Stress Test

I like to text… and I much prefer it to talking on the phone for several reasons.

• I can respond at a more convenient time… 🕰️

• I can discreetly send romantic texts to my husband… ❤️

• I can answer a pressing question without pausing our movie… 🎥

However, not being able to hear voice inflections or which words are stressed can completely change a text's meaning. 🫣

Try this experiment…

It seems wise to give the texter the benefit of the doubt and presume the most gracious inflection and meaning… at least until proven otherwise. 😇

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A Seat at the Table

In May 2021, a high school graduation photo from Muskogee, Oklahoma, began circulating online. Madison Moore stood in the middle, wearing her cap and gown, with Pryce Jackson and Kyran English on either side. Her father explained the photo in one sentence: “These 2 fine young men have watched out and have been friends with my daughter since kindergarten.”

See the Photo & Full Story Here

The internet did the math. Kindergarten to graduation is thirteen years.

Madison has Down syndrome, and beginning in kindergarten, she was included in general-education classrooms, a step her mother had advocated for. Being in a classroom is one thing. Feeling like she belongs there is another. Over the years, Pryce and Kyran made sure Madison had a seat at lunch, a friend to walk with her in the hallway, and a hand to hold on field trips whenever she wanted one.

What did thirteen years of showing up look like? Wonderfully ordinary.

Kyran remembered that Madison would often ask him, Pryce, or both of them to walk or sit with her. “And it was never a burden to us at all,” he said. Pryce described their role as a kind of big-brother role: looking out for Madison, making sure she was okay, and, in his words, “being that person our parents raised us to be.”

Pryce and Kyran did not wake up one morning in high school and decide to become exceptionally kind young men. They had been learning, little by little, what friendship looks like. Notice someone. Make room. Sit down. Walk together. Stay. By the time graduation came, those choices were simply part of who they were.

Madison’s mother said the boys did not see her daughter as “a kid with Down syndrome.” They saw their friend. She described their friendship as second nature… just kids who loved one another.

The support wasn’t one-sided, either. Kyran remembered a day in third grade when a bad grade left him feeling low… It was Madison who consoled him. She wasn’t simply the friend being looked after. She was a friend who knew how to show up, too.

A seat at the table. A friend in the hallway. Lunch together. The normal things.

…and that is exactly what the Heartside Framework means by Do the normal things. It really is that simple.

We can raise a generation that notices when someone needs them… that knows how to make room for someone on an ordinary Tuesday… and that keeps making room until kindergarten somehow turns into graduation.

Source: Genovese, D. (2021, May 30). “Oklahoma teens praised for friendship with student with Down syndrome, as graduation photo goes viral.” Fox News. The graduation photograph, credited to Sheila Chambers, appears with the Fox report.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/oklahoma-students-teen-down-syndrome

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“Died” Is a Kind Word

Picture a kindergartner in an itchy funeral dress. All morning, the adults have been saying strange sentences. We lost your grandpa. He passed away. He’s in a better place. She is five, so she is doing five-year-old math…

• Lost things get found.

• People who pass by come back our way.

• If the place is better, when will we go visit Grandpa?

No one is a bad guy. Nobody in that room was trying to confuse her.

We often reach for the soft words because we love our children, and the hard word feels like one more blow. Softening how we describe death is a kindness instinct… aimed, this time, at the wrong target.

The Heartside Framework takes a stand here:

Action One of the Heartside Five states: Say the true thing. At its core is the claim that gives this feature its name: “Use honest words… even the hard ones. ‘Died’ is a kind word when it is said kindly.”

The experts who spend every day with grieving children agree. Dougy Center*, the National Grief Center for Children & Families, teaches helpers to “use concrete words such as ‘died’” rather than “vague terms like ‘passed away.’” Their reason is not stylistic. Young children are concrete thinkers. In Dougy Center’s own example, a young child who hears “Dad passed away” or “I lost my husband” may quietly expect that his father will return… or simply needs to be found.

Euphemisms do not soften the death. They fog it. The child eventually learns what happened… but along the way, they also learn that some of the people they trust speak in riddles about some of life's biggest things. Honest words do the opposite. They make the enormous thing nameable, and naming a hard thing measurably calms the mind’s alarm rather than feeding it.** Best of all, the honest speaker gets marked in the child’s ledger as someone who can be asked anything and trusted with hard feelings.

When using true words, kindness is required in the delivery. “Died,” said gently, up close, with a hand on a small shoulder, is a world kinder than any euphemism offered from across the room. The word does the honesty. The voice does the love.

In practice it is mercifully simple. When the question comes, answer it straight and small: “Grandpa died. That means his body stopped working, and it can’t be fixed.” It’s okay if your voice shakes. It’s okay if you tear up.

A word about Dougy Center, because this feature leans on their wisdom. From their home in Portland, they support grieving children, teens, and families, and they train helpers worldwide. Their free resources belong on every guide’s shelf. They also provide various training classes. I’ve taken their “Becoming Grief Informed” training myself, and I plan to take more. I support their mission wholeheartedly. Find them at dougy.org.

Somewhere ahead of you, a child is holding a hard question. You now know the kind answer is the true one.

Notes

* Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families, “How to Help a Child Who is Grieving.” Dougy Resource Page

** Naming an emotion measurably quiets the brain’s alarm systems: Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17576282/

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Do the Normal Things

Consistently Ordinary

When someone we love is hurting, we tend to reach for something big. Flowers. The giant card the whole class signs. The perfectly worded message we rewrite eleven times… then send at midnight.

Or we do the opposite. We back away and give them space… respectfully, quietly, and from a distance.

Two instincts. Both rooted in kindness. Both can leave a hurting friend feeling strangely alone. If you have ever hovered near someone’s hard season, holding a casserole with no idea what to say, you know the two instincts can visit in the same afternoon.

Here is a third way… and it is almost embarrassingly small:

When something sad happens to a person, much of the familiar world can suddenly feel different. Ordinary things like the same seat, the same game, or the same walk home can become small anchors. They don't fix anything… they aren't trying to. They simply keep a little piece of the world recognizable while the hard part is hard. Research with children grieving the death of a parent has found that stability, positive relationships, and familiar routines can matter after a loss.* The ordinary parts of life can offer welcome steadiness when so much else has changed.

Try this: Ask a young person about a friend they care about. “What are the little, normal things you two share?” You’ll likely get a happy list… the game, the show, the snack trade, and the joke no one else finds funny.

Then discuss: If something sad happened to your friend, what might happen to all those normal things? Often, they stop. Everyone tiptoes, everyone pretends, or everyone starts looking for the big gesture. Go back to their list and ask…

“Which of those little things could you keep going anyway?”

There is no single right answer; that’s part of the beauty. The saved seat. The Tuesday game. The walk that still leaves on schedule. The answer only has to be small enough to happen… and steady enough to happen again.

It lands, like so much at the Heartside, on the Heartside Promise: “I don’t need to fix the sad. I just need to show up.”

Showing up, it turns out, often looks wonderfully unremarkable.

You might experience a side effect of this exchange...

You may start noticing the normal things in your own friendships differently. The coffee. The walk. The running joke. The Tuesday phone call. Ordinary things can look a little less ordinary once you realize what they can mean.

