About McClean Fletcher Center
McClean Fletcher Center provides support and understanding in a safe and hopeful environment where children, teens, and their families grieving the death of a loved one can embrace their grief and move through the healing process toward peace.
McClean Fletcher Center extends support services to families, caregivers, schools, and other agencies in the Jackson Metro area while functioning as a resource to the entire state.
There is a place where children can embrace grief and begin their journey through the healing process toward peace. The place is within a child’s heart. The location is McClean Fletcher Center, Mississippi’s first grief center for children and their families.
The Center’s bi-weekly program sessions begin with families, staff, and volunteers sharing a meal, providing an opportunity for fellowship and bonding. Afterward, children and teens are placed in age-appropriate groups, where they meet for activities such as open discussions, art, music, games, reading, expressive writing, and journaling. Adult caregivers meet separately in the center.
The Center also offers an Anticipatory Grief program to assist those experiencing the anticipated death of a loved one due to illness or disease. Emotional needs are often overlooked or misunderstood because of the pressures and challenges we face when someone in a family has a serious illness.
History
The Center, named for McClean Fletcher, who died at the age of 19, was born out of the need to support children and families suffering the loss of a loved one. The Center opened its doors in 1999.
Guiding Principles
- Grief is a natural reaction to the loss of a loved one for children as well as adults.
- Within each individual is the natural capacity for healing.
- Grief knows no time frame. Duration and intensity are unique for each individual.
- Care and acceptance assist in the healing process.
ALL ABOUT MCCLEAN
ALL ABOUT MCCLEAN
It was junior high, seventh grade, and Sara was the new kid in town. Panic set in as she waited beside the flagpole to begin her brand new life in her new school. Sara realized she didn’t know one human being in the entire junior high school. No one, not one soul. As kids scurried to visit before the bell rang, Sara was relieved to be greeted by McClean, who said to her, “You’re new here, aren’t you? Come with me, and I’ll be your friend.”
And that’s how it was with McClean Fletcher, a friend to everyone, even strangers. A mentor to her friends, always using the perfect words for advice, relying upon her faith to guide her life. A selfless organizer who made certain friends keep in touch with one another because McClean realized the value of friendship.
Kids gravitated to McClean. Children adored her, and the feeling was mutual. She respected their unconditional love as well as their full-of-life- undemanding innocence. McClean planned to be a pediatrician because of her desire to help others and because she received such joy from being around children. It is ironic that at the age of 19, just a child herself, McClean was killed on her way home from doing the thing she loved most. On a rainy day, McClean died in a car accident, traveling home from babysitting close family friends who lived out-of-state. The family for whom McClean was sitting admired her so much that they named their youngest child after McClean in honor of her memory.
It is said that those who are irreplaceable leave us on rainy days; God washes away their footprints because no one can ever walk in their place.
When we lose someone like McClean, it becomes apparent that we are really not in control of our lives, and the loss changes us forever. If we admit it, death saddens our souls, grieves our minds, and challenges our spirit. If we allow it, death can strengthen our souls, mature our thinking, and dare our spirit to live each day as if it were the last. Out of this maturation comes hope, healing, and peace. And from this peace comes one of life’s most perplexing truths:
Even the smallest of hearts may bear the heaviest burdens and triumph.
PEACE
Of all the experiences that human beings encounter, death is the most overwhelming. When death enters our lives, it changes us forever. As adults, when we experience grief associated with loss, it tests all that is within us. But if you will, imagine how this grief must feel to a child. Then imagine The McClean Fletcher Center as a wonderful nest for children and families at a time when their hearts are breaking. When it is time to leave the nest, children and families will know one of grief’s most perplexing truths:
Even the smallest of hearts may bear the heaviest of burdens and triumphs.
For all of us, life is short, and death is imminent. Sometimes, even for children. At McClean Fletcher Center, it is our mission to love and nurture our children and one another while we prepare our adult hospice patients for the process of dying and prepare our children for the process of living.
HOPE
There is a place where children can embrace grief and begin their journey through the healing process toward peace. The place is within a child’s heart. The location is The McClean Fletcher Center, Mississippi’s first grief center for children and their families.
Grief is an emotion we wish could be reserved only for grownups. But grief does not discriminate. It transcends cultural boundaries, race, gender, and even age. At the McClean Fletcher Center, our focus is young people who have experienced the death of a sibling, parent, grandparent, friend… any loved person.
HEALING
The McClean Fletcher Center began as a vision of Kathy Woodliff, a licensed counselor and community volunteer. At the age of nine, Kathy suffered the loss of her mother. Because of her experience with this grief process, Kathy understood the need for the support of children suffering the loss of a loved one.
The McClean Fletcher Center is named in honor of McClean Fletcher, who died in 1996 in an automobile accident. McClean was 19 years old and had committed her future to loving and caring for children, although she herself was just a child. McClean exemplified the spirit and philosophy of The Center’s mission through her passion for life, her compassion for children, the gift of mentoring, and her intuitive ability to touch the hearts of those in need.
Out of this loss and grief was born the beginning of corporate and personal healing. It provided a positive and hopeful promise: The McClean Fletcher Center.
MCCLEAN'S PROGRAMS
The McClean Fletcher Center’s professional staff and trained volunteers provide age-specific support groups for children suffering loss. We encourage kids to share their experiences with other kids in the program through these groups. Group work for adult family members is also encouraged and is available through McClean Fletcher Center programs. The availability of programs is not limited to children within hospice families. Our services are available to any child in the state who has experienced a loss due to illness, suicide, or other means of death.
