September 11, 2025 • 11 mins
First Hour Grief Recovery helps people crawl through the toughest moments in their lives. Lisa Schardein and Karen Buchanan Meyer are co-founders of this group that helps people put one foot in front of the other during their darkest moments.
Learn more at FirstHourGrief.org
Learn more at FirstHourGrief.org
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey you Miles, appreciate it. You're on news radio eight
forty w h A s Terry Miners here with my
two new best friends. Now the question is which one's
the better friend? Right? Is the Karen or Lisa? I
don't know quite yet. Karen Chardine or Meyer? No, start
over again, Lisa Chardine, Karen Buchanan Meyer or is it Meyer? Buchanan?
(00:25):
You gotta speak up. You gotta get down by your sister.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You Canon Meyer?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
There you go?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
There?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You could be in there, Karen Kurfey's Buchanan Mine, that's good.
Pick a name, any name.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm sorry that all that movie equipment is in here today.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Apparently we're going to be in a movie.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, no, apparently they're shooting some some something in here.
I don't know what it is. But if you wind
up in a major motion picture, don't come to me
from making back. He could be in here in a minute.
You never know who'll walk in here, Karen with many names.
I we were just having a little laugh off before
we go. It's good to see you at least, Shardeine.
(01:02):
How's the world treating you?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm good today, Thanks Terry, and we do say today, the.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Two of you put together a heck of a project. Well,
you're a co founder, executive director and Karen is a
board member for First Our Grief Recovery. Please explain more.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So, Karen is also a co founder, and we work
together to create a nonprofit that helps people navigate sudden loss.
So really hard stuff, you know, murder, suicide, just all
the tough things that you're just thrown into. Miscarriage, miscarriage
and inf loss is one of those things. And in fact,
we have an Angel walk coming out on October fourth
(01:41):
at broad Run Park to honor babies that have gone
too soon.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah right, I mean I know about that from my
own life experience with women I'm close with, you know, siblings,
and it's a challenge and so people do need supports systems,
and that's what this is about, Karen.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yes, definitely. I lost my husband in twenty eleven to
suicide and there was nobody there to support me. So
I realized at that moment I needed to go help
the next wife who suffered a suicide. And I didn't
know how to do that, and that became my mission
to figure out to get healed enough to do that.
So between people we met. In about seven years of
(02:25):
talking about it, I met Lisa and then she said, hey,
we're not getting younger, let's get this thing started. So
we started in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Good for you. It's fantastic and it's nice to see
all we're all starting out here with a nice laugh
today too. It shows you that life goes on, yes,
and that's important that you clutch onto each day.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yes, that's right. We're not promised tomorrow, are we. No?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
No, but the driving force has to be the yearning
to be of value in society and to see if
you can't be of service and help to someone, because
when you're down, you need somebody else to help you well.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And helping other people helps us. That is a coping strategy, right.
So both of us suffered terrible things at our lives,
terrible losses, and it helps us to help other people.
And what's beautiful about our nonprofit is that people who
go through our program are now mentors in our programs.
So we use a peer to peer model and we
pair you up with somebody who has a similar loss.
(03:22):
So if you call First Hour and you've lost your
husband a suicide, for example, we'll pair you up with
somebody who has a suicide loss story, and so instant connection.
It creates an instant connection and you feel like, oh,
this person gets me, they understand. And look, they're still walking,
they're still talking, they're still moving. When I don't feel
like doing anything right, I don't. The world has just
(03:42):
crashed for me and I don't know how I'm going
to survive this. And suddenly I see somebody that has
survived it, and that's called hope. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And there are people listening to us who are afraid
to take the first move because you go into a
place you weren't prepared for Karen, right.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Charlie Kirk's wife, perfect example. I just my heart just
bleeds for her.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah. So yes, So what do we say to people
who are listening to us on the radio. They've gone
through some horrible experience, some indignity, some horrible situation. They
either don't want people to come knock on the door.