* Haine, R. A., Ayers, T. S., Sandler, I. N., & Wolchik, S. A. (2008). “Evidence-Based Practices for Parentally Bereaved Children and Their Families.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 39(2), 113–121. The review discusses empirically supported protective factors and intervention practices for parentally bereaved children, including stable positive family experiences, supportive relationships, and efforts to restore consistency and structure. Open access: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2888143/ DOI: 10.1037/0735-7028.39.2.113.

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Grief Doesn’t Do Stages

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. You can probably recite them... nearly everyone can. For more than fifty years, classrooms have taught the five stages of grief, hospitals and counseling offices have discussed them, and the internet has shared them. They have become one of the best-known ideas about grief.

In 2017, three established bereavement researchers published a review posing a simple question:

After five decades, does the evidence support the five stages of grief?

The answer was “No.”

Overall, the review concludes that grief is not stage-like, orderly, or predictable. It is fluid, overlapping, and different from person to person.

But the paper goes further than saying the stages do not fit the evidence:

Some of that harm can come from well-intentioned helpers.

When we refer to a grief-stage map, we may start coaching people through it... nudging a friend toward “acceptance,” worrying when the anger never comes, or quietly wondering whether the grief in front of us is unfolding in the right order. The review warns that a mistaken belief in stages can leave bereaved people feeling as though they are not coping correctly… while shaping unhelpful responses from friends, family, and professionals. Supporters’ attention shifts toward where someone “should” be instead of the person actually in front of us.

A wrong map does not just mislead the traveler. It misleads everyone walking beside her.

This is why the Heartside Framework teaches actions, not stages. A Heartside Hero is never asked to figure out where a friend “is” in grief or to steer them toward the next stop. Heroes are taught what they can do in the moment in front of them:

• Say the true thing.

• Put the ball down.

• Sit beside them.

• Do the normal things.

• Remember out loud.

The review also revealed some encouraging news. The researchers found that (instead of going through predictable stages) most bereaved people adjust to loss in their own way, drawing on their own resources and the informal support of family, friends, and community.

Those support people are exactly the ones Heartside exists to equip.

For now, the takeaway is simpler:

Let go of the map. Pay attention to the friend.

Source: Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Boerner, K. (2017). “Cautioning Health-Care Professionals: Bereaved Persons Are Misguided Through the Stages of Grief.” OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 74(4), 455–473. Open access. DOI: 10.1177/0030222817691870.

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She Saved My Life

When singer-songwriter Andy Grammer was 25, his mother died. His godmother, Leigh (his mother’s best friend), stepped into the enormous void left by her death and stayed.

Grammer said it plainly in an interview, saying she “really showed up for me to all the big and small life things.” Notice what he doesn’t claim. Nobody fixed his pain. Nobody made his mother’s death okay. No one could. What Leigh offered was presence, again and again. She was at the funerals, the birthdays, and the ordinary Tuesdays… for years.

More than a decade later, the world learned what that presence had been worth. In 2022, Grammer released “Saved My Life,” a soaring collaboration with producer R3HAB. The song’s chorus was aimed directly at Leigh: “I think you should know you saved my life.”

The official video widens the circle. Grammer invited fans to honor the people who showed up in their lives… teachers, parents, friends, and even strangers. The result is a parade of gratitude for heroes who never knew how much they mattered.

The Heartside Promise says:

You don’t need to fix the sad. You just need to show up.

“Saved My Life” is the view from the other side of that promise… from the perspective of the person who was hurting. Years later—long after the casseroles were gone and the sympathy cards had stopped. What did he remember? Not a speech. Not a fix. Someone who showed up. Someone who stayed.

None of what Leigh did was an accident. Showing up “to all the big and small life things” for years is not something a person stumbles into. It’s a decision… a decision made early and renewed on ordinary days. It’s exactly the kind of decision the Heartside Framework exists to prepare young hearts to make.

What Leigh could not see was the total impact… what all that ordinary presence was quietly adding up to.

That may be the most encouraging math in the whole song. The showing up is intentional. The saving is often invisible… sometimes for a decade, sometimes forever.

The world is full of hurting people. Show up. Teach others to show up. Show up for the big things. Show up for the small ones. You may never learn what that presence was worth. Leigh went more than a decade without knowing. Heroes show up anyway.

Sources:

Andy Grammer, quoted in “Andy Grammer Collaborates with R3HAB for Heartfelt New Single ‘Saved My Life,’” S-Curve Records, May 6, 2022. https://s-curverecords.com/andy-grammer-collaborates-with-r3hab-for-heartfelt-new-single-saved-my-life/

Andy Grammer and R3HAB, “Saved My Life,” Giant Soul/S-Curve/Hollywood Records, 2022. [official video link]

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Mission > Conflict

Many thanks to and for your encouragement and support of the Heartside Project’s mission!

You’re right, Ryan… the kids are watching us and noticing how we interact with others. That’s an excellent point.

…and Sherry, neither article that I disagreed with was yours. But even if it was, I have no doubt that we could work well together supporting the Heartside mission. People don’t have to agree about everything to work together and make a difference!

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends.

See you next time… We’ll save you a seat.

Jepper Lynn

In 2017, three established bereavement researchers gathered fifty years of evidence and asked the hard question: Do bereaved people really go through these stages? Their answer matters for anyone who teaches, coaches, or stands beside a hurting person… because what we expect grief to look like shapes how we treat the people going through it.

This exploration walks through the whole review in plain language:

• Where the five stages came from… and who they were first written about.

• The objections that began almost as soon as the model did… and how Kübler-Ross herself responded to them.

• Five problems, sorted and explained: what the stages leave unexplained, what they muddle together, and what the evidence never showed.

• What long-term studies found instead… including the surprising share of bereaved people who remain steady from the start.

• The famous 2007 study that claimed to confirm the stages… and the challenge that followed.

• Why an unsupported model refuses to die: the deeply human appeal of a map.

• The researchers’ practical guidance and advice… what helpers and professionals should do instead of watching for stages.

We show how well The Heartside Project aligns with the researchers’ conclusions and advice… and where we extrapolate beyond them. By the end, you’ll know the whole story of the five stages of grief… where they came from, why they stuck, and why we teach actions instead.

The full exploration is below, print-safe and ready for your reading chair.

After our launch period, the Research… Explored section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the PDFs themselves.)

→ The Research: Cautioning Health-Care Professionals: Bereaved Persons Are Misguided Through the Stages of Grief (PDF)

Cautioning Health Care Professionals Bereaved Persons Are Misguided Through The Stages Of Grief

165KB ∙ PDF file

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→ The Research Explored: The Trouble With Stages (PDF) :

The Trouble With Stages Research Explored Heartside Magazine

196KB ∙ PDF file

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Have you been taught the five stages of grief? Do they fit with what you’ve seen in the lives of you and your friends? Do you think our understanding of the stages changes how we should show up for grieving friends?

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Leave a comment

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

Here’s what’s inside:

Framework Focus: Action Four of the Heartside Five… Do the normal things.

The Big Idea: After a loss, the ordinary world can feel closed. Small, steady invitations, offered with room to say no (and offered again tomorrow) beat grand gestures every time.

Heartside Heroes Will...

• Name the two common mistakes: treating a friend like glass, and pretending nothing happened.

• Map a friend’s normal things on an anchor map.

• Practice an ordinary invitation that leaves room for no.

SEL Standards (CASEL):

• Social Awareness

• Relationship Skills

• Responsible Decision-Making

• Self-Management.

