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“I pictured an old house with a fireplace, a pot of tea and candles; a place where I could come with my children for comfort and friendship, where our laughter and tears would be equally welcome and shared.”
Our History
In 1989, Kath McCormack’s husband Rick Deggelman died suddenly at the age of 33. Her children, Ricky and Barbara, were 3 and 5 at the time. They lived in the Bay Area, where the family attended support groups at The Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon. Kath felt that those groups saved her life.
When the family moved to Seattle two years later, Kath searched for a new place where she could connect with other young widows; a place that her family could return to again and again as they learned how to navigate their new life. But much to her disappointment, she couldn’t find the support she craved. Luckily, along the way she met three other people who had been widowed young; Joel Junker, Katie Evans, and Barbara Hendricks. Together, they created their own support groups, then known as Widowed Young Persons Support.
In September of 2000, The Healing Center became a non-profit organization with 501 (c)(3) status. For five years, The Healing Center offered young-widow and children’s support groups in Kath’s apartment, church basements, and other borrowed spaces. Finally, in December of 2005, The Healing Center was able to rent its first official location, a charming, rustic home in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle, pictured above.
Since then, The Healing Center has grown exponentially. We’ve expanded our programming to serve more types of grief experiences, most notably support for young adults and seniors, and have expanded our capacity tenfold to serve more than 400 clients each year. While we’ve outgrown our first home in Ravenna, we’ve stayed true to Kath’s original vision: to build a community of grieving people that provides on-going support through open, authentic conversations about grief.