Savannah Smiles

Hello and welcome to the gifted life podcast where we have conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Lori Seale. I'm Joey Boudreau. I'm Sally Gentry.

And we are here for you. Our goal is just for healthy conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. So thanks so much for listening in today. We are focused on Savannah smiles.

Yes, Savannah smiles as a camp centered on families who experience the untimely death of a child. We'll tell you more about the camp and how they support families. We've just heard such great things about this camp. So we want to explore it a little more with you.

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Obviously we have lots to talk about here on episode 98. You guys already? All right. Let's do it.

Here on the gifted life, we are excited to introduce you to our new friends, Jennifer Sharfenstein and Haley Aurelian of Savannah Smiles. The reason we asked them to come on the gifted life is because we got some really great feedback from an active donor family. Savannah Smiles does a lot of things that will tell you about coming up on this episode, but there was this camp that sisters of a brave hero attended and they said, what they got out of that camp was so good. Mom said, I just can't imagine not having this for my girls.

And we just thought, wow, we need to share that story with everybody. Jennifer, Haley, we appreciate you guys joining us here on the gifted life. Well, we're happy to be here. Thanks for asking us.

All right. So start us at the beginning, Jennifer. You are the director of Savannah Smiles. We know people will start doing searches and things.

So Savannah Smiles is what we're talking about today and focusing on. So Jennifer, take us back to how this got started. All right. Well, I am the director, but more importantly, I'm Savannah's mom and she left this earth on December 10th of 2006.

It was an accident. She was nine years old. Our family was not prepared for that. What family ever is and we didn't have a life insurance on our girls.

We have four daughters at the time. They were 12, nine, six and three and the final expenses for her were in the thousands. We had no idea. But our friends and family in our community, because the accident was so public, just poured into a bank account and this was now we're going on almost 12 years.

She's been in heaven. So this is before crowd bonding or go fund me or any of those online options. So you actually went to a bank and gave money. And our friends and family in the community poured into that account so much so that her final expenses were covered and then there was this money left over.

And if you think about that, we just were like, what do you do with this money? This is going to be because our child died. We don't take a vacation. You don't buy a car.

You can barely breathe. So we really did just say, guys, what do you want to do with this? I'm sorry, short, the benefits miles was born. And so what we do through the benefits miles because it was such a blessing to have her expenses paid and not have that burden.

We try to help families with those same expenses when tragedy strikes them. So Jennifer, this is something that we see quite often. Of course, we work with families of donors of all ages and we see that same thing, especially from any aspect, emotionally and as well as financially, they're not prepared. Most people don't have insurance, life insurance coverage for children.

And we would love to be able to offer this type of support. But unfortunately, we can't as well as other organizations, the other Lopez, so to speak, around the country, because it can seem like a conflict of interest for obvious reasons. So that's why we love when we hear about organizations such as Savannah Smiles and the work that you do. We see from a personal and professional aspect the impact that it has.

So Jennifer, I'd like to know when you're supporting families, what sort of resources do you have for them or provide to them? Initially, just the phone call. I usually talk to these all the families. We do have an office in Baton Rouge where one of our board members takes the calls in that area and that parish.

So initially, it's the phone call. I'm actually speaking to the greeting family myself and offering them hope because I am one because we are a grieving family and we have survived. I get to share with them that it is survivable and how we did. And for us, it was a great piece of reason we survived it.

It says a book that we did not write, but it was given to us after Savannah left. That was just really helpful. Called a one year book of hope. The author is Nancy Guthrie.

He could probably go to Amazon or a vision book distributor or something and find it. But we will send that book to a family. Depends on the conversation I've had with the family. Some are receptive to the resources.

Some are just so broken that you can't hardly speak. Another resource is a CD that actually is our story. And you can find it on our website. I will send the hard copy to the family, but anybody can go to the website and hear the whole recording.

But it's basically a study and I share our story through our own words and music that was written specifically for the project. That's a whole another story for another day, how that all came together. How are folks guided to you or how do you find the families? The funeral homes know about us, the hospital know about us.

And so we are on a resource list for those organizations. And I will say I don't ever feel like there's one business or hospital that abuses, you know, sends everybody our way. Usually social workers in the hospitals or the funeral directors in their family and they're listening to their story and realizing they don't have any options because sometimes the options are anonymous. Great.

The hospital will offer that there's just nothing else. And I can't imagine that. I can't imagine that. I can't imagine that.

I have no place where I get the flowers. So we just give the family the option of what they want to do and help them as best we can to fund it. That's great. So obviously we have very parallel missions and we have a lot of families that do come to us for help or a guidance or any resources and will certainly point them your direction.

What age range should we be looking at? We help from tiny babies still born to age 18. What about, you know, I've seen you guys around and I'm not the best social media person. So I apologize for that.