Every Heartside Lesson Plan runs in a 20-minute core, shrinks to 10 minutes for those in a time crunch, and grows with extenders... with adaptations for Grades 1–12 and versions for whole-class, large-group, small-group, and one-on-one.

Downloadable Resource List

• Heartside Lesson 4: Do the Normal Things · The complete lesson plan

• Anchor Map Worksheet · Hands-on activity

• Invitation Cards · Fill-in cards for today’s and the future

• Doors We Keep Open Poster · A fill-in door for your Heartside wall

• Lesson 4 Family Note · Ready to copy and send home

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster · The map for every lesson, on one hand

New to the Heartside Framework?

Start with the Foundation Lesson: Becoming a Heartside Hero

After our launch period, the Heartside Lesson Plans section and downloads will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. Feel free to use this lesson with the young people in your life. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the lessons themselves.)

Everything you need is right here, ready to print:

• Heartside Lesson 4: Do the Normal Things (PDF)

  

  Heartside Lesson 4 Do The Normal Things

  273KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Anchor Map Worksheet (PDF)

  

  Heartside Anchor Map Worksheet

  438KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Invitation Cards (PDF)

  

  Heartside Invitation Cards

  369KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Doors We Keep Open Poster (PDF)

  

  Heartside Doors We Keep Open Poster

  191KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Lesson 4 Family Note (PDF)

  

  Heartside Lesson 4 Family Note

  448KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster (PDF)

Heartside Framework Hand Poster

4.04MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Let me know which ages and adaptations you choose—and how it goes. I am always open to constructive feedback… from pointing out typos and misspellings (I promise that I try to scan for those…) to suggestions for the adaptations and activities. We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all.

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

Birthday Bash Blur

Today, I’m enjoying the Labor Day holiday by recovering from a wonderfully chaotic weekend of grandson birthday gatherings.

On Saturday, my oldest son’s youngest four held a joint “Mega Birthday Bash” with backyard swimming and front yard inflatables. The birthday boys are turning (or have recently turned) 12, 10, 9, and 4.

Then on Sunday, we celebrated my #2 son’s oldest sons’ 10th and 8th birthdays. We drove a bit over three hours each way to the Nashville area for a gymnastics party (and an afterparty of swimming and socializing). We returned home (and to the Eastern Time Zone) in the wee hours of the morning.

I love my big, crazy family!

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First Day Photo

Every August, the same picture is taken on porches and front steps across the country: a new backpack, new shoes, a kid squinting into the morning sun. In Manila, Arkansas, the Curtwright family had been taking that picture for years. It started with Brady, and when his little sister, Nora, was old enough, she joined him. Big brother, little sister, side by side. Nora even got a backpack to match his.

Last December, Brady died after a car accident.

He was fourteen. Nora was nine.

As another school year approached, their mom, Ashley, asked Nora if she was ready to go back. Nora said no. It wasn’t the new teacher or the new classroom that worried her…

There are parts of grief that arrive when everyone expects them. Then there are the ones hiding in perfectly ordinary places: birthdays, ballgames, holidays, and first-day-of-school pictures. Ashley told Nora they would figure it out. She then asked Gabe Gonzales, Brady’s best friend since seventh grade, to take the picture with her. Gabe agreed, but he also had a bigger idea. He texted their group chat: “Who’s down to take a picture?”

They were all down.

On the first day of school, Nora carried a picture of Brady. As she and her mom walked through the doors toward her new middle school, twelve of Brady’s friends were waiting. The picture was taken, not because twelve boys could replace one brother. They couldn’t. Ashley knows that better than anyone. She told KAIT that the boys would never fill the void Brady left, but that they had become family because of how much they loved him. They did something else instead: They showed up.

That matters… because the hardest days of grief aren’t confined to the first few weeks. They are scattered across the calendar: a first day, a birthday, the opening game, an old tradition that suddenly feels very different. Showing up for a grieving friend often means remembering those days, too.

A few weeks later, Nora told People what she thought when she saw the boys waiting for her: “When I saw them, I knew I was going to have a good day.” More than that, their presence told her something bigger. If she needed them, she knew they would be there. She expects them back for next year’s picture, too. “They are always there,” she said.

Nora asked who was going to be there. Twelve boys answered.

KAIT Region 8 News, "Brady's friends show up for his little sister's first day of school," Alejandra Hernández, August 12, 2026. PEOPLE, "After Big Brother's Death, 9-Year-Old Girl Worried Their First-Day-of-School Ritual Was Ruined. Then His Friends Showed Up," Brian Brant, September 1, 2026. Video: KAIT Region 8 News, via YouTube.

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The Hands Remember

Quick test: Try to say the words to “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” without moving your hands.

Go ahead. We’ll wait. 🕷️

If your fingers started climbing the waterspout on their own, you’ve just encountered the oldest teaching trick in the world. Nobody drilled you on that song. You did it… and decades later, the words and motions are still filed together, hands first. Bodies keep things in a deeper drawer than words can reach. The Heartside Framework is designed to be filed in that drawer.

We teach our Heartside Framework on the hand. When a class or a family learns the framework, they don’t just hear it… they do it:

• The Heartside Promise is said with an open palm, where it lives: “I don’t need to fix the sad. I just need to show up.”

• Then the Heartside Five are counted on the fingers: pointer for Say the true thing, add the middle finger for Put the ball down, and so on until Remember out loud opens the whole hand. (Always the running count, never one finger at a time… finger number two, flying solo in a fourth-grade classroom, teaches a lesson nobody planned.)

• The Backup Rule gets a high five because calling for backup should feel like a win… and the high five symbolizes the helping hand of a trusted adult.

• The ritual always ends where the framework begins… hand over heart, the Heartside Promise one more time. Children have watched adults make hand-on-heart pledges their whole lives. They know exactly what it means.

Leading it takes no talent and ten seconds. Model it slowly once. Then do it together… same order, same words, at the start and end of every lesson, until their hands run it before their mouths catch up.

Memory researchers call it the enactment effect: People remember what they physically do far better than what they only hear or read.*

As a former (…but always in my heart) math teacher, I especially appreciate this study:

Fair is fair: None of this research studied grief. It studied learning… but the information still applies. Hands don’t ask what the learning is for.

We’re not teaching math (sad, I know). But someday a Heartside Hero’s friend will be crying, and that Hero’s mind will go blank. Minds do that—but hands don’t forget as easily. That Hero’s hands will know a reassuring promise, five actions to try, and where to reach for backup.

*Madan, C. R., & Singhal, A. (2012). Using actions to enhance memory: Effects of enactment, gestures, and exercise on human memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 507. Open access: doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00507

**Research notes: Cook, S. W., Mitchell, Z., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2008). Gesturing makes learning last. Cognition, 106(2), 1047–1058. Free full text: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2265003

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Sit Beside Them

Quiet Comfort

Every adult knows the moment. A friend is sad. We’ve said everything we can think of. The conversation runs out of road… the quiet arrives.

In a very short time, silence can feel oddly loud. Ten seconds of it… and it feels as if the whole room is staring at you. Researchers have measured it: In one experiment, a four-second pause in a conversation was enough to stir unease.*

So we often choose the easiest escape from the discomfort… suddenly remembering somewhere we need to be. We leave the friend alone in their sadness. We’re not being unkind. It’s just… the silence feels like proof that we are failing. No words left must mean no help left, right? Wrong.

