Impact Stories

Shay Jacobs on Why We Need for Safe, Compassionate, and Culturally Responsive Places to Grieve

febrero 15, 2024

In an interview with Shay Jacobs, we discuss the transformative impact of culturally responsive grief care – its potential to bridge gaps, build understanding, and provide meaningful support to individuals and communities in times of loss.

The mission of Adam’s Purpose is to offer help, hope, and healing to communities of color who are impacted by grief, loss, and trauma. They accomplish this by normalizing grief recovery through awareness, education and promoting access to culturally competent support services.

Rooted in firsthand experiences, Shay spearheaded the creation of Adam’s Purpose with a specific focus on raising awareness around pregnancy loss, as well as addressing the profound effects of grief, loss, and trauma among Black moms and their families.

Encountering barriers to effective grief counseling, Shay recognized the need for resources, especially for communities of color, and a greater awareness of mental health and trauma in the context of grief. In March 2019, Shay and her husband organized the inaugural Grieve Gracefully Symposium, drawing from their personal experiences to provide relevant educational, inspirational, and practical information to support those grieving in the community.

In this interview, Shay talks with us about the importance of culturally responsive grief care, bridging gaps, and what it means to serve people well collectively.

How do you see Adam’s Purpose filling grief care gaps?

“I see Adam’s Purpose filling in the gaps for grief care is in providing culturally responsive care,” said Shay.

Adam’s Purpose matches peers with lived experience to break down perceived barriers to accessing mental health support.  

“The gaps we are filling are (1) we are in the community, (2) we are culturally responsive, (3) we are making accessibility easy, and (4) providing lived experiences that remove the stigma that might be associated with coming to a mental health professional.”

Your website mentions culturally responsive support to individuals experiencing grief. Why is it so important that grief care is culturally responsive?

Shay shared her story to help explain how Adam’s Purpose grew from her lived experience. She spoke about multiple losses, including her son, Adam, the organization’s namesake; her mother-in-law, mother to her spouse and grandmother to her children; her 21-year-old niece, and the family’s dog.   

“We lost three generations and a family pet, and when we went to first get support, it was not that we cared who gave that support, because we were so desperate and vulnerable, we just needed help … And we were met with a very unfortunate circumstance. Where we were overlooked, unwelcomed … we were just looked at … It was ‘you don’t belong here looks’,” says Shay. “The courage that it took to go somewhere and say hey, I am here. I do not know what to do.”

Shay described the devastating experience of jumping through hoops, hitting barriers, and feeling unseen through a practitioner’s lens.   

Shay’s experiences highlight how biases in healthcare practices and the lack of representation in therapeutic spaces can exacerbate an already challenging journey for those navigating grief. When it comes to grief care accessibility, it is imperative that we remove any additional barriers that might hinder someone from feeling seen in their grief.

Shay and her spouse created Adam’s Purpose to break down racist and systemic barriers and provide safe spaces for each person to grieve.

“That is why I set up [Adam’s Purpose] for women of color, because we don’t have that space, and have not had that space,” says Shay.

She described stories from her participants who tried to access other supports only to feel silenced or invalidated in a room where no one looked like them. Spaces where they did not feel others would understand their experience.

It is vital we hold ourselves accountable to become more culturally aware and to do the important work to ensure our spaces are genuinely inclusive.

“As a practitioner, it is important to learn enough about what a different person’s culture is either by asking or being educated on how to best meet their needs,” says Shay. “[To be culturally responsive] is identifying and dealing with your own biases for the betterment of whomever it is that you are serving. It is looking at yourself and your lenses and recognizing biases, owning that, and learning not to project that on anyone.”

This work can be an uncomfortable reckoning, but it is a key piece to providing culturally responsive care.

“If we are serving the community, we should be uncomfortable, because we should be personally growing and recognizing where our biases come up,” says Shay. “We all need to have the cultural humility to say ‘I don’t know. I will never know, but let me let you tell me. Without me telling you or invalidating your experience.’ When I talk about being culturally responsive, it means to serve people with the best interest of them and their culture.”

In line with that idea, how can Adam’s Purpose and Judi’s House partner to ensure that grief-informed care is also culturally responsive?

“When I think of ways that Judi’s House and Adams Purpose can work together, it is that Adam’s Purpose would be key in bringing that culturally responsive education to Judi’s House and allyship,” says Shay. “The pipeline for practitioners of color is narrow, so we have to partner with anyone serving the community as they are willing to learn and engage so that we can collectively embrace what it is to serve people and serve them well.”

Shay emphasizes that addressing gaps in grief care requires a commitment to crucial work in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI), stretching ourselves to reach into the community to diversify ourselves, and engaging in efforts that propel us beyond our comfort zones. It is essential to acknowledge our blind spots and actively work towards establishing a secure, compassionate, and culturally sensitive environment.

Shay also sees the two organizations partnering with one another to better address gaps in care, be it referrals for pregnancy loss support groups or for a mother attending Shay’s groups to feel empowered by their decision to take their kids to Judi’s House.

“We can partner to be one voice and to ally on another,” says Shay. “We are two organizations … but here is what we can glean from one another.”

What has been one of the most profound takeaways from the Grieve Gracefully Symposium?

“I did not realize how many people are grieving. I thought 40 people would come to that maybe. Keep in mind, we launched these 6 months after we lost Adam. We launched the symposium because we were grieving multiple losses, but so were our friends and family and everyone else in our community. And I was like, ‘why is no one talking about their grief?’,” says Shay.  

She said a key takeaway was awareness that almost everyone just needed permission to grieve.  

“That is what we do at Adam’s Purpose, we are normalizing grief. Because if we normalize grief, normalize the conversation, then we can normalize getting help without shame.”

What is the number one thing you want to share with those grieving a death loss?

“Grief is really a journey. It ebbs and it flows. It does not mean we should ever put a timeline on it,” says Shay.

“Grief can teach you lessons. Grief can make you grateful. I know people talk about the ugly side of grief, but do you know how much I have grown and learned? It gave me some valuable lessons in life … I really feel like the person I have become through this – I love her. I can’t tell you if I loved myself before. This forced me to search for meaning, it forced me to search for hope. It propelled me to gratitude and gave me a perspective that life is truly short. So, for anyone grieving: Grief is tough, and I am not minimizing it at all, and everyone has a story to tell.”

“But one thing I must say is there is hope. You can hope. And there is grace to grieve. I say grieve forward. Grieve, forward.”