We learned in Thursday’s Eagle about a project happening this week at Independence Health System’s Crossroads Campus designed to help people who are grieving.

Tanisha Bowman, a social worker with Independence Health System’s palliative care department, has set up what’s known as a “wind phone” from Monday through Friday. The phones aren’t actually connected to anything — instead, they’re a chance for people to say what they want to dead family and friends.

“The idea of speaking your words into the wind and letting them be taken away in the hopes that maybe they reach the ears of the person … It's just a nice way to have a conversation,” Bowman said. “I wanted to give people the opportunity to engage if they want.”

Bowman is using the phone herself. She planned to talk to her grandmother, who died in 2018.

She observed that getting the chance to say something that you didn’t get to say to a loved one can be cathartic.

As someone who works with people nearing the end of their lives, Bowman is familiar with grief, and she knows it’s something that every person experiences. But too many people don’t realize that.

“I would like other people maybe not to get as comfortable as I am, but to have a little less fear and less discomfort being able to actually sit with it a little bit,” she said.

Wednesday is National Grief Awareness Day, which is why Bowman set up the wind phone and a grief wall, where people can write the name of a loved one on a paper crane and attach it to the wall.

One of the things that groups such as the American Psychological Association recommend is talking about the death of your loved one. Holding in thoughts and feelings can lead to isolation, which, in turn, can make grief last longer and be harder to handle.

Projects such as this remind people exactly how common grief is, and that even when we are grieving, we are not alone. That's a message worth repeating.

— JK