Children will naturally do the same thing. Picture this playground scene: A sad kid on the bench, a friend who hovers, runs out of things to say… then drifts back to the swings. The adult version looks different (we don’t spend much time on playground benches), but it follows a similar pattern in hospital hallways, funeral lobbies, and with the casserole left on the porch without knocking. We care. But nobody ever taught us what to do when the words run out.

Here is an idea worth trying with the young people in your life. Talk about the two kinds of quiet:

Somewhere in that conversation, a young person discovers something many adults never did: You don’t need to fill the quiet. You just need to stay in it. Nothing gets fixed. The sadness doesn’t magically go away. The sad friend simply stops being alone in their sadness… and that makes a BIG difference.**

That brings us back to the Heartside Promise: You don’t need to fix the sad. You just need to show up.

Sometimes showing up simply means not leaving.

*Even a four-second silence dropped into a conversation lowered feelings of belonging and raised feelings of rejection, below conscious notice: Koudenburg, N., Postmes, T., & Gordijn, E. H. (2011). Disrupting the flow: How brief silences in group conversations affect social needs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(2), 512–515.

**The simple nearness of someone who cares measurably calms the brain’s threat response: Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1032–1039.

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Hero Is a Hard Job

Somewhere in Denmark, a teenager’s phone rang. It was her best friend, crying so hard she could barely be heard: “My father died tonight.”

What that girl did next was the beginning of a long, difficult journey.

Researchers at Aarhus University interviewed ten young women who, as teenagers, supported a best friend after a parent died. Not the grieving children… the friends who showed up and stood beside them. All ten stayed. All ten struggled.

• They didn’t know what to say… nobody had taught them.

• They tried to fix things by cheering their friends up… and failed.

• They feared the wrong word would restart the grief… so they stayed silent.

• They hid their own troubles… staying strong at funerals, then crying in private.

They gave and gave. “It truly is [exhausting] to just give,” one remembered. “But that is what you do. It is part of the deal.”

Despite the challenges, the researchers did not recommend shielding young people from the job of supporting a grieving friend. Instead, they recommended telling them the truth about it. The researchers conclude that making it clear that supporting a grieving friend is a challenging, long, difficult job “may enable even more friends in succeeding.”

Why would that help? Because these friends weren’t short on love. They were short on preparation. No one told them that their friends’ withdrawal was normal, that the fix-it urge would fail, or that needing their own backup wasn’t a weakness. A hard job becomes easier to survive when someone gives you honest expectations… and then stays close as you do it.

This is why the Heartside Framework calls them Heartside Heroes. Not because it’s cute. Because the job is hard, and hard jobs require training before the alarm sounds and the call goes out… not after. Tell the young people in your life the truth: Showing up for a hurting friend is hard work. Teach them what to expect. Then be their backup while they do it.

One of the heroes interviewed received her reward in a single sentence… her grieving friend simply said, “Thank you for being here.” That acknowledgment was enough to keep her going.

Source: Winther-Lindqvist, D. A., & Larsen, I. O. (2021). “Grief and Best Friendship Among Adolescent Girls.” OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 83(3), 545–562. First published online in 2019. DOI: 10.1177/0030222819856146.

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What the Rabbit Knew

The Rabbit Listened, written and illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld

Taylor builds something from blocks… “something new, something special, something amazing.” Then a flock of birds crashes through, and it’s gone.

What happens next may be the truest picture of showing up we’ve found in a picture book.

The animals arrive one at a time, each carrying a fix. The chicken wants to talk about it. The bear wants to shout about it. The elephant wants to remember exactly how it was and rebuild it. The hyena wants to laugh it off. The ostrich wants to hide from it. The kangaroo wants to sweep the whole mess away. The snake wants to go knock down somebody else’s.

Think about the animals in the parade... Not one of them is unkind. Every single one shows up… briefly. Each offers the comfort that works for them: their move, their medicine, their fix. When Taylor doesn’t want it, each one leaves. They came to fix, so when the fixing was refused, there was nothing left to stay for.

Taylor is alone.

Then the rabbit comes. The rabbit doesn’t propose anything, perform anything, or try to fix anything. The rabbit simply moves closer… a warm body, quietly beside. Taylor is the one who finally speaks: “Please stay with me.” So the rabbit stays. The rabbit listens.

Then something amazing happens... With the rabbit nearby, Taylor does nearly everything the parade proposed. Taylor talks, shouts, laughs, remembers, plans to hide, and even briefly dreams of wrecking somebody else’s day. Every feeling gets its turn. In Taylor’s order. At Taylor’s pace. Out loud to somebody safe. The animals weren’t wrong about the feelings. They were wrong not to give Taylor the space to choose the action and the timing.

Hurting hearts don’t take their feelings on a schedule. But when someone stays close and quiet, the feelings find their own way through. By the last page, Taylor is planning to build again: “It’s going to be amazing.”

If you’ve been learning the Heartside Framework, you can probably name everything you just watched:

Every fix in that parade is a ball… and the animals didn’t know how to put their balls down.

The rabbit goes straight to sit beside them… and the listening makes room for Taylor to say every true thing there was to say.

Underneath the whole book beats the Heartside Promise: You don’t need to fix the sad. You just need to show up.

Read it with a child you love. Then think about it together: Which animal shares your fix? Everybody has one. Me? I tend to be a mix of the chicken and the elephant. I want to talk, to encourage, to look at the bright side, to make a plan to rebuild… But I, too, am learning to put my balls down.

The Rabbit Listened, by Cori Doerrfeld (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2018).

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The Back Porch Title

I’m blown away by the positive support that I am getting from new followers and subscribers. Thank you!

If you have an idea for one of the features or have a personal Heartside Hero story, we’d love to hear [and possibly share] it.

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends…

See you next time… We’ll save you a seat.

Jepper Lynn

Here’s what’s inside:

Framework Focus: Action Three of the Heartside Five… Sit beside them.

The Big Idea: Presence… not answers. The silence that feels awkward to the helper often feels like company to the hurting. Staying in it is a skill we can practice.

Heartside Heroes Will…

• Sit beside a partner for sixty silent seconds without filling the quiet.

• Name ways to be company without words.

• Let the hurting friend set the pace.

SEL Standards (CASEL):

• Self-Awareness

• Self-Management

• Social Awareness

• Relationship Skills.

Every Heartside Lesson Plan runs in a 20-minute core, shrinks to 10 minutes for those in a time crunch, and grows with extenders... with adaptations for Grades 1–12 and versions for whole-class, large-group, small-group, and one-on-one.

Downloadable Resource List

• Heartside Lesson 3 · Sit Beside Them—The complete lesson plan

• “Quiet Company Menu” Poster—Options for quiet sitting, for the wall

• Side-by-Side Sheet—Hands-on activity

• Family Note—Ready to copy and send home

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster—The map for every lesson, on one hand

New to the Heartside Framework?

Start with the Foundation Lesson: Becoming a Heartside Hero

After our launch period, the Heartside Lesson Plans section and downloads will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. Feel free to use this lesson with the young people in your life. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the lessons themselves.)

Everything you need is right here, ready to print:

• Heartside Lesson 3 · Sit Beside Them (PDF):

  

  Heartside Lesson 3 Sit Beside Them

  270KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• “Quiet Company Menu” Poster (PDF):

  

  Heartside Quiet Company Menu

  300KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Side-by-Side Sheet (PDF):

  

  Heartside Side By Side Sheet

  188KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Family Note (PDF):

  

  Heartside Lesson 3 Family Note

  408KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster (PDF):

  

  Heartside Framework Hand Poster

  4.04MB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

Let me know which ages and adaptations you choose—and how it goes. I am always open to constructive feedback… from pointing out typos and misspellings (I promise that I try to scan for those…) to suggestions for the adaptations and activities. We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all.

