About the
Early Parent Loss
Support Center
SHARING EXPERIENCES OF LOSING A PARENT
The early death of my father. It seems I have always described it as the day the world turned upside down—and it never turned back.
My father was 50 when he died suddenly, a few days after my 11th birthday. My two brothers, two sisters, and I have all survived the loss of our Dad, sometimes together, more often separately.
I’m Jim Eschen and this is an introduction to a program that I can truly say has been in development for more than fifty years.
My goal in creating the Center for Early Parent Loss is to provide a comfortable format for sharing our experiences of losing a parent in childhood. The purpose is for each of us to gain understanding, develop insight, and receive support.
In the time that we grew up, this type of emotional help may not have been offered or even available. It’s never too late to talk about a parent loss which still affects us so deeply. It's a large part of how we define our lives.
This is my family. That's me with my wife, Laura, and our four children. It was taken in 1990, at the 50th wedding anniversary of the kids’ maternal grandparents.
It might seem strange to say that I take a certain pride in the fact that Laura and I have lived long enough to ensure that none of my children had to go through what I went through at age 11.
This specific awareness is an "effect of EPL," and a relatively harmless one at that. It has not caused me any difficulty in life; if I mention it to someone (my wife has been listening to such observations for a long time), it should concern no one.
Other effects are not so harmless. Bereaved children are at increased risk of experiencing social withdrawal, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. For 20% of them, by some estimates, these increased levels indicate the need for professional help. Over the last 30 years, services for bereaved children have grown, and awareness in the education and mental health communities has ensured that appropriate support and clinical services are widely available.
However, here's another estimate: adults who have lost a parent in childhood are almost four times more likely to experience severe depression. The approximately 6% of us who have experienced the death of a parent before age 16 probably know what this tendency to depression looks like.
ABOUT JIM ESCHEN, MODERATOR
I received a Master degree in Social Work in 1979 and have worked in various psychiatric, counseling and social work settings ever since. It was during my time as Director of Ralston Purina’s (now Nestle Purina) Employee Assistance Program (1987 – 1996) that the idea of a specialized program—or series of programs—for those of us who lost a parent in childhood, began to germinate.
Over thousands of interviews with employees and their family members, I began taking note of the EPL adults (approximately 1 in 6 of U.S. adults), who to some extent had never quite adjusted to the loss. As for recovery? My experience and those of my many clients point to the fact that there is none. There is instead coping and surviving; failing and succeeding—in light of, and in spite of, this most personal of losses.
Now I am coaching, a wonderful addition to the counseling background—assisting clients with “getting where they want to go,” the ideal complement to counseling’s work on understanding the whys and hows of “having arrived at this point in life.”
I would like this site to become a “center” for us to come to in order to find listening ears and sensitive hearts, exploring our fragmented roots and moving together in groups.
Jim Eschen, MSW
The Center for EPL is not about treating depression.
Mental health services, like services for bereaved children, are widely available for depressed adults. This is not one of them. Group members who have suffered from emotional/behavioral illness are advised that this program is not treatment, but might be a useful adjunct to professional care.
We will ask you to disclose whether you are receiving mental health treatment or have in the past, and should symptoms say of depression, increase, you will be encouraged to consult a mental health professional.