Published Articles

2019 - Feb - Gazette - Love Helps Us Heal

Love Helps Us Heal The room was full of friends and family who came to honor a woman’s life. First, the guests offered their condolences in the receiving line. Next, as the celebrant, I shared pie...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Thursday, January 31, 2019

2019 - Jan - The Daily News - Huntingdon

Funerals Matter I worked with a woman who was pregnant with her first child. When it was time for her to give birth, she and her fiancé drove to the hospital, took the elevator and got off on the ...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Tuesday, January 15, 2019

2018 - Dec - CDT - Learning to Live - Healing Through the Holidays

Healing through the Holidays As part of my outreach for the Helping Grieving Hearts Heal program, Evelyn Wald, a licensed professional counselor at Individual and Family CHOICES, and I facilitated...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Sunday, December 23, 2018

2018 - Nov - The Daily News - Time for Family, Time for Talk - Conversations Count

Conversations Count: Time for Family, Time for Talk Month John B. Brown Funeral Home, Inc. - Huntingdon, PA Years ago my husband John met Jim in State College. John was a Penn State student c...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Monday, November 12, 2018

2018 - Nov - Gazette - Conversations Count: Time for Family, Time for Talk Month

Conversations Count: Time for Family, Time for Talk Month A counselor ed class of Penn State graduate students recently spent a couple of hours asking one another meaningful questions such as: Wha...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Thursday, November 1, 2018

2018 - Oct - CDT - Helping Hands - National Family History Month

Remember, share your family stories during National Family History Month When my grandmother was a young woman, she came from Kansas to Milroy, Pennsylvania, to visit a college friend. One day dur...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Thursday, October 11, 2018

2018 - August - Gazette - Plan Ahead

Plan Ahead In March of 2017, a group of us sat in a circle together at the Bellefonte Senior Resource Center and talked about death. We talked about the history of our perceptions about death. We ...
By Jackie Hook
In Published Articles
Monday, August 13, 2018
Next >

Previous Posts

2018 - July - CDT - Helping Hands - Humor to Heal

Humor to Heal There is a scene in the movie Steel Magnolias where Sally Field’s character is leaving her daughter’s funeral and experiences several emotions in a few minutes. She is sad, angry, co...

2018 - June - CDT - Learning to Live - Honoring Life

Honoring Life Before I began to work with Koch Funeral Home, I thought their work was about death. What I have learned since then is just the opposite. Their work is about honoring life. They hono...

2018 - May - Gazette - Nurturing. Where do you begin?

Nurturing, Where Do You Begin? The patriarch of a family I know recently died. He had been in declining health for a couple of years and near the end, his family courageously chose to bring him ho...

2018 - March - CDT - Helping Hands - Healing with Nature

Healing with Nature  Losses come in all shapes and sizes as does the healing that follows from them. One result of a loss is often a future you hadn’t expected. A few years ago, I was grievin...

2018 - February - Gazette - Make it Matter

Make it Matter My husband and I attended the visitation for a family friend a few years ago. As we were greeting the family in the receiving line, I was struck by my interaction with our friend’s ...

2018 - February - Gazette - Remembering with Love

Remembering with Love Love. For yesterday’s celebration of Valentine’s Day, love was at its core. The Greeks had at least six different words to describe love: Agape – love extended to all Eros –...