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

This exploration walks through the whole study in plain language:

· The four things that keep friendships alive… and how grief disrupts every one of them.

• Twelve themes from the interviews, pulled from the young women’s own words.

• Why the researchers suspect grief is contagious between best friends.

• The fear that kept caring friends silent… and the misunderstanding underneath it.

• Who the helpers leaned on when the helping got heavy.

• The maze, the twists, dead ends, and the five words that made it all worth it.

We show how well The Heartside Project aligns with the researchers’ own conclusions and advice… including where our mission does and doesn’t fit the study. By the end, you’ll learn enough from these ten friendships to recognize the eleventh when it shows up at your own kitchen table.

The full exploration is below, print-safe and ready for your reading chair.

After our launch period, the Research… Explored section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the PDFs themselves.)

→ The Research: Grief and Best Friendship Among Adolescent Girls (link to publisher’s page)

→ The Research Explored: Being and Staying (PDF) :

Being And Staying Research Explored Heartside Magazine

205KB ∙ PDF file

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What do you think is the hardest part of supporting a grieving friend? What helped most when you were the one grieving? How would you counsel a child/teen in your life who wanted to support a hurting friend?

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Leave a comment

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

This exploration walks through the entire case in plain language:

• Why put grief education in the curriculum?

• How would it help?

• What are schools teaching now?

• Is the topic too sensitive for schools?

• How would it be taught?

• What might change if grief education was required?

We reveal where The Heartside Project aligns with the researchers and where we go further on our own. By the end, you’ll know the case well enough to argue for it… or argue with it.

The full exploration is below, print-safe and ready for your reading chair.

After our launch period, the Research… Explored section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the PDFs themselves.)

→ The Research: The Case for Mandatory Grief Education (PDF)

The Case For Mandatory Grief Education Dawson

399KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

→ The Research Explored: The Case For Grief Class - Research Explored (PDF)

The Case For Grief Class Research Explored Heartside Magazine

194KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Does required grief education sound like a good idea to you? Should it be voluntary for each school system? Something else?

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Leave a comment

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

‘Ber Day - September 1

We are about to enter my favorite months of the year… and they all end with Ber.

September literally kicks it off with the beginning of football season and the promise of cooler temperatures. (I know… it’s still unbearably hot here in Tennessee. Nevertheless, I still have the hope of a middle schooler who buys cute back-to-school corduroys and sweaters for the first week of school.)

October has always been my favorite month. True fall weather finally arrives, and the Smoky Mountains show off a glorious display of color. My bubbly autumn joy has been somewhat tempered now that October holds the anniversary of my daddy's death... I now treasure a more melancholy autumn joy.

November wraps up our homeschool semester and hosts big, wonderful, chaotic family Thanksgiving gatherings. With 4 sons and 6 daughters (5 of whom are married) and 16 grandkids (thus far), we rarely get everyone together at the same place… but we usually get pretty close in November.

December rounds out the Ber months with the magic of Christmas, the celebration of our Savior, and the anticipation of the new year. I also love the idea of December snow (but I’m usually over it by January).

Even though this has always been my favorite time of year, I have to thank my friend Michelle for introducing me to the wonderful concept of ‘Ber Day, which has now become an official holiday in my home! 🍂

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The Wrong Direction

June 6, 2018. Arden Hills, Minnesota. A section final, with a trip to the state tournament on the line. The final inning. Two strikes on the batter. A fastball catches the outside corner. The umpire’s arm goes up.

Strike three. Game over.

You know what usually happens next. Gloves go flying. Teammates race toward the mound. Somewhere in all that celebration… the losing team quietly begins gathering their things.

That’s what happened this time, too.

…except for the pitcher.

Ty Koehn of Mounds View High had just thrown the pitch that sent his team to the state tournament. His teammates were already running toward him. His catcher came toward the mound with his arms wide open. Ty waved him off.

Still standing frozen near home plate was Jack Kocon… the batter Ty had just struck out.

Here’s something the scoreboard couldn’t tell you. Ty and Jack had been friends since they were thirteen. They had played on the same travel team before different high schools put them in different uniforms.

Now one of them was headed to state… and the other one’s season had just ended.

So Ty walked away from his own celebration, waved off his catcher, and hugged his friend.

…for ten full seconds.

The video can show you the hug, but it can’t show you what Ty said.

“You had a great season, you’re a great player… and don’t let this outcome affect our friendship,” Ty later remembered telling him. “I told him I loved him, and he’s my brother, and our friendship will always last longer than this silly game.”

It’s also important to note what Ty didn’t do.

1. He didn’t apologize for the pitch.

2. He didn’t tell Jack there would be other games.

3. He didn’t try to fix the sad.

He simply went to his friend. He acknowledged the pain. He showed up.

He said what was true. He reminded Jack that he mattered more than the game. Then he stayed there with his hurting friend… while a celebration began behind them.

That hug traveled much farther than either boy probably imagined. Millions watched the video. National news picked it up. A few weeks later, Ty and Jack received a surprise ESPY for sportsmanship on Good Morning America.

But I think Jack gave us the best summary of those ten seconds.

“I had my head down, and I thought it was one of my teammates,” he said. “When I saw it was him… that just meant the world to me.”

Then he said something I wish we could tape to every dugout wall:

That night, almost everyone ran toward the celebration.

Ty noticed his hurting friend… and he went to him first.

*As reported by CBS News, NPR, and Good Morning America.

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Backup Requested…

Picture a crisp, cold afternoon in late January, and a firefighter we’ll call Bob.

Bob had worked in fire and rescue for nineteen years. But this was his day off. Today he was shoveling his driveway… and hoping against hope that the warming sun would take care of the sidewalk for him. The sound of kids’ voices was a welcome distraction from his half-finished chore, so he chose to investigate.

Bob was strong, trained, and brave. Over the years with the department, he waded through floods and walked into smoke.

Yet when Bob topped the little rise and saw the retention pond… he stopped short.

Two neighborhood boys… twenty feet out. They waved to him and called for help. As he assessed the situation, he noticed a crack spreading from the shoreline toward them.

Nineteen years of training could tempt a man to “be the hero” and hurry to them… to walk out there himself. Those same nineteen years are exactly why Bob didn’t. He knew what this situation required: an ice-rescue team with its suits, sleds, and specially trained rescuers.

So… Bob did what he was trained to do. Without a second thought, he pulled out his phone and called for backup. He knew these boys. He knew they weren’t supposed to be out there. But he called anyway… without shame. Their safety was his top priority.

While the ice team hurried toward the pond, Bob stayed. He moved to the shoreline and spoke to the boys with a reassuring presence… steady voice, first names, “Keep your weight spread. Help is already rolling.” Soon, a rope arced out over the ice.

Bob stayed close until the team in rescue suits slid out past him and brought both boys safely to shore.

Rescue departments train exactly this way. The first responder at a thin-ice scene almost never goes onto the ice; the job is to secure the scene, keep the trapped people calm, and call for backup. In fire and rescue, calling for backup is a skill… one they practice. True, real-life heroes call for backup.

