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~ Mission ~
Statement of Purpose
Journey of Hearts™ was designed to be a Healing Place with resources and support to help those on their personal journey of grief following a loss or a significant life change. Education is one of the best ways to understand the grief response and aide people in recovering from loss. This website contains a variety of different Grief AIDEs to help in the education process including information, techniques for coping, resources, and links to other websites. Grief AIDEs help visitors understand and work through the grief process following a loss, how to survive present and past losses and how to cope when old losses become felt anew, or new losses occur.

At Journey of Hearts™ a person is educated about the "normal" grief response, including what to anticipate in the transformational process that occurs following a loss. In addition, the grieving person is encouraged to draw upon or discover their internal source of strength to help them through shock and the grief reaction as well as finding their own healthy way of coping with a loss, crisis or significant life-change.

Mission Statement
Journey of Hearts™ is a web resource for anyone who has ever experienced a loss be it acute or long-standing. This site was created to serve as an online Healing Place with resources and support to help those through the grief process following a loss, crisis or a significant life change.

Goals for Journey of Hearts™

  • Help visitors ready to undertake an active role in dealing with their losses use Transitional Medicine through the grief response by transforming feelings of depression into hope, despair into happiness, anguish into peace, loneliness into friendship, loss into serenity, and finally grief into joy, or at least reaching a new understanding.
  • Recognizing that grief is a very personal and private emotion strive to maintain the privacy of visitors to this site.
  • Conduct this site in an ethical manner following the current existing codes of conduct: the HON Code of Conduct, the AMA's Guidelines for Medical and Health Information Sites on the Internet, and the eHealth Code of Ethics.
  • Provide, promote, and encourage the dissemination of quality medical information on the Internet and strive to only include sites that support these same beliefs.
  • Include, as needed, quality medical information from other reputable resources on the site, with the belief that knowledge about a "loss" empowers, thereby reducing the fear, the questions and the "dis-ease" generated from the unknown and uncertainties raised following a loss.
  • Emphasize color, speed and content with our website design, creating a site that will allow access for the majority of Internet users, rather than including the latest website designs and web innovations for a few.
  • Promote and support organizations that provide computer access and promote computer literacy in underdeveloped areas and countries. Encourage and support the same fundamental principles of the free software initiative (Open Source)—to share knowledge with others to empower themselves and thus create a better place for their home community and the Internet community.
  • Reach other countries, uniting people on an international level, via recognizing the common universal experience of loss. Translate the information on Journey of Hearts™ into other languages.
  • Internalize and promote the belief of Karl A. Menninger, "Love cures people, the ones who receive love and the ones who give it too." To recognize there are many different definitions for "cure," which sometimes may require curing the soul, as well as the body.
  • Live by the principle that in the New Millennium, a person will no longer be judged by how much he/she owns or possesses, but rather by their contribution to the community. Take to heart the thought-provoking statement from ‘Finnish Hacker,’ Linus Torvalds, "In Finland, the worth of a person isn't measured in dollars."
  • Remember that giving back to others is a sign of healing. The ultimate goal of Journey of Hearts™ is to help people reach a point where they can recover enough to reach out to help someone else in the early stages of grief following a loss.
  • To this end, Journey of Hearts™ is a not-for-profit undertaking.
    Since starting the site in September 1997 Journey of Hearts: A Healing Place has been financially maintained by Dr. Kirsti A. Dyer and Cole D. Thompson. To date, the entire operating costs as well an estimated 4,000+ of hours to write, design, host and maintain this web resource, have been donated by Dr. Dyer and Mr. Thompson as our gift to the grieving Internet community.

    With the original version of the site, we had affiliate arrangements with two different companies, which did not generate any income for maintaining this site. We have since changed our Book Affiliation to that of Amazon.com. We encourage visitors who are those interested in ordering books online from Amazon.com to do so through our site and support Journey of Hearts. In doing so this site will receive a small portion of the sales. We hope to continue providing Journey of Hearts as a freely available resource on the Internet. Supporting the site with book purchases will allow us to do so.

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    Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
    Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
    Margaret Mead

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    Information on this site is designed to support, not replace, an existing physician-patient, provider-patient relationship. We regret that we are unable to answer any specific medical, mental or health related emails. Please contact your health care provider if you need specific questions answered. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement.
    All material, unless otherwise specified, is © 1997-2003 by Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS of Journey of Hearts. Information on this site may be shared with others, but not in for-profit ventures without permission.
    For more information see our full Copyright.

    To contact the Domain Designer regarding the website or to use materials on this website send email to designer@journeyofhearts.org
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    Last update July 20, 2002