But so what kind of fundraisers do you guys do for because I'm always looking to do things like runs and you know, I like to do five Ks and different things. So what can I be looking for? Is there any option like that? We just had our golf tournament.

That's our big I heard all about that because some of our folks went that way and they said they help you that day. I'm going for a sedan. It's mine. I was okay with that.

It's a great day and you don't have to like golf. You just have to know how to eat. Well, that's exactly what we said. Yeah, I love the guys don't play golf well, but they can eat.

They're getting hard. So we talk about organ tissue, I don't nation. You guys help anyone who has lost right donor or not donor, but yet you're familiar with our mission, right? Yeah, it affected us.

And it was an organ donor. Wow. Okay. And that was back in 2006.

Savannah smiles was established. August of 2007. 2007. I'm on a mission.

I like that. Can we focus now on this camp that we heard so much about Haley? I'm going to bring you in if that's all right, Jen. Tell us the setup for this camp, the hope going into it.

I know it was the first year and then what you guys saw coming out of that first camp. The setup of the camp was along the can where we had the kids come in and we would do a lot of different things. We would explain the grief journey, so kind of understanding of what grief is in kid terms so that they can understand what it is with a few just kind of kids and use clinical terms. They're not going to know what you're saying.

So we broke it down and I was like, understand it. And then we would get them together in groups of two or three. We called them their buddy groups and asked them different questions about their grief and how they're handling it and different things like that and how their view of God is after grief. And then we would go out and play.

So the model of camp was really, let's feel these really hard feelings. And then, okay, we felt them. We were processing them. Let's go out and play and have fun and play them away.

Which is a really important model when someone's grieving. Do you feel your feelings? But then, okay, now I'm going to go do something fun. Jody and I stumbled upon a program called Griefshare and that is just a nationwide grief recovery.

13 week sessions at a time usually offered through some church and it was such a great model that I guess as we sat there and we actually led it because there was nothing here like that. So we've briefed the first time with the people there. We were only six months into losing her and we were leading this group but it was easy to lead because of how the curriculum was written. But I just remember thinking where is grief here for kids?

Where is something that can help my girls? Grief. So Jody and I feel like Grief's healthy, if that makes sense? And it trickled down into our girls because they all were grieving differently because of their ages and continued to.

I mean when Kayla got married, she had a bouquet for her sister and she had it at the sign and table. She wanted to represent her sister who would have been there but not make a day about her. And it was just very, very sweet. So the grief changes as they get older.

But going back to them being kids, they were very isolating at school. They were different. They didn't know what to say. They didn't say anything and that hurt.

And I don't know how to do that. Yeah, that's right. So there's another really great book by the same author. I'll just digress for a second.

It's called What Grieving People Wish You Knew About What Really Helped and What Really Hurts. Nancy Guthrie looked that one up too. Anyway, I just kept thinking where is something like this for kids. And kids love camp and I thought we could get into a camp setting and bring these principles to them but change them a little bit where they can understand it.

That's kind of the formula behind camp events. I like it. So what was the age range of participants on 2018? We started with 9 to 14.

I'd love to get into the teenagers. Kaylee and I have talked about in the future maybe doing two different camps where you've got younger kids and older kids. I don't know what that looks like because it all belongs to the Lord and he just kind of tells us what to do and then we do it. But this first one, 8 to 9 to 14 is what we focus on.

And so how, looking back, how do you think that went? You're proud that we started this and we have ways that we want to improve for the next one? Yeah, I think it was really great. Great thing.

My other daughter, she's 2018 now. Of course they were all there which was very sweet. But she said, Mom, if I didn't know me better, I would not think this was your first camp. I mean, that's how it moved.

It went. But I mean, a lot of that has to do with me. It's a fantastic job. Well, and I agree with you.

So the feedback that we got on our side was that it was a huge success and Mom shared that she was grieving in her own way. And really that was kind of clouding what she was able to see the sisters of this hero and how they were grieving. She just came out enlightened. She learned more information, how to talk to her daughters.

And so I just think that was incredible. And I said, man, how do you spell success? That sounds like that success right there. Well, Kaylee did a really good job of sending resources with the guardians when I don't know if they'd share that.

But if they dropped the kids off, we knew that would be a quiet weekend at home. And no distractions. And that's going to be sad. So she did a good job of finding resources that they could look at.

You want to talk about that? Yeah. So I felt it was really important to bridge the gap between what the kids were doing at camp and what Mom, Daddy, and are doing at home. And that they could sometimes be a disconnect.