But it's the only way to heal, really is by
(04:24):
other human connections.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is and that's why we are very private. They would
reach out to us, and brettany who assists us on
the phones is really good about just getting a bit
of the information, a bit of the story, so you
know exactly what mentor can really work with them. We've
had counselors and as people because we get grief, and
my daughter was at u of L and she was
understood like one page of suicide information that was it.
(04:47):
So I realized, based on our training, which we did
right off the bat on grief, we can have people
there to walk with them and just be a support.
As a mentor, I've worked with a lot of suicide
stories and to know that some of my clients now
are doing grief yoga for clients or working as a
(05:07):
widow to help other widows in it at a church.
I really worked with them to help give back to
their community, and that's the goal. And it's a choice.
It's a choice to want to heal. It's going to
take a lot of work and it's going to take time,
but it's choice. And I worked really hard to get where.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I was interesting perspective on that. And obviously somebody must
be available all the time because people have pressure on
them at three am.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So what happens we get contact us forms typically or
if they call in, they leave a message and we
get right back to them. It's within a few hours.
If it's the middle of the night, obviously it's going
to be in the first thing in the morning. But
we call them right away. Typically we get them in
within a week, no longer than two weeks. The first
visit is free, and then after that it's a seventy
five dollars fee per session. But we don't turn people
(05:58):
away because of money, and so we have scholars of money.
We have partnerships with people that help offset that cost,
because people deserve to get help when they're just broken
and shattered like this. And so you know, you're talking
about what you can say and what you can't say
to people. One of the things I like to do
with people to talk about the platitudes that people often
bring up when something happens, like oh, I understand how
(06:20):
you feel. My dog died last week. And you know,
these are things that you do not say to something right,
or you know God must have needed him because you know, yeah, yeah,
or he's in a better place. We're not even ready
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Right. People are well intentioned, but they don't realize how
clumsy those phrases are.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right, The best thing you can do for somebody if
something unthinkable happens, is to just sit with them and listen.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Listen right, be awkward.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
You know, you don't have to have the right words.
You don't have to try to fix the situation. Just
sit and listen, and then look for opportunities to help
them in some way. They need help. They need to
be driven to some places maybe during this time right
maybe they're nervous about driving in a car, or maybe
their grass needs to be motor maybe the leaves need
to be raked. You know, you can look for opportunities
(07:07):
to help somebody and just tell them you're going to
do it. Don't ask, don't call them up and say, hey,
I'm going to bring dinner over Friday night. Is that okay?
Say no, I'm going to bring dinner over. I'm going
to leave it in a cooler on your front porch
so you don't have to see me. And I'm not gonna,
you know, interrupt your life. And you know, that's what
I'm gonna do for you this week and next week
I'm going to bring you know, something else, and so
(07:28):
you just keep doing things like that. Help with the children.
You know a lot of people who have lost children
have other children. So what can you do well, you
could maybe take the other children out so that the
parents can have some time to grieve, because it's hard
to grieve when you have other children in the house.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And Karen, you don't know when someone's bouncing on the
bottom either, so it's like they still could be more
of a slide coming. Yes, And that's why you you
you go with.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Them and you can see the differences. You can see
their week, like what week they've had?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Really interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I give them my clients homework and I'm like, okay,
so bringing the homework the next week and they don't
and they can't, they don't have it, and I'm like
why that becomes the conversation, what are you really going
up to and what's really going on at home? I
remember having one gentleman that couldn't walk out of his
house and go take a walk down to mailboxes. He
just couldn't do it. He couldn't come back because he
(08:21):
just wasn't ready. And that's where some people are. But
that's okay. At least we're having a conversation and they
bring family members. We've had families come in.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
They have conversations because these helpers coming in. That's the
ray of daylight that's just slowly creeping in and maybe
the person doesn't understand that, but that daylight's going to
spread to a full blown, bright, brilliant forward path for someone.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And then let's teach the bosses. Let's teach their boss
that just had this person just had a major loss
or a miscarriage and their boss doesn't have them coming
back in three days.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, come back to work. Well, you get immersed in work,
and that'll that'll make you better.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You're not going to brain fog. Well yeah, you're going
to brain fog.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Busyness is not a tool for coping with your No.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I've heard that used before too, and it's fair. It's
just rude. But people again just like, oh god, one
of them. Yeah, well that's not time for that.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I love the nature of what you're doing. Thanks for
reaching out to help people. All right, So let's talk
about the event one more time so people can sign
up and be a part of it.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So angelwalk dot org has all the information on it,
and we are actually doing personalized signs, so you can
put your baby's name on a yard sign and have
that on the walk pathway and you can order t
shirts with your baby's name on there. So we have
a lot of babies people that want to honor their babies.
