Russell Friedman & John W. James
Co-authors of: The Grief Recovery Handbook and When Children Grieve
www.griefrecoverymethod.com
The key to recovery from significant emotional loss is to express feelings in the moment you have them. Children are naturally superb at communicating what they feel when they feel it. The Rainbow Reach Series of books presents perfect guidelines for children to help them discover what they need and want to communicate about life-affecting events, in pictures and words. We heartily endorse these books – and heart is the most important element.

Sylvia E. J. Kidd
Director of Family Programs
Association of the US Army (AUSA)
Just like their soldier dads and moms, many military children are experiencing an extraordinary number of deployments resulting in disruptions in their home routines and stress. They often feel they must take on additional family responsibilities in the absence of their deployed parent and can become overwhelmed.

AUSA Family Programs is continually searching for beneficial resources to offer military parents to help them address these challenges. I highly recommend Susan Weaver’s Rainbow Reach Series of books for younger children. These insightful workbooks will address not only sensitive issues such as worry and the deployment of a parent but also the loss of a loved one or even a family pet. Using both pictures and words, they offer a means for a child to be able to communicate his/her emotions and thoughts about life affecting events.

Laura Hufford, School Counselor
South Vienna Elementary School
I just received the Heroes! Rainbow Reach Series workbook. It is GREAT! I am a school counselor in a rural district and currently have 2 sisters (Kindergarten and 3rd Grade) whose father is in Afghanistan. This will be perfect!

Lynn J. Piper, Ph.D., LCP
Animal Assisted and Trauma Therapist
As a licensed clinical psychologist, with several years of experience helping children with the issues contained in the Rainbow Reach Series, I would utilize the books in a child’s therapy to help them learn how to express difficult thoughts and feelings. The books are colorful, engaging, and easy to use, and the activities will help children address the impact of life events in healthy ways.

Mary W. Lindahl, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Marymount University
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Children heal best when they are engaged in activities that help them express and resolve difficult feelings. The Rainbow Reach Series provides such activities in a creative, interesting workbook format that will help children move beyond grief and anxiety.

Nancy S. Price, LCSW
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
I particularly like the Worry Busters! activity that helps children decide how big their worry is and how to make their worry smaller.

Linda Goldman, Grief Therapist and Educator
Author of: Life and Loss, Children Also Grieve, and Raising Our Children to Be Resilient
Susan Weaver has created the Rainbow Reach Series as a comprehensive tool for children to express thoughts and feelings involving death and loss. From pet loss, to worry, deployment and death, these interactive workbooks create the safe space for expression so needed for our bereaved girls and boys. Parents and professionals will assuredly benefit from using these resources to develop communication and sharing, and normalize a child’s grief journey. The Rainbow Reach Series is a valuable tool for young people and adults to use in recognizing the multifaceted aspects of grieving, and for supporting outlooks for recovery and resilience that can be useful throughout a lifetime.

Andrew Voell, DVM
Pender Veterinary Centre
Fairfax, VA
Over the years as a veterinarian, I have been asked how to help children work through the loss of a family pet. In the small world of a child, a family pet occupies more of that world than we adults may understand. This book provides a tool to help our children work through what they may be feeling in the loss of a pet they cherished. The “doing” activity focus of the book provides a tactile venue to help spark heart to heart communication, which is essential in the healing process.

Mary Beth Williams, Ph.D., LCSW
Trauma Recovery and Education Counseling Center
In an age of communication by social media networks, Twitter, Facebook, and other non-physically connected devices, it is refreshing to find a means to help children deal with the pain of loss, parental deployment, worry and anxiety that is non-electronic and allows for multimedia expression of feelings in an interactive format. The use of drawings and activities illustrate more complex concepts such as projection, desensitization, grief, mourning, and guilt. For many children, the loss of a pet through death is the first encounter with the ending of a life. Yet many adults underestimate the feelings of loss. The Forever Friend activity book is an excellent tool to help children work through the stages of loss including remembering, ritual, and moving on. The Heroes! activity book is an excellent tool for children whose parent or parents are being deployed in dangerous, life-threatening war zones. Without dwelling on the negative impacts of deployment, this workbook approaches deployment from the positive of what the hero parent is doing to help our country and how those children can preserve a long-distance relationship.

Lois Hall, MS
Grief Recovery Specialist Trainer, The Grief Recovery Institute
LOVE the books! Every church should keep a couple copies of the Rainbow Reach Series for the leaders of children’s and middle school youth efforts!

Fran Zamore, MSW, ACSW
Author of: GriefWork – Healing from Loss and
The GriefWork Companion – Activities for Healing
Bereavement Coordinator, Holy Cross Hospice – Silver Spring, MD
Private Practice
The Rainbow Reach Series is wonderful! I love the way that a child’s creativity is utilized in identifying emotions and focusing on blessings. The books offer excellent yet simple text and drive the lessons of optimism, acceptance of feelings and resilience home in truly age-appropriate ways. Bravo!