Growing Through Loss

Pictured L to R: Emilia, Justin & Jude Chambers.

     In February 2018, life for the Chambers family was turned upside down. Vanessa Laco Chambers learned her cancer was terminal, and a few weeks later, just days after her 39th birthday, she succumbed to the disease while in Angela Hospice's home care program.
     "Everybody took such good care of her when she was in her final stages. It was amazing. I'd never experienced anything like that before, so I think we were very lucky in that context," said Vanessa's husband, Justin Chambers.

"They always come out happier than 

they went in," Justin said of Emilia 

and Jude, about their visits with 

Angela Hospice's children's grief 

counselor Debbie Vallandingham 

and therapy dog, Piper.

     He was grateful for the help of Angela Hospice, especially for the guidance of their social worker, so he said it was a natural progression to reach out to Angela Hospice for grief support for himself and his children: 6-year-old Emilia; 8-year-old Jude; and 14-year-old Luke, Vanessa's son from her previous marriage. The transformation that has come about since has been a huge help to their family.
   "It's wonderful, it's amazing to see," Justin said, nodding toward his daughter Emilia. "When someone like this has a pillar taken out from underneath them, you can't even imagine what they go through. But to see that for the most part they are pretty healthy, happy, running around like crazy, jumping off all the couches in the whole entire house over and over, just being kids...it's beautiful."
     It's been about a year now since Emilia and Jude started seeing Debbie Vallandingham, a social worker in Angela Hospice's bereavement department. Luke has since switched to a male counselor, but for the younger kids, their visits every other week with Debbie are something they can count on.
   "Everything else that they counted on before is all of a sudden gone," Justin said. "But now this is a new kind of normal for them."

Debbie Vallandingham & Piper

     Debbie has helped Justin tremendously too. She's helped him understand that all three kids will process grief in a different way because they are at different stages developmentally. She's also helped him to recognize their patterns.
     "With Debbie's help I've been able to see a lot of the triggers that are going on," Justin said, "to be mindful that the reason that Jude's super upset right now because the crayon is the wrong color, isn't really the crayon. It's something much, much different and a lot deeper."
     Grief is an ongoing journey, and the Chambers clan is managing it as a family. Justin is grateful that Debbie is there to help when things get tough, like when Jude started acting out.
     "It was a really hard time for him and he started getting aggressive, and he was hitting and stuff like that, and I didn't know where to go with it," Justin said. But Debbie created an "anger menu" to help Jude express himself. "Now Jude's back to being Jude. It's awesome because it could have turned sideways really fast on me," Justin continued.
     Angela Hospice's grief support programs, including one-on-one counseling like the Chambers kids receive, as well as support groups and workshops, are all made possible through the generosity of Angela Hospice donors. With your support, we can continue to extend this outreach to more families throughout the community, coming beside them as they cope with some of life's biggest challenges.
     "We're so happy that we discovered Angela Hospice, and that there was already a path set for us so that way we could just kind of climb aboard and then go," Justin said. "Because I don't know that I would have been able to get us on that path by myself."