It's a family friendly event. It starts at it opens
(09:48):
at nine am. The walk starts at ten am Broad
Run Park on October the fourth. Again there's lots of
family events. They'll be face painting, there'll be white pumpkins
to decorate. The walk is about a mile, so you
can bring the stroller, you know, if you've got other kids.
It's it's very doable for everyone. And we just want
to say their names and remember these babies because people
(10:10):
often just sweep this under the rug terry. You know,
Oh you're young, you can have another baby, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, it's that kind of language.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It's insensitive, but people some people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, they don't even treated like it was a baby sometimes,
you know, if it's a miscarriage, it's and these people
had hopes and dreams for their baby.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well of course, but it's just that mentality like you
hear out of a football coach rub some dirt on it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It was amazing because last year was our first year,
we had what over one hundred people, over two hundred people,
and it was amazing to have families and all these
different shirts like you see at different walks coming in together.
It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Thanks for coming to tell us about it. The website
is First our Grief dot org and they can get
the information there as well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
That's perfect. They get the information there and Angel walked
dot org as well.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Very good. Great Karen mcannon, you rock too, sister. Thank
you thanks for helping people. You're pulling people through a
tough time so they can reappreciate life. Nothing better enjoy again.
Firstour Grief dot org is the website. Back in a
few on news Radio eight forty whas
Hey you Miles, appreciate it. You're on news radio eight
forty w h A s Terry Miners here with my
two new best friends. Now the question is which one's
the better friend? Right? Is the Karen or Lisa? I
don't know quite yet. Karen Chardine or Meyer? No, start
over again, Lisa Chardine, Karen Buchanan Meyer or is it Meyer? Buchanan?
(00:25):
You gotta speak up. You gotta get down by your sister.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
You Canon Meyer?
Speaker 1 (00:30):
There you go?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
There?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You could be in there, Karen Kurfey's Buchanan Mine, that's good.
Pick a name, any name.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I'm sorry that all that movie equipment is in here today.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Apparently we're going to be in a movie.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, no, apparently they're shooting some some something in here.
I don't know what it is. But if you wind
up in a major motion picture, don't come to me
from making back. He could be in here in a minute.
You never know who'll walk in here, Karen with many names.
I we were just having a little laugh off before
we go. It's good to see you at least, Shardeine.
(01:02):
How's the world treating you?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm good today, Thanks Terry, and we do say today, the.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Two of you put together a heck of a project. Well,
you're a co founder, executive director and Karen is a
board member for First Our Grief Recovery. Please explain more.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So, Karen is also a co founder, and we work
together to create a nonprofit that helps people navigate sudden loss.
So really hard stuff, you know, murder, suicide, just all
the tough things that you're just thrown into. Miscarriage, miscarriage
and inf loss is one of those things. And in fact,
we have an Angel walk coming out on October fourth
(01:41):
at broad Run Park to honor babies that have gone
too soon.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah right, I mean I know about that from my
own life experience with women I'm close with, you know, siblings,
and it's a challenge and so people do need supports systems,
and that's what this is about, Karen.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yes, definitely. I lost my husband in twenty eleven to
suicide and there was nobody there to support me. So
I realized at that moment I needed to go help
the next wife who suffered a suicide. And I didn't
know how to do that, and that became my mission
to figure out to get healed enough to do that.
