Fitting that the man spreading the word for so many local arts endeavors—including the Virginia Film Festival and the UVA Drama Department—would pen a few of his own. A few years ago, local public relations specialist John Kelly interviewed Kate Atwood, a former local and founder of an Atlanta grief support group for kids called Kate’s Club, for Albemarle Magazine. Atwood, a former Charlottesville resident, lost her mother when she was 12, and founded Kate’s Club when she was 24.
The interview led to a book collaboration called A Healing Place: Help Your Child Find Hope and Happiness After the Loss of a Loved One, and will be released in November. An early copy arrived on my desk this week, and I called Kelly to let him know; he dropped by to take his first gander at the paperback cover art and talk about his work on the project. "Kate’s a force of nature," he said of Atwood. "Counter to what you’d expect from a woman running an organization on grief." More after the photo.
Assembling the book took roughly a year-and-a-half, according to Kelly; when the pair first spoke, Atwood was in the midst of press attention for Kate’s Club from People Magazine, CNN and "The View." Kelly spoke with Atwood—"long phone interviews"—about topics Atwood hoped to tackle in the text.
Death and grief, said Kelly, are "outside of our comfort zone as a society. Adding a child makes it even less comfortable." But, he added, "Avoiding it is the most uncomfortable thing of all." A Healing Place is largely about engaging the discomfort of grief, and giving kids the opportunity to express it in their own voice.
And for Kelly, a father, A Healing Place is less a clinical text than a practical guide to trusting kids to handle uncomfortable issues. "It’s a humanistic look at something not typically seen as human," he explained.
I haven’t read all of the book yet, but my conversation with Kelly reminded me of how parents or adults might make decisions to moderate cultural content for kids. I can’t say whether my folks did me a disservice by influencing when I started watching Tarantino movies or listening to Nine Inch Nails, but I’d like to hear from parents and kids alike about their experiences tackling the cultural tough stuff.