This is at the heart of the Backup Rule, the piece of the Heartside Framework that relies on another’s hand:

Young people find their own thin ice: A friend shares something scary. Sadness lingers for days and won’t lift. Something feels far too heavy for a twelve-year-old to carry…

The Backup Rule tells them what the firefighter knew. Calling for backup is good; it’s heroic. It’s NOT tattling.

Also note that reaching out to a trusted adult does not mean quitting on your friend. The Heartside Hero stays while help is on its way… just like Bob did.

The research on this is solid and compelling. The most consistent protective factor found in childhood-resilience research is a dependable connection to a caring adult. Researcher Ann Masten calls it ordinary magic.* It’s not rare heroics, just ordinary relationships doing quiet work.

Finally, before a young person in your life has occasion to tell you about their “too-big” situation… there’s a promise worth making to them: “If you ever call me for backup, I will not be angry, you will not be in trouble, and your friend will get help.”

It’s always late January somewhere… Keep your radio on.

*Research memo: Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in evolution. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227–238.

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Put the Ball Down

When someone we love is sad, our first instinct is usually to try to make it better.

We crack the joke. Offer the treat. Change the subject. Suggest something fun to do. We desperately want to see our friend’s smile return. We want them to have their “happy” back.

Kids have the same instinct… and nobody has to teach it to them. They seem to arrive with a built-in emergency cheer-up kit, usually containing one joke, two snacks, and a very confident suggestion to go outside.

Really, it’s a lovely instinct. It comes from exactly the right place. We see someone hurting, we love them, and we want to help.

But this week’s action from the Heartside Five asks kids (and maybe the rest of us too) to try something a little different: Put the ball down.

Here’s the idea, small enough to try over an after-school snack.

Talk with your kids about what it’s like when a friend is sad. When we try to cheer them up, distract them, or get them playing again, it can be a little like tossing them a ball.

Here. Catch.

Maybe the ball is a joke... Maybe it’s a treat. Maybe it’s “Come on, let’s go play!” We toss something their way, hoping it will make the sadness go away.

The throw is full of love.

But no ball has ever fixed a broken heart. Not even the really good ones. Not even the ones that bounce perfectly and somehow always end up under the couch.

Deep down, even young children understand that.

If you want to take the conversation a little further, wonder together about the things that make kids really sad. What happens at school? On the team? In the neighborhood? Between friends? What hurts?

Your kids probably know that list better than we do.

Naming those things is its own quiet lesson in noticing. It helps children begin to recognize that the kid sitting next to them may be carrying something they can’t see.

Then sit with the harder question for a moment: If cheering up can’t fix it, what does a sad friend actually need from us?

You may be surprised by how much your kids already know. Because the answer is simpler than most of us were ever taught… and it’s the Heartside Promise:

It doesn’t mean jokes are bad. It doesn’t mean we should never bring ice cream, suggest a movie, or invite someone outside to play. There is a time for all of those things.

It just means we don’t toss them over as a way to make the sad disappear.

Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is put the ball down and simply stay.

Fair warning, though… Once the ball is part of the conversation, you might catch yourself starting to toss one:

• The quick joke.

• The “at least…” reassurance.

• The distraction.

• The cheerful “Look on the bright side.”

…when you get the urge to make somebody feel better with a quick-fix ball toss.

Then, you may suddenly think, “Oh, there’s that darn ball.”

Put it down.

That’s not failure.

That’s the lesson working on you, too. ❤️

This seed is deliberately small. Want it fully fleshed out and ready to go... every age from 6 to 18, word-for-word language, and printables? This week’s premium Heartside Lesson Plan is done for you... and ready when you are:

Lesson 2: Put the Ball Down

One in Every Classroom

We teach children what to do if the fire alarm rings.

Stop what you’re doing. Line up. Follow the teacher. Walk calmly outside.

We practice it before there is smoke in the hallway, which is rather the point. Yet there is another hard thing almost every child will eventually face, and we mostly wait until it happens to start explaining it.

Grief.

A 2023 research review argues that we should be doing the same thing to prepare students for grief. Even before the pandemic, about one in 29 UK school-age children had already experienced the death of a parent or sibling. (American numbers tell the same story… about one in eleven of our children will experience the death of a parent or sibling by age 18.) When grandparents, friends, and other important people are included, most children will experience the death of someone close before they finish school.

The researchers aren’t only concerned about preparing the child who will grieve. Like The Heartside Project, they’re interested in preparing the children who will be standing beside them.

Because those children will be there.

One small study cited in the review found that 65 percent of teenagers surveyed turned to friends during difficult situations. Yet when a classmate is grieving, children may avoid them, ask uncomfortable questions, or simply have no idea what to say. The researchers specifically recommend teaching classmates how to welcome a grieving child back and how to be a supportive friend.

That changes the question a little.

Instead of only asking, How will we help this child when something terrible happens? We can also ask, What are we teaching the kids who will be their local support system?

That is a much more hopeful question because we can do something about it before anybody is hurting.

The researchers recommend age-appropriate grief education taught over time, using stories, fictional situations, books, and other approaches that allow children to learn without requiring them to share their own painful experiences. That fits beautifully with what we are building at The Heartside Project: giving ordinary kids simple ways to know what to do when somebody they care about hurts.

So try a Heartside lesson with your own kids. Share one with a teacher, counselor, principal, youth leader, or school board member. Ask your school what children are currently being taught about how to support a grieving friend.

There will eventually be a child in the classroom who needs those skills.

Let’s teach the children sitting beside them.

Want the whole case… every witness, every number, and the honest fine print? This week’s Research… Explored, “The Case for Grief Class,” walks through the full review in plain language.

Source: Dawson, L. D., Hare, R. E., Selman, L. E., Boseley, T., & Penny, A. (2023). “The one thing guaranteed in life and yet they won’t teach you about it”: The case for mandatory grief education in UK schools. Bereavement, 2. https://doi.org/10.54210/bj.2023.1082 · US estimate: Judi’s House/JAG Institute & New York Life Foundation (2025). Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model. https://judishouse.org/research-tools/cbem/

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“I Can’t Just Let Him Hurt Like That”

This issue’s Lens: Friday Night Lights... a dinner table, a grieving quarterback, and one family showing us both halves of the framework in a three-minute clip.

In case you haven’t seen the show (I personally enjoyed it and recommend it), here’s a bit of an introduction: Matt Saracen is a teenage quarterback who has been dating Coach Taylor’s daughter, Julie. Matt’s father... a father he barely knew... has just been killed in Iraq. As the scene opens, Matt arrives at his coach’s home for a family dinner. He’s late and obviously distracted… but still gets a warm welcome at the Taylors’ table.

For a few minutes, he tries to be a dinner guest. It doesn’t hold. What comes out of him instead is the truest, least sayable thing he is carrying: he hates his father. He would like to say it to his face... “but he doesn’t even have a face.”

Watch the table while he says it. Nobody corrects him. Nobody defends the dead man. Nobody explains his feelings back to him or hands him a silver lining. The Taylors let the true thing be said in their kitchen, and they stay.

Then Matt stands, embarrassed: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Taylor. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.” What happens next in that doorway is why I chose this scene.

Julie... Matt’s girlfriend... does what every loving heart does first. “Matt, you don’t have to go!” She turns on her parents: “You’re just gonna let him go like that?” Then comes her sentence, and it may be the most honest line about helping ever put on television: “I have to do something. I can’t just let him hurt like that.”