So between people we met. In about seven years of
(02:25):
talking about it, I met Lisa and then she said, hey,
we're not getting younger, let's get this thing started. So
we started in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Good for you. It's fantastic and it's nice to see
all we're all starting out here with a nice laugh
today too. It shows you that life goes on, yes,
and that's important that you clutch onto each day.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yes, that's right. We're not promised tomorrow, are we. No?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
No, but the driving force has to be the yearning
to be of value in society and to see if
you can't be of service and help to someone, because
when you're down, you need somebody else to help you well.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
And helping other people helps us. That is a coping strategy, right.
So both of us suffered terrible things at our lives,
terrible losses, and it helps us to help other people.
And what's beautiful about our nonprofit is that people who
go through our program are now mentors in our programs.
So we use a peer to peer model and we
pair you up with somebody who has a similar loss.
(03:22):
So if you call First Hour and you've lost your
husband a suicide, for example, we'll pair you up with
somebody who has a suicide loss story, and so instant connection.
It creates an instant connection and you feel like, oh,
this person gets me, they understand. And look, they're still walking,
they're still talking, they're still moving. When I don't feel
like doing anything right, I don't. The world has just
(03:42):
crashed for me and I don't know how I'm going
to survive this. And suddenly I see somebody that has
survived it, and that's called hope. Right.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And there are people listening to us who are afraid
to take the first move because you go into a
place you weren't prepared for Karen, right.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Charlie Kirk's wife, perfect example. I just my heart just
bleeds for her.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah. So yes, So what do we say to people
who are listening to us on the radio. They've gone
through some horrible experience, some indignity, some horrible situation. They
either don't want people to come knock on the door.
But it's the only way to heal, really is by
(04:24):
other human connections.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is and that's why we are very private. They would
reach out to us, and brettany who assists us on
the phones is really good about just getting a bit
of the information, a bit of the story, so you
know exactly what mentor can really work with them. We've
had counselors and as people because we get grief, and
my daughter was at u of L and she was
understood like one page of suicide information that was it.
(04:47):
So I realized, based on our training, which we did
right off the bat on grief, we can have people
there to walk with them and just be a support.
As a mentor, I've worked with a lot of suicide
stories and to know that some of my clients now
are doing grief yoga for clients or working as a
(05:07):
widow to help other widows in it at a church.
I really worked with them to help give back to
their community, and that's the goal. And it's a choice.
It's a choice to want to heal. It's going to
take a lot of work and it's going to take time,
but it's choice. And I worked really hard to get where.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
I was interesting perspective on that. And obviously somebody must
be available all the time because people have pressure on
them at three am.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So what happens we get contact us forms typically or
if they call in, they leave a message and we
get right back to them. It's within a few hours.
If it's the middle of the night, obviously it's going
to be in the first thing in the morning. But
we call them right away. Typically we get them in
within a week, no longer than two weeks. The first
visit is free, and then after that it's a seventy
five dollars fee per session. But we don't turn people
(05:58):
away because of money, and so we have scholars of money.
We have partnerships with people that help offset that cost,
because people deserve to get help when they're just broken
and shattered like this. And so you know, you're talking
about what you can say and what you can't say
to people. One of the things I like to do
with people to talk about the platitudes that people often
bring up when something happens, like oh, I understand how
(06:20):
you feel. My dog died last week. And you know,
these are things that you do not say to something right,
or you know God must have needed him because you know, yeah, yeah,
or he's in a better place. We're not even ready
to hear that.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Right. People are well intentioned, but they don't realize how
clumsy those phrases are.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right, The best thing you can do for somebody if
something unthinkable happens, is to just sit with them and listen.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Listen right, be awkward.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
You know, you don't have to have the right words.