Because they're just brought up a lot of grief and that weekend at Mom, Dad wouldn't have that same chance unless we gave them resources. So we sent them home with a therapist, with a book, we sent them home with the one you're about to fill and the CD for them and to listen to you. And then at the end of camp, we sent the campers home with a load of questions that Mom, Daddy, and could ask to help understand what happened at camp for kids. Again, that's really hard for the kids to express the sadness to the parents when the parents think, you don't want to make them upset again.

So opening that conversation for them and letting them know that it's okay to have this conversation in crucial, in the group process between parents and children. So Hayley, I'm sitting here and we heard Jennifer's talk and why she's so passionate and why she does what she does. And you sound like you're into this camp and you're going to make this work and I'm with these families. And so how did you get involved in this world?

I lost my dad when I was 14 years old and my mom really shut down after that and she was engulfed by the grief process. And so it ends up working with her late rocky time already and then if you had a grief to it and really losing both parents such as the whole and other world of men. So I remember thinking at 14, 15 years old that I wish there was a camp or there was some kind of something where I could talk to people like me who get it because my friends and school didn't get it, my teachers didn't understand. Like, it was incredibly isolating.

And then the Lord did a thing and through crazy circumstances, I ended up meeting Jennifer Wayne which led me to Savannah's Miles obviously and I went to college and I got my undergraduate degree in social work and grief really is a passion for me helping parents and children bridge this gap and walk through the grief process and healthy manner. It's important to me because I didn't get a walk through it and a healthy manner and I just gave a destruction of that left. Well, I could hear it Miss Haley. So I'm glad that we asked you that question ma'am.

Let's talk about Savannah's Miles successes. Jen, if you had to go back just two or three things that you're like, I'm so glad we walked in this direction. That's a good question. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that.

Well, I guess the biggest thing is the over 1000 families we've helped since 2007. And starting with $7,000 and we've given over $800,000 in these years. I mean, it's amazing. I'm just a mama.

That's great. That's wonderful. I do not see myself as the director of our quarter of a million dollar budget. I found it's amazing to me.

But I've never been God. Oh my goodness. So this is a Savannah's Miles and the privilege of talking to families all the time and sharing with them that they can survive. Because boy, do you need to hear that.

And I'm excited about camp. I don't know where it's gonna go. You know, we were driving home from camp and I'm the visionary of my husband and myself. He's a realist and he pulled me back down out of the clouds and said, okay, let's figure this out.

And I said, babe, I've got a vision. You want to hear it? I mean, this is on the way home from camp. Like we slept on bunk beds for three nights, right?

And we're exhausted. He's like, yeah, go ahead. And I said, I see maybe camp going nationwide. What if we've got friends all over the country that have been ministers, you know, because men just move all over the place?

Oh, yeah. What if we partner with other churches in the same way, grief here is all over the nation. And we bring camp to other places because clearly, as you said, you know, there's a need. What if we do that?

And he was like, you want to sleep on bunk beds all the time? No, no, no, I don't have a keeper. I like that. I like it.

Big dreams. Reach for those stars. Oh, my goodness. You've got one life.

We've got one life and God gives us the purpose. And sometimes the story he writes for us is difficult, but we have a choice. What are we going to do with it? On this podcast, we talk about one person making a difference.

I was just adding your name to that list of folks that we have talked to one person making a difference for so many. So we thank you for what you do. We thank you for walking in this direction, for bringing in folks like Haley to make a difference in so many people's lives. So obviously I think a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast and they're going to want to turn to you guys and learn more.

Would you send them? I would send them to our website. A lot of resources there. A lot of people ask us, what can we do?

How can we help? And it sounds simple to say, donations because what I do as far as talking to the families, not a lot of people can do that. And as a family that has lost, I know how important it was for me to hear from somebody on my road. Not that others can't comfort.

But boy, I just wanted to hear, I needed to know, I was going to survive. I need to know you, know how to feel. And I'm going to be okay. So it's not like I can have a bunch of people answer the phone.

It really is. As long as there are resources and we have money to work with and we can keep doing what we're doing. But I'm going to deal. And if you want to be on the map, keep going.

Then you can provide for it. And if that ever stops and we stop. I think you're going to keep going. I think we need you.

Is that site? Savannah-Smiles.org? That's the one. Savannah-Smiles.org.

We appreciate you, Jen. We appreciate you. Hey, Lee. Keep up the good work, guys.

Thank you. Here on the Gifted Life we're all about learning more information to make it through each day. We are so glad that we have Sally on our team. We always learn from her each and every episode as well as our guests today.

We're focusing on setbacks, right? Yes. We are very young. We are very young.

I think she's an expert. I agree. We got a lot of letters. She's got a lot of letters behind her name.

So we'll call her next. What you got for us today, Sally? Today we are going to talk about setbacks. And what I'm talking about are things like death.

