About Linda Goldman

  Linda Goldman Bio

 

  Email: Linda.goldman@verizon.net

  Website: www.childrensgrief.net

 

 

 

Linda Goldman is a Fellow in Thanantology: Death, Dying, and Bereavement (FT) with an MS degree in counseling and Master's Equivalency in early childhood education. Linda is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (LCPC) and a National Certified Counselor (NBCC). She worked as a teacher and counselor in the school system for almost twenty years. Currently she has a private grief therapy practice in Chevy Chase, MD. She works with children, teenagers, families with prenatal loss, and grieving adults. Linda shares workshops, courses, and trainings on children and grief and trauma and currently teaches as adjunct faculty in the Graduate Program of Counseling at Johns Hopkins University. She has also taught on the faculty at the U. of Md. School of Social Work/Advanced Certification Program for Children and Adolescents and lectured at many other universities including Penn. State University, Buffalo School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, The National Transportation Safety Board, and The National Changhua University of Education in Taiwan as well as numerous schools systems throughout the country. She teaches the course on "Working with LGBT Youth" at Johns Hopkins Graduate School, the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and the Child Welfare Administration. She has written many articles, including Healing Magazine’s Helping the Grieving Child in the Schools, The Bullying Epidemic, Creating Safe Havens for Gay Youth in Schools (2006) and Parenting Gay Youth (in-press 2008). Some of her articles on children and grief and trauma have been translated into Chinese for the Suicide Prevention Program of Beijing. She appeared on the radio show Helping Gay Youth: Parents Perspective (2008) and has testified at a hearing before the MD Joint House and Senate Priorities Hearing for Marriage Equality (2007) and the MD Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee for the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act (2008).

Linda has worked as a consultant for the National Head Start Program, National Geographic, and was a panelist in the National Teleconference: When A Parent Dies: How to Help The Child. She has appeared on the Diane Rehms show to discuss children and grief. She was named by the Washingtonian Magazine as one of the top therapists in the MD, VA. DC area (1998) and again named by The Washingtonian Magazine as a therapist to go to after the terrorist attacks in 2001. She has served on the board of ADEC, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and is presently on the advisory board of SPEAK, Suicide Prevention Education Awareness for Kids, RAINBOWS for Our Children, and the advisory board of TAPS (The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) as their Children’s Bereavement Advisor. Linda is the recipient of the ADEC Clinical Practice Award 2003.

Linda Goldman is the author of Life and Loss: A Guide to Help Grieving Children (First edition, 1994/ Second edition 2000) Taylor and Francis Publishers. Her second book is Breaking the Silence: a Guide to Help Children with Complicated Grief (First edition, 1996/Second edition 2002). Her other books include Bart Speaks Out: An Interactive Storybook for Young Children On Suicide (1998) WPS publishers, a Phi Delta Kappan International fastback, Helping the Grieving Child in the School (2000), and a Chinese Edition of Breaking the Silence: A Guide to Help Children With Complicated Grief (2001), the Japanese Edition of Life and Loss: A Guide to Help Grieving Children (in press 2005), and "Raising Our Children to Be Resilient: A Guide for Helping Children Cope with Trauma in Today’s World (2005)" and a children’s book Children Also Grieve (2005), Chinese translation of Children Also Grieve (2007) and Coming Out, Coming In: Nurturing the Well Being and Inclusion of Gay Youth in Mainstream Society (2008). She has also authored contributing chapters in resources including Loss of the Assumptive World (2002), Annual Death, Dying, and Bereavement (2001-2007), Family Counseling and Therapy Techniques (1998), and The School Services Sourcebook: A Guide for School-Based Professionals (2006). She is currently writing two books to be included in a series, Great Answers to Difficult Questions about Death (in-press 2009) and Great Answers to Difficult Questions about Sex (in-press 2009).

Linda also created a CD-ROM "A Look at Children’s Grief" (2001) published by ADEC, The Association for Death Education and Counseling. Her op/ed "Cut Out Guns, Bullying" appeared in the Baltimore Sun, March 2001. She was an important part of the Washington Post Article, How To Talk to Kids about Suicide and has participated in other interviews for articles in the media including the Washington Post, The LA Times, USA Today, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, US Magazine and Redbook Magazine.

Linda contributed in many ways after 9/11. She authored the chapter about children, "Talking to Children about Terrorism" in Living with Grief: Coping with Public Tragedy, Published by the Hospice Foundation of America 2003. She contributed to The Journal for Mental Health Counselors in their special grief issue in the article "Grief Counseling with Children in Contemporary Society" 2004. She was a strong part of the TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) response team at the Pentagon Family Assistance Center, conducted a workshop about children and grief at the 2002/2004/2005/2006 TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar, authored articles including, "Helping Children With Grief and Trauma" (2002/ 2003) and Fostering Resilience in Children: How to help kids cope with adversity (2005) TAPS Journal, Children Coping with a Military Death (2008) TAPS Journal, and serves on the advisory board of TAPS as Children’s Bereavement Advisor.

Linda contributed on the Public Broadcasting Series Program "Keeping Kids Healthy" on Children and Grief which aired in October, 2006. She is the recipient of the "The Tenth Global Concern of Human Life Award 2007" in Taiwan.

 

linda.goldman@verizon.net
www.childrensgrief.net

 

 

Children entering this new millennium are faced with life issues that were unspeakable to us growing up as children. Death related tragedies such as suicide, homicide, and AIDS, and non-death related traumas such as divorce and separation, foster care and abandonment, bullying and terrorism, and abuse and violence have left our children sitting alone in their homes, unfocused and unmotivated in their classrooms, and terrorized in their
communities. They are overwhelmed with their feelings and distracted by their thoughts.

Survivorship of these traumas creates for any child a loss of their assumptive world of safety, protection, and predictability. The role of the media as a surrogate communal parent and extended family further creates
this same traumatic loss of this assumptive world for many if not most of our children.

Children naturally assume their world will be filled with safety, kindness, and meaning as they attempt to answer the universal questions of who am I and why am I here. All too often these qualities seem to disappears into a nightmarish universe of randomness, isolation, and unpredictability. This leaves many of today¹s young people immersed in a new assumption: There is no future. There is no safety. There is no connectedness or meaning to my life. By joining together as a global grief team, caring adults can co-create an assumptive world that again provides a child¹s birthright to presume love, generosity, and value will be integral parts of their lives.

We are raising a segment of our youth that are numbed, disconnected from their hearts, their minds, and their consciousnesses, and choosing all to easily, other alternatives such as drugs and alcohol, crime and violence as ways of coping with the loss of their assumptive world. In yesterday¹s world we may have protected ourselves from trauma by having fire drills in our schools. In today¹s world our kids protect themselves from danger in the schools by having gun-fire drills. Too many of today¹s school children are grieving children. So many of our boys and girls are born into a world of grief and loss issues that live inside their homes and lay waiting for them outside their doorsteps, on their streets, schoolyards, and classrooms. Increasingly, children are traumatized by prevailing social and societal loss issues in their families, their schools, their nation, and their world.

Text adapted with permission from Life and Loss: A Guide to Help Grievng Children, Breaking the Silence: A Guide To Help Children With Complicated Grief: Suicide, Homicide, AIDS, Violence, and Abuse and Helping The Grieving Child in the School Healing Magazine (Kidspeace)and Growing Up Fast (NES).
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