for consideration and the first monthly award is expected to be announced before Labor Day.

“It’s sponsored by our construction company because we now do one hundred percent financing for veterans,” Garza said in an interview. “We have received some story submissions from younger veterans and also from the sisters and daughters of fallen veterans from the Korean War, World War 2, Vietnam and more recent wars as well.”

Every month, a veteran or if fallen, his or her family, will be honored at various Rio Grande Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) posts based on their submitted story. Afterward, sponsors will help build in the veteran’s backyard a barbecue pit, a seating area for friends and family and a covered pergola to provide shade while grilling.

“Our labor is free and we’re getting the lumber at cost but we might have to build with metal because lumber is so expensive right now,” Garza added. “We got together with the veteran hospital and military recruiters. We’re all super excited.”

In addition to showing his appreciation to military veterans, Garza also highly favors teachers.
For the past five years, Garza has been organizing a teacher appreciation event for Thanksgiving in which teachers receive a complimentary turkey. Despite statewide COVID-19 restrictions last year, Garza’s GIVE for Teachers was a success.

“The teachers picked up cupcakes, turkeys, fixings and other goodies but it was all drive through,” he said. “There were 400 cars that came through the car lot.”

The Bert Ogden Fiesta Nissan dealership at 5001 S I69C in Edinburg hosted the 2020 event and Garza managed to raise enough money to gift a $1,000 check.

“Everybody’s a little bit more relaxed with the whole masking now and being in public,” he said. “I think we should be able to get back to our regularly scheduled GIVE for Teachers event in November.”

Garza had intended to host a wine tasting for teachers with a live jazz band every three months but the planned quarterly event has turned into just a giveaway.

“We haven’t been able to host any events for our teachers,” he said. “All we have been able to do is giveaways. We had a $1,000 giveaway, a $500 giveaway, gift cards and a couple of Cricket Arts and Craft Machines.”

Juliette Fairley is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Born in Chateauroux, France, and raised outside of Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Juliette is a well-adjusted military brat who now lives in Manhattan. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, Time magazine, the Chicago City Wire, the Austin-American Statesman, and many other publications across the country.

This article was published in American Essence magazine.