By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The Center for Life Experience, Inc. (CFLE) has moved to a new location in Hays and is now a non-profit organization, but its purpose remains the same.
“We’re here to help people address those life challenges that come with grief and loss, and restoring healing and hope,” says Ann Leiker, CFLE executive director and a licensed social worker.
Through three core support groups that are a part of CFLE – Healing After Loss, Healing Hearts, and Healing After Loss of Suicide – participants learn that everyone grieves differently and adjusts to the loss of a loved one differently.
“We don’t stop when you’re mostly through the initial grief and loss phase. There’s another phase that can be very daunting and challenging, and that’s ‘who am I now without this person in my life?'”
People need to move forward with their lives and want to still honor those they’ve lost, Leiker says.
“We address things like going back to work, how to have the hard conversations, family changes, adjusting differently. We address all kinds of life challenges that come with grief and loss, not just grief and loss. That’s not something you see in many groups.”
Healing After Loss (HAL) deals with the loss of adults, including spouses, parents, siblings, and friends. Healing Hearts is for those who’ve lost a child of any age. Healing After Loss of Suicide (HALOS) brings together people who are surviving the loss of someone to suicide.
The fourth core group, “Healing Kids’ Hearts,” is in its fourth year.
It’s an annual daylong retreat for children ages 7-12 who’ve had a significant loss in their lives.
“Children grieve differently than adults,” Leiker stresses. “They don’t talk the same way as adults. They may want to grieve creatively, doing things like making a memory box with pictures and drawings.”
Children attending past retreats have made bird houses and memory stones to place in a garden.
Plans for the 2019 retreat in late March are to make kites along with memory boxes.
Each child is paired with an adult volunteer mentor for the day.
“They become friends and they just share. The kids come in pretty quiet and by the end of the day, they’re smiling and they have hope. They have memories of their loved one that they can share.”
CFLE also shares leadership with NAMI-Hays, the local affiliate of National Alliance on Mental Illness.
CFLE is the NAMI resource center for information about mental health issues. The NAMI-Hays support group meets at CFLE and educational programs are offered quarterly to the public.
All the groups meet at CFLE and are open to anyone at no cost.
Each meeting starts with the reminder that it is not a clinical therapy group.
“These are true support groups where we bring together people who’ve had similar experiences, where they can share and learn from each other. By listening to each other, they at least learn they are not alone. Others are dealing with the same issues although the outcomes may not be the same.”
The Center for Life Experience was launched 18 years ago in the Hays First Presbyterian Church, with donor funds specified to benefit the community, not the church.
Last May, the Session of First Presbyterian determined it could no longer financially support CFLE.
In November CFLE became a stand alone community-based not-for-profit 501(c)(3) and in late December, CFLE moved to the second floor of the Hadley Center in downtown Hays.
“We are extremely grateful and appreciative of the support we get from the community,” Leiker said, “because it allows people to just come and participate [in these groups] and feel welcome. They don’t have to worry about becoming a member or having to pay.
“They just come when they can, learn to celebrate the lost one’s life, and go on with the rest of their own lives.”
More information about CFLE is available by calling or texting 785-259-6859.