The Respite: A Centre for Grief and Hope

Written by Patty Rasmussen Wednesday, February 01 2012

Three women seated: The founders of The Respite: A Centre for Grief & Hope, from left, Mandy Eppley, Elizabeth Berrien, and Cindy Ballaro

Three is a powerful number.

In Ecclesiastes 4:12, King Solomon wrote, “…A strand of three cords is not quickly broken.” Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book, “The Tipping Point,” writes that three agents of change are crucial for a tipping point — that point when a shift occurs.

In 2011, three women in Charlotte, N.C., Mandy Eppley, Elizabeth Berrien, and Cindy Ballaro, came together using their separate journeys through grief to start The Respite: A Centre for Grief and Hope, a place providing a holistic approach to confronting grief and loss.

Their meeting and founding The Respite was a perfect storm, according to psychotherapist Eppley, who was dealing with both the breakup of her marriage and her best friend and business partner moving to another city. Ballaro lost her job through downsizing and was asking existential questions about the path her life should take, and Berrien was still recovering and reclaiming her life from the shattering loss of her child, stillborn in January 2008 and the combat death of her husband in Afghanistan in August 2009.

“We all felt the huge void, wondering what our grief was asking us to do,” says Eppley. “At the same time we all felt a passionate desire to serve, to give back and to provide real help for individuals while they were grieving their losses -- to empower people. We wanted to offer services to everyone who walked through our door, and we all shared those visions together. Last year was the time that we were all in individual transformation, with a passion to serve, and we collided on a spiritual level and in a practical way.”

	Cindy Ballaro (standing) leads participants in a SoulCollage® for Grief & Hope class at The Respite.

Each of the three women brought unique experiences and talents to The Respite. Eppley is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice since 1993. Ballaro is a marketing and development professional who worked in nonprofits for over 20 years. Berrien, who had a degree in anthropology, was a stay-at-home Army wife and mother of a six-month-old infant before the death of her husband. She founded the nonprofit Soul Widows out of a desire to reach out to other women who were walking the same path. The Respite has become the home for Soul Widows.

The women believed strongly that the way to handle grief was not through isolation but through community. The Respite, a 501c3 nonprofit, offers a place where anyone, regardless of income level, can come even in the midst of their deepest suffering.

But they also take a life-affirming approach to loss.

“We’re working with grief from the perspective that grief is a great teacher. It doesn’t devastate us and leave us bleeding without bringing us to the other side of life in some way,” Eppley says. “Grief is paradoxical. With every great loss in our lives there is also a treasure that is coming to us, whether we’re learning something about ourselves, about life.”

Resources at The Respite help individuals mine their grief, look for the hope beyond the sadness, and they offer a variety of tools with which to do the work. Eppley serves as The Respite’s counselor, offering traditional talk therapy, one- on-one and in support groups. Ballaro facilitates an art therapy program called SoulCollage®, a technique using images leading to self-exploration and awareness. Yoga and massage are also part of the holistic approach to emotional healing.

Founding Soul Widows and partnering with Eppley and Ballaro to start The Respite has turned out to be a significant component of Berrien’s ultimate healing.

On February 22, The Respite is offering a virtual classroom via live feed, from 8 to 9 p.m. EST, with Mandy Eppley leading a group on the topic, Hope for the Winter Blues. For details, please go to www.therespite.org.

“Seeing the blessings in my life, living intentionally,” says Berrien of what she’s learned from the loss of her husband and child. “Both those (grief) experiences gave me newfound strength, resiliency, to have the courage to live my life and not run away from it. I learned that there are still good things to come. The Center has already brought blessings in the lives of people I’ve met and know that we’ve helped.”

Three women, unified by a common a purpose of acknowledging grief and finding hope, brings to mind another literary "three" -- a quote from poet Robert Frost who said, “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

*For more information about The Respite, the programs and services as well as information about a March 23 fundraising gala, visit www.therespite.org. To learn more about Soul Widows, visit www.soulwidows.org.

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Patty Rasmussen is an Atlanta-based freelance writer. She spent 12 years covering the Atlanta Braves for ChopTalk Magazine and has written for Major League Baseball publications, Georgia Trend magazine, WebMD, and Blue Ridge Country.