You don't have to try to fix the situation. Just
sit and listen, and then look for opportunities to help
them in some way. They need help. They need to
be driven to some places maybe during this time right
maybe they're nervous about driving in a car, or maybe
their grass needs to be motor maybe the leaves need
to be raked. You know, you can look for opportunities
(07:07):
to help somebody and just tell them you're going to
do it. Don't ask, don't call them up and say, hey,
I'm going to bring dinner over Friday night. Is that okay?
Say no, I'm going to bring dinner over. I'm going
to leave it in a cooler on your front porch
so you don't have to see me. And I'm not gonna,
you know, interrupt your life. And you know, that's what
I'm gonna do for you this week and next week
I'm going to bring you know, something else, and so
(07:28):
you just keep doing things like that. Help with the children.
You know a lot of people who have lost children
have other children. So what can you do well, you
could maybe take the other children out so that the
parents can have some time to grieve, because it's hard
to grieve when you have other children in the house.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And Karen, you don't know when someone's bouncing on the
bottom either, so it's like they still could be more
of a slide coming. Yes, And that's why you you
you go with.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Them and you can see the differences. You can see
their week, like what week they've had?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Really interesting.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I give them my clients homework and I'm like, okay,
so bringing the homework the next week and they don't
and they can't, they don't have it, and I'm like
why that becomes the conversation, what are you really going
up to and what's really going on at home? I
remember having one gentleman that couldn't walk out of his
house and go take a walk down to mailboxes. He
just couldn't do it. He couldn't come back because he
(08:21):
just wasn't ready. And that's where some people are. But
that's okay. At least we're having a conversation and they
bring family members. We've had families come in.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
They have conversations because these helpers coming in. That's the
ray of daylight that's just slowly creeping in and maybe
the person doesn't understand that, but that daylight's going to
spread to a full blown, bright, brilliant forward path for someone.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And then let's teach the bosses. Let's teach their boss
that just had this person just had a major loss
or a miscarriage and their boss doesn't have them coming
back in three days.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, come back to work. Well, you get immersed in work,
and that'll that'll make you better.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
You're not going to brain fog. Well yeah, you're going
to brain fog.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Busyness is not a tool for coping with your No.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I've heard that used before too, and it's fair. It's
just rude. But people again just like, oh god, one
of them. Yeah, well that's not time for that.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
I love the nature of what you're doing. Thanks for
reaching out to help people. All right, So let's talk
about the event one more time so people can sign
up and be a part of it.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So angelwalk dot org has all the information on it,
and we are actually doing personalized signs, so you can
put your baby's name on a yard sign and have
that on the walk pathway and you can order t
shirts with your baby's name on there. So we have
a lot of babies people that want to honor their babies.
It's a family friendly event. It starts at it opens
(09:48):
at nine am. The walk starts at ten am Broad
Run Park on October the fourth. Again there's lots of
family events. They'll be face painting, there'll be white pumpkins
to decorate. The walk is about a mile, so you
can bring the stroller, you know, if you've got other kids.
It's it's very doable for everyone. And we just want
to say their names and remember these babies because people
(10:10):
often just sweep this under the rug terry. You know,
Oh you're young, you can have another baby, right, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, it's that kind of language.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
It's insensitive, but people some people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, they don't even treated like it was a baby sometimes,
you know, if it's a miscarriage, it's and these people
had hopes and dreams for their baby.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Well of course, but it's just that mentality like you
hear out of a football coach rub some dirt on it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It was amazing because last year was our first year,
we had what over one hundred people, over two hundred people,
and it was amazing to have families and all these
different shirts like you see at different walks coming in together.
It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Thanks for coming to tell us about it. The website
is First our Grief dot org and they can get
the information there as well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
That's perfect. They get the information there and Angel walked
dot org as well.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Very good. Great Karen mcannon, you rock too, sister. Thank
you thanks for helping people. You're pulling people through a
tough time so they can reappreciate life. Nothing better enjoy again.
Firstour Grief dot org is the website. Back in a
few on news Radio eight forty whas
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