If you have ever loved a hurting person, you know that sentence from the inside. It is love... in fix-it form. It is the ball.

Now watch her parents do three things at once. Tami gathers her daughter in: “Come here, sweetie. It’s okay.” That is a grown-up holding the young helper’s heart... the Backup Rule, seen from the adult side. Coach steadies the doorway: “Shh. I’ll get him.” Then he follows Matt into the dark, offering the only thing the moment can hold: “Matt. I’m gonna walk you home.”

Matt’s entire answer is one word: “Okay.”

No speech on that walk. No fixing. Just sitting beside him, at three miles an hour.

Here is why this matters at your house: the children we are raising will be Julie. Loving, desperate, certain they must do something. The fix-it urge is not a flaw in them... it is love that hasn’t learned its shape yet. What they need is what Julie had: adults close enough to catch them, comfort them, and show them what presence looks like.

Watch the clip with your teens, then ask two questions. What did Julie want to do? What did her parents do instead... for Matt, and for her?

The Taylors couldn’t fix the sad either. They simply refused to let anyone be alone in it... including their own daughter.

Scene from Friday Night Lights, “The Son” (NBC/DirecTV). Quoted briefly for commentary, with admiration.

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Thank You

I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has subscribed to Heartside Magazine… paid AND free. You are helping more than you probably realize. Every subscription helps Heartside grow and makes it a little easier for the next parent, teacher, counselor, or youth leader to find us.

Sharing Heartside Magazine helps, too. Tell a friend. Send an article to a teacher. Pass along a lesson to someone who works with kids. Every time you help this work travel a little farther, you are helping spread a pretty simple idea: Together, we can raise a generation of kids who know how to show up when a friend is hurting.

Heartside is still young. That makes those of you who are here now especially important. You aren’t just reading something I write each week. You are helping this idea find its people.

I’m very glad you’re one of them. Thank you.

See you next week… We’ll save you a seat.

Leave a comment

Jepper Lynn

Here’s what’s inside:

Framework Focus: Action Two of the Heartside Five: Put the ball down. (Your middle finger, the tallest one… because the urge to fix is the tallest feeling in your hand.)

The Big Idea: A friend’s sadness cannot be fixed… so don’t try. Not with jokes. Not with advice. Not with distraction. Heartside Heroes notice the fix-it urge, set it down, and simply stay.

Heartside Heroes Will...

· Tell why they shouldn’t try to fix the sad.

· Name their own fix-it move and notice the urge when it rises.

· Practice the trade: Set the ball down, say a kind true thing, and stay.

Every Heartside Lesson Plan runs in a 20-minute core, shrinks to 10 minutes for those in a time crunch, and grows with extenders... with adaptations for Grades 1–12 and versions for whole-class, large-group, small-group, and one-on-one.

Downloadable Resource List

• Heartside Lesson 2 · Put the Ball Down (PDF)—The complete lesson plan

• “The Ball Isn’t Bad” Anchor Chart—The trade at a glance, for the wall

• Beach Ball Sheet—Hands-on activity

• Lesson 2 Family Note—Ready to copy and send home

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster—The map for every lesson, on one hand

  ---

New to the Heartside Framework?

Start with the Foundation Lesson: Becoming a Heartside Hero

After our launch period, the Heartside Lesson Plans section and downloads will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. Feel free to use this lesson with the young people in your life. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the lessons themselves.)

Everything you need is right here, ready to print:

• Heartside Lesson 2 · Put the Ball Down (PDF):

  

  Heartside Lesson 2 Put The Ball Down

  271KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• “The Ball Isn’t Bad” Anchor Chart:

  

  The Ball Isn't Bad Anchor Chart

  475KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Beach Ball Sheet:

  

  Heartside Beach Ball Sheet

  376KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Lesson 2 Family Note:

  

  Lesson 2 Family Note

  455KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

Heartside Framework Hand Poster:

Heartside Framework Hand Poster

4.04MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Let me know which ages and adaptations you choose—and how it goes. I am always open to constructive feedback… from pointing out typos and misspellings (I promise that I try to scan for those…) to suggestions for the adaptations and activities. We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all.

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

Porch Ponderings

Hello, Jepper here. 👩🏻‍💻

Welcome! The front porch of my house is where I greet guests and welcome friends. It’s also where I sit to learn of neighborhood happenings, enjoy thunderstorms, read a good book, and ponder God’s goodness. It’s a place to gather information—but it’s also the place where I can relax and just be… me.

That’s how I view the Front Porch of Heartside Magazine… and the kind of thing I plan to share in this space. The Front Porch is where you’ll see glimpses of the world through my eyes. I’ll update you on new projects (like this first issue of Heartside Magazine), holiday happenings, personal opinions, and possibly even announcements of new grandchildren… (I currently have sixteen. Yes, 16!)

But most of Heartside Magazine is dedicated to The Heartside Project’s mission—to encourage and equip caring adults who want to raise young people who know how to show up for hurting friends.

Pull up a chair and join us…

The Boy Who Didn’t Walk Past

The first day of school has a personality all its own.

The hallways are louder than they need to be. Backpacks somehow seem bigger than the children carrying them. Teachers are smiling, parents are smiling… and if we’re being honest, quite a few of those smiles are more forced than real.

For one eight-year-old boy named Connor, it was simply too much. He stepped away from the crowd, found a quiet corner, and cried.

Christian, another second grader, noticed him.

Christian didn’t know why Connor was upset. He didn’t know Connor was autistic. He didn’t know if they would someday become friends or if they’d even talk again after that morning.

So he walked over… and sat on the ground beside the crying boy. No speeches. No clever advice. No attempt to make the first day of school suddenly feel easy. Just two boys sitting together for a little while.

When the bell rang, Christian reached for Connor’s hand, and they walked into school together.

Christian’s mom happened to capture the moment in a photograph that she later shared online. The internet did its thing, and the picture eventually found its way to Connor’s mom, who thanked Christian for the kindness and shared that Connor is autistic.

It’s a beautiful story: An eight-year-old saw another child hurting and didn’t keep walking.

That kind of kindness doesn’t happen by accident. Most kids (and honestly, most adults) avoid the awkwardness of not knowing the “right thing” to do by simply walking by. But somewhere along the way, Christian learned that you don’t need all the answers before you step toward someone who is hurting.

Later, Connor was asked what he remembered about that morning. His answer? “He found me and held my hand.”

Found me. I love that.

Not, “He fixed everything.” Not, “He made me stop being scared.”

Just… He found me.

Then Conner added one more detail. “…and I got happy tears.” Happy tears. On the hardest morning of the year.

We don’t need to know exactly what to say. We don’t need to make the hurt disappear. We don’t even need to understand everything someone is going through—but we shouldn’t walk past.

…and on one chaotic August morning, that was enough.

*As reported by CBS News, ABC News, and KSL, August 2019. Both families shared this story publicly.

The Whole Thing Fits in Your Hand

Since this is our first issue, let’s start at the beginning... and the beginning is good news: Children can learn to love a hurting friend well. The skills are small, they are learnable, and they fit... quite literally... in the palm of a child’s hand.

Each week, we’ll dig into some aspect of the Heartside Framework, our research-informed framework for teaching young people (and often the adults around them) how to show up for a friend whose world just got heavy.

