People deal with loss in different ways, and the Beacon of Hope grief ministry in Conway invites individuals to use photos, glue sticks and family stories to help them heal.
A free event, Scrapbooking: A Pathway Through Grief, is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday in the St. Joseph Catholic Church Parish Administration Office, 1115 College Ave. Lunch will be provided. The event is in coordination with the ministry’s third annual fall conference.
Kathy Kordsmeier, coordinator of Beacon of Hope, said the scrapbooking event, the first the ministry has held, is designed to be easy even for beginning scrapbookers.
“We’re not expecting them to finish a book. We’re going to do six pages,” Kordsmeier said. “It’s another way of telling their story, and that’s another way to healing and grieving, is telling your story, whether telling a friend, writing, any other creativity activity. They bring whatever they want to use to remember and honor their loved ones; we are providing everything else. We don’t want them to feel this is a task they have to do — that’s why we got these expert scrapbookers who already have created these beautiful pages,” she said.
The “expert scrapbookers” include Jeanne Trawick of Conway, a retired assistant elementary-school principal.
“I come from a line of historians,” Trawick said. “My mother, particularly, is great at documenting family stories and history, so I grew up with a little bit of historian in me. We have all been storytellers in writing our own family stories, and photo gatherers, if you will, for years.”
Trawick said she mainly makes scrapbooks to give as gifts, including for weddings and birthdays, but she also scrapbooks her family photos.
A team from her church scrapbooks, and members have made pages for the Beacon of Hope event, ready to be personalized.
“We’re going to provide everything — scissors, glue sticks, layouts,” Trawick said. “We have everything they need, except the pictures and the stories.”
Trawick said participants who don’t want to bring photographs can come to the event and take the scrapbook pages home to put photos in at their leisure.
Trawick said every family has stories that are retold through the years. For example, she said, one of her now-grown sons was just a toddler when he was taken shopping to a store that sold body-and-bath products. Trawick said she and her friends were smelling the products he couldn’t reach and making comments such as, “Oh, lavender, my favorite.” Finally, her son piped up from down below a table with, “Oh, garlic, my favorite,” she said, laughing.
“We need them to bring their memories and their stories,” she said.
Trawick said there will be a time for participants to write something about their loved one, but she said she doesn’t want anyone to be intimidated by that. Trawick and Kordsmeier suggested that participants think of a few stories ahead of time about the person who is the subject of the scrapbook.
“It can be letters, or poems, or songs, or simply a collection of words that describe the person. It doesn’t have to be complicated,” Trawick said.
She said her grandmother loved wearing her pearls and made wonderful custard pies. It’s those kind of memories that people can record, she said.
Trawick said one woman plans to make a memorial scrapbook about three of her loved ones who died in a short period of time.
“The other thing we suggest people can do to narrow it down, so they don’t get overwhelmed,” Kordsmeier said, “is it could be vacations together, holidays together, or that person’s hobbies, or their career. It’s not like you have to have their entire life in that book.”
Trawick’s husband, Tim, will perform music to set the mood, Kordsmeier said.
Trawick said Tim will perform a song that their son, Sam, wrote.
To register for the event, call or text Kordsmeier at (501) 269-1998, or email her at kkordsmeier@outlook.com.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.