A Brief But Spectacular take on the importance of bereavement care

John Yang:

After experiencing her own personal tragedy, Joyal Mulheron founded Evermore, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve the policies and practices surrounding bereavement care. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on why every loss matters.

Joyal Mulheron, Founder, Evermore:

Our daughter's name was Eleonora. Eleonora was, at least to me a very special person. When she was here, everyone wanted her to die quickly. Hospice wanted her to die quickly. The funeral homes they would say to me, Joy, do you think that she'll die before she weighs this or before she's one because if she does, then I'll broker you a better deal.

The systems around us failed. And I thought it was my fault. And it wasn't till years later that I discovered that it wasn't my ineptitude. The systems are simply not there for families.

After Eleanora died, I just had this intuition that something else needed to exist for bereaved families, but I didn't know what it was. And so I decided to quit my job and I started frankly, walking the sidewalks talking to people in Washington DC about their life experiences.

Evermore is a nonprofit dedicated to making the world a more livable place for bereaved people. Our grief is as unique as the relationships we hold. Bereavement, however, is systematic. Most people don't realize that being exposed to death or bereavement itself is actually associated with many other public concerns and emergencies — teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, substance misuse, self-harm, violent crime, incarceration, suicide attempts, suicide and premature death due to any cause.

There are stunning statistics around really areas of concern that keep me up at night. One of those is that as many as 80 to 90 percent of incarcerated youth experienced a death event just to being incarcerated. We are incarcerating grieving children in America.

If I go to Capitol Hill and say that people will be stunned. If I say that in inner city, mothers will be like, where have you been? Of course, that's true. The first thing that I would say to people, you're not alone. You and your person that you lost, they matter. They matter terrifically.

For policymakers, this isn't a Republican or a Democratic issue. This is an issue that touches every person at some point in their life. And there are many, many things that I believe we can do together to make the world a more livable place for bereaved people.

My name is Joyal Mulheron. This is my Brief But Spectacular take on why every loss matters.