Local writer, illustrator release children’s book about understanding, resisting, and coping with society’s increasing wave of self-harm
Hope and the Winds of Grief is a resource for families facing the storm of suicide.
With the consistently rising rates of suicide, it is hard to find someone whose life has not been touched by the unfortunate experience today. While it is an ongoing discussion, how to cope and work through a loss or attempt can be ignored and neglected. To fill this need, a team of authors, artists, mental health professionals, and marketers contribute their specialties to provide a resource for children and families to cope with a loss from suicide in the book Hope and the Winds of Grief: A Story of Healing After Losing a Loved One to Suicide.
Children join the main character, Orrie, as he is taken up by the winds of grief after losing his older brother to suicide. He is carried through shock, anger, shame, and sadness, and although the emotions of the wind blow through Orrie from time to time, he finds a way through the storm by sharing with others and holding onto Hope—another character in the book. Through every phase of the characters journey, Hope is there, even if barely visible.
“We talked a lot in our initial brainstorming sessions about how we needed a central metaphor. We kicked around a number of ideas, but the one that really spoke to me was winds,” Author Scott Emmons says. “They’re uncontrollable. You have these emotional kind of currents, that’ll toss you one way or another, and you are at their mercy for a while until you get your bearings. The other thing I loved about it was that Hope rides in a hot air balloon which was a perfect connection. From there, it was natural for the character that experiences the loss to be a bird.”
With the likeness of a koala bear, Hope was created by Stacey Lamb before the idea for this book was born. Although it was originally a character without a story, Lamb knew that Hope had a great purpose. // Provided by Haines Eason
While the story focuses around Orrie, the most important character is arguably Hope. Depicted as a yellow koala bear, Hope rides on a red and blue air balloon and always stays in Orrie’s life. When the winds have slowed, it is Hope that initially provides comfort and brings Orrie to a group of characters to lean on. These characters all know Hope and connect through their journey through the winds of grief.
Every aspect of this book is intentional, from the color choices to each written word. Hope’s character is comprised of primary colors—the first colors a child typically learns—and wears a calm teal scarf representing comfort and familiarity. Each phase of the winds takes on a completely different color and intensity that reflect the emotions Orrie is working through.
Even the decision on how to refer to suicide kept the victim and those left behind in mind. In the field of mental health, they are moving away from the phrasing, “committed suicide” to “died by suicide” because of the connotations around the word, ‘committed.’ The same word for acts that often imply a sense of guiltiness or wrongness like ‘committing a crime’, do not accurately reflect the mental state and often desperation of those considering taking their own life.
“The commonality amongst all of us is love. This a project where all of us have put so much love and compassion into it. So, hopefully, when people get the book, feel that. One of the ways we did that was using trauma-informed terminology that could be hope-inducing and that didn’t make individuals feel like something wrong or shameful had happened,” public and mental health professional Katherine Melton says. “We don’t say someone committed cancer, we say they died of cancer. We are working to break that stigma with the hope that people feel like they can reach out for help and get the support that not only that they need but that they deserve.”
Hope and the Winds of Grief is a project that has been years in the making and is pioneered by a team of seven individuals. All the art, color choices, and character design was created by Stacey Lamb.
As a past artist for Hallmark and founder of HAPPYtown, Lamb already had experience with using her creativity to help patients process through difficult times. After her friend was diagnosed with cancer, she created 100 index cards of encouraging messages to represent every day of isolation she lived through after a bone marrow transplant.
The hospital staff saw the healing value of Lamb’s art, which led her to create more resources within HAPPYtown with her husband Brent Lamb for a variety of mental and physical journeys. She was filling a need but began to get more requests for products centered around suicide and grief. So, as she reached out, she realized she was not the only one who wanted to meet this need.
“I really tried to to wrap myself around the story in a way I’ve never done before,” Lamb says. “It’s been a really different project, and I think it’s probably the thing I’ll remember most people in my life. So this book means a lot to me for a lot of reasons.”
Dr. Dana Wyss responded to Lamb’s call and proposed the project of creating a children’s book about coping with suicide. As a licensed marriage and family therapist, clinical art therapist, and registered play therapist, her work focuses on processing self-injury, adopted children and families, grief and loss, and more. Her specialties are perfectly suited for this project, and she worked with Melton to inform the lingo used in the book, as well as the timeline and emotions that took Orrie on. While the art and medical professionals set a strong foundation for Hope and the Winds of Grief, the storyline was formed by Emmons.
With Emmy-award winning talent, Emmons works for the digital content company, JibJab and writes for the Netflix show, “Ask the StoryBots.”
“Hope and the Winds of Grief was a real departure for me because everything I had done for kids had been humorous or light or just kind of entertainment oriented,” Emmons says. “So this was a little bit of a stretch, but a very rewarding one. As far as working with the subject matter in a children’s book, I would say my guiding principle was just to keep it as simple and direct as possible. My experience with children’s books is that powerful, emotional impacts are often the ones that are minimal in terms of story and wording. And so that was what I tried to follow when writing.”
While these four created the book, PR personnel, Haines Eason, marketed the book’s release, and Lamb’s daughter-in-law Alyssa Lamb developed the team’s online presence as the HAPPYtown Social Media and Communications Specialist.
“We’ve gotten a lot of messages and comments on posts saying that they’re really excited and thankful that somebody is doing this because there’s not enough resources like this out there, especially directed at kids,” Alyssa says. “The website has seen a lot of traffic, and I think a lot of people are resonating with it. It seems like people are very thankful that this is out there.”
Although the workbook was made to be used alongside the storybook, its activities and advice are applicable all on its own. // Provided by Haines Eason
Along with the story book, this team also released a workbook full of activities to start or continue processing a loss from suicide. Some pages give children easy methods to ground themselves and cope with what they are feeling, while other pages help them dive into why they have a certain emotion and truly process their thoughts. While aimed at helping children, the simplicity and approachable nature of this workbook makes it a useful resource for many ages. Parents can use it to start the difficult conversations in their homes, but also realize how they are being affected in their family unit.
The effectiveness of this resource stems from two characteristics of this team. The first is that even though each one works within their strength, their work does not happen on an island. Each member is able to contribute to every part of the project, which allows each element to develop into its best. There are very few lives unaffected by suicide today and each member contributes a piece of their experience to form a book that speaks to many. This strong sense of shared contribution rises from the second aspect that makes this book so effective; the foundational desire to help others out of love and compassion.
“It’s funny how hope works because I was coming home from a conference a couple weeks ago, and I said to Brent, ‘Hallmark gave me the greatest gift by letting me go, because none of this would have happened if they didn’t.’ So, I love Hope, I love everything about her,” Lamb says. “She’s more than a koala—She’s, all of us, and we all need hope. She’s given it to me, and I hope that we can help other people. The whole thing is, we just want to help people who are hurting and let them know everything’s gonna be okay. The winds take you here and there. Some days are good, some days are bad, but we’re here for you. It’s been the craziest ride I’ve ever been on and the best ride I’ve ever been on as well.”
Hope and the Winds of Grief is available on Amazon along with the workbook accompaniment. See all the resources HAPPYtown has on their website and stay updated on their Instagram or sign up for their newsletter.