Natural disasters, job loss, home loss, just to name a few that can really put us into a downward spiral. And it doesn't matter how big or small the setback can be. We still, at times, can end up feeling really defeated. This doesn't have to be the outcome for you to stay stuck in a never-ending cycle of being negative when you do have a setback, but sometimes struggling with these negative feelings can be really tense and sometimes we question, you know, what is our purpose?

What are we doing that's causing this sort of thing? And you can go through life's challenging moments and then realize, okay, this is not what I planned. This is not the way that I thought my life was going to go. But you know, you can take a step back.

You can learn from the experience and realize, okay, that wasn't the most pleasant thing that I've gone through, but I have learned better how to handle myself and those around me when I have experienced some type of serious loss. And I know it's okay to feel sorry for myself and have self-bout. I know I've gone through that on many occasions. I'm sure most everyone has.

But you know, that's all part of the human condition. We typically own our self-pity. So it's really up to us to just own it too. I know sometimes it's easy to blame other people for how we feel.

But the bottom line is we are responsible for our own feelings. And sometimes, you know, I'd like to say, well, it must be Lori or it must be Joey or maybe it's Kirsten or maybe it's Troy. But you know what, that really doesn't work because you know it doesn't make us feel any better. We're still feeling sorry for ourselves.

So we've got to say, all right, I need permission just to take a step back and say, you know, sometimes life just sucks, right? No matter what. And so, you know, to ease these negative feelings, it's really up to each and every one of us to remember to be kind to ourselves, realize there are others who depend upon us and concerned about our well-being. And to move in a more positive outlook, make a list of things.

What are you grateful for? And I don't want to hear anyone say, well, I have nothing to be grateful for because that absolutely is not true. No matter how small it may be, there's always something to be grateful for. And that's including all the wonderful moments with that loved one that you miss.

And so think of as many things that you possibly can, big and small, and give me once again, something very, very minute but important to you. And then finally, focus on others and find ways to help others. You'll be surprised to find how well this can work. I mean, I know when there's times that I'm really feeling sorry for me.

I'll reach out and I'll find out someone needs some additional help. When I do that, it not only helps them, but boy, it sure helps my state of mind. So I think it's a good thing to do. I think you were talking to me because I think just this week I said, oh, and it rains, it pours.

I said something in Cajun too, Cajun country. I don't know. All right. I like that, Sal.

Maybe there's a topic you want Sally to cover, info at the Gifted Life.org. We'd love to hear from you. On every episode of the Gifted Life, we honor a hero, today's hero, Nicholas Lewis. And today we're talking about Nicholas and the quilt square that his family designed in honor of him.

Yeah. I'm not sure if Nicholas is going to be the best Nicholas from those closest to him we left behind. The central butterfly of fabric is for Ashley, his girlfriend. The other four fabric strips are for his three brothers and sister, him, David, Jacob, and Emily.

The buttons represent his parents, Lisa and Jack. The fish represents his anti-ann. You can identify any fish and was the best scuba dive buddy. The red button represents how much we love him.

The cross stitch strip comes from one of his baby outfits. We are happy to have been able to share the gift of life through Lopa, but our loss of Nicholas still leaves us with an overwhelming sadness. We keep his love in our hearts and pray that someday we'll hug him again. May he rest in God's peace.

And thanks for sharing Nicholas's story with us. That was a beautiful explanation of everything that went into building that quilt square in honor of Nicholas. If you want to see that quilt square, maybe you want to learn how to submit your own quilt square in honor of your loved one, visit lopa.org slash quilts. And now we pause to say thank you to Nicholas for the gift of life.

And our question and answer segment. Lori, this one is for you. Don't do that. Okay.

Listening. Alright. The question is, can I register my child to be an organ, I, and tissue donor? Okay.

I'm ready to talk to you today. Thanks Lori. Yeah. And please remember, if you have another question or something you really would like to know, you can give us a call at 504648347 or email us at info at the gift of life org.

All right, guys, episode 98, powerful episode. We loved all that we learned. Yeah, it was so interesting and wonderful learning about Savannah Smiles and all what they provide for families. And what is just wonderful for me to hear is that both Jennifer and Haley have so much compassion and dedication to helping support families after that have experienced a loss and it's great, great news to hear.

Yeah, another resource. Add that to your toolbox, guys. So if you're not registered to be a donor and this episode inspired you to register, register me.org as a national registry, and we do hope that you go out today and do something you would normally do to help us make life happen. Thanks for listening.

This is a production of Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency or LOPA. They get to life as hosted by Lori Steele, Joey Buudro, and Sally Gentry. Our executive producer is Kirsten Hines, producer Ishelon Caraway, and we are recorded, engineered and mixed in our Covington, Louisiana studio by Troy Perez.