In 2003 Andi Stein, wife and mother to two sons, Alec and Adam, lost her husband to bacterial meningitis. Along with this disease taking her husband’s life, it also took from her children any sense of growing up as a normal kid. Alec felt out of place in school, thinking he must be the only person who had lost a parent. This isolation as well as her children’s hatred of grief counseling sent the Stein family searching for comfort in another family. The Flamini family had also recently suffered the loss of their 10-year-old daughter from a brain tumor, thus allowing the two families to find common ground over the tragedies that had befallen them. Dr. Flamini learned that his assistant was a volunteer at the newly formed “Kate’s Club” and the two families decided that it would be helpful if they enrolled all of the children in the club’s activities. Andi remembers Kate picking up her boys in a van and driving them to many different gatherings. Andi saw Kate’s Club as “a place to turn to when I didn’t have another place”, and knew that her children could finally feel like they were no longer outsiders and they had a place to call their own. Kate’s Club was able to help her family heal. The healing was not just for her children. Andi herself met her fiancé through Kate’s Club at one of the Gala events, and after dating for some time, it seemed only appropriate that he propose to her in the same place, a Kate’s Club gala. The rest is history in the making.
Would you like to share your story? Please get in touch with Kate's Club! KC has free grief support with grief resources, grief counseling resources, grief training, and volunteer work in Atlanta and surrounding places in Georgia. Kate's Club is a growing nonprofit in Atlanta with grief specialists for kids and young adults going through bereavement. Our goal is to make a world where it is okay to grieve.