It starts with a promise

Everything rests on one sentence, right in the middle of the palm:

The fear that keeps children away from a hurting friend is almost never a lack of love. It is the belief that showing up means fixing... and since nobody can fix the sad, everybody stays home. The Heartside Promise takes that job off the table. Children learn it in their own voice: “I don’t need to fix the sad. I just need to show up.” Once a child believes that sentence, the hardest part is done.

Then come the five actions

Showing up is made of five small, doable actions... the Heartside Five. Children count them on their fingers, starting with the pointer:

1. Say the true thing. There are no magic words... There are true ones.

2. Put the ball down. The urge to cheer up, distract, and fix is the ball. Set it down.

3. Sit beside them. Presence… not answers. Being there is the whole job.

4. Do the normal things. The ordinary world is still here. Keep gently inviting your friend into it.

5. Remember out loud. Say the name. Tell the stories. That is how the love keeps going.

Smile. This isn’t somber work. It’s empowering work. It’s hero work. Heroes should feel good about it.

One rule keeps everyone safe

The last piece belongs to another hand… a trusted adult’s.

We call it the Backup Rule:

Firefighters call for backup. Police call for backup. Heroes do too... it is not tattling, and not failure. Make sure your Heartside Heroes understand this.

Where to begin

Each issue, this feature will go deeper into a piece of the framework. If you’d like to teach the whole-hand overview this week, the Foundation lesson, “Becoming a Heartside Hero,” is ready for you. Like all premium Heartside Lesson Plans, it includes adaptations for ages 6 to 18, fits into your schedule (running between 10 minutes and 45 minutes with a 20-minute base time), includes downloadable tools, and more. → Heartside Framework Foundation Lesson.

They don’t need to fix the sad. They just need to show up.

…and now you know how to teach them.

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Say the True Thing

There are no magic words that will fix everything for a sad friend. That’s the obvious secret... and once your kids know it (and accept it), everyone is free.

Try it at the dinner table or during circle time. Ask, “When a friend is very, very sad, what are the magic words that make it all better?” Let everyone guess until the guesses run out. Then share the secret: Nobody has magic words. Not kids. Not teachers. Not parents. Nobody. But we don’t need magic words... We need true ones.

Teach the One True Sentence: “I heard about ___. I’m really sorry. I’m here.” Practice it around the table with a pretend sad thing (a lost game, a dropped ice cream cone) until everyone has said it out loud once. Two rules while you practice: 1) No saying “at least” allowed. “At least” is a cheer-up phrase wearing a costume. 2) No hiding in silence.

Ouch!

If your crew is ready for one step deeper, talk about the word “died.” Adults often reach for vague, mushy words like “passed away,” “lost,” or “went to sleep” because they feel softer. To a child, that very vagueness can be scarier than the truth. True words communicate clearly: “Your dog died. I’m really sorry.” Teach your kids that “died” is a kind word when it is said kindly. Sad things are less frightening when there is no ambiguity. Say the true thing.

Then add the part most lessons skip… the staying. Practice a round of Say It and Stay. One person shares a pretend sad thing; their partner says a true thing, then stays for a slow count of five. No fixing—no filling the quiet. Five seconds feels very long the first time, and that is exactly the lesson. The words open the door, but the staying is what does the loving.

Here’s how you can make it stick… Hand out index cards. Everyone writes the One True Sentence, decorates it, and tucks it where they’ll find it on a hard day… a backpack pocket, a lunchbox, or a wallet. Yes… You too. Planning (and practicing) what to say is good practice for adults, too.

Say this: “Don’t worry about finding the perfect thing to say. Say a true thing... then stay.”

The heart of it: This is “Action One” of the Heartside Five: Say the true thing.

Want it fully fleshed out and ready to go... every age from 6 to 18, word-for-word language, and printables? This week’s premium Heartside Lesson Plan is done for you... and ready when you are: Lesson 1: Say the True Thing

The Committee Votes No

There’s someone that you’ve been meaning to check on.

You think about it more than once. Then, the committee in your mind convenes: She’s probably too busy. I don’t want to bother him. They wouldn’t care. What would I even say? The committee votes no. The committee always votes no.

In 2022, Peggy Liu of the University of Pittsburgh and three colleagues went looking at what happens when the committee gets overruled. Thirteen preregistered studies. Just under six thousand people. Someone reached out to a person in their life with something small… a note to say hi or a little gift. Cookies. Coffee. One mini plant. Every sender first guessed how much it would be appreciated. Then the researchers went and asked the receivers what they thought.

Senders guessed low. Thirteen studies... and they all guessed low. Receivers appreciated the reach-out more than the senders had predicted.

Then comes the curious part... The looser the tie, the more the sender’s guess missed. For general friendly acquaintances, the underestimation more than doubled. Notice what that does and doesn’t say. Your closest people still appreciate hearing from you the most. But the friendly-not-close ones are where your guess goes furthest astray. This means the people your committee feels most certain about are the people it understands least.

While you debate what to write or what to gift, you grade yourself: Is this awkward? Is it a good time? Is “thinking of you” enough? But nobody on the other end is holding a rubric. Instead, they feel warm and think one uncomplicated thing: “Someone thought of me.”

This reminds me a bit of the Heartside Promise: You don’t need to fix the sad. You just need to show up. Nobody in those thirteen studies tried to fix anything. They sent a note. They handed over cookies. They showed up. The impact was greater than they expected.

These were ordinary people in ordinary weeks. No funeral, no diagnosis, no packed-up house, no marriage coming apart. Now, this study doesn’t address what a check-in is worth to someone whose world just fell apart. But what it can tell us is that our arithmetic is broken in the easy case—and badly. If we are this wrong on an ordinary Tuesday with a friendly acquaintance, we shouldn’t be trusting that same faulty math on the hardest day of someone’s life... not when other researchers have already found that the silence of friends is one of the loneliest parts of grief.

Now reach out. Yes, to that person who came to mind as you read that first sentence... Just a simple, “I’ve been thinking about you.”

Then hand it down. The next time your child stalls at the edge of a hurting friend? Tell her that scientists went and checked, and the person receiving it will appreciate it more than she thinks.

Want to walk through the whole study... how each of the thirteen experiments worked, why surprise is the secret ingredient, and where the honest fine print lives? This week’s premium Research… Explored, “The Reach-Out Gap,” is waiting for you here: The Reach-Out Gap

Study: Liu, P. J., Rim, S., Min, L., & Min, K. E. (2022). The surprise of reaching out: Appreciated more than we think. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Full paper.

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What Sadness Knew

This issue’s Lens: Inside Out (Pixar, 2015)... the scene where the wrong emotion turns out to be the right friend.

Halfway through Inside Out, a candy-crying imaginary friend named Bing Bong loses the last thing he had left of his girl, Riley... his rocket wagon, swept over the edge into the memory dump. He sits down in the middle of the journey and will not move.

Joy gets to him first, and Joy does what we all do. Funny faces. Tickling. A game. Promises of fun up ahead. It is the whole cheer-up playbook, run by the most likable character in the movie... and none of it works. Bing Bong doesn’t budge.

Then Sadness sits down beside him. Watch what she does, because in about ninety seconds she runs four of the Heartside Five. She says the true thing: “I’m sorry they took your rocket. They took something that you loved.” She never once argues him out of his sadness... no “at least,” no silver linings... the ball stays down. She stays beside him and lets the quiet be quiet. Then she opens the door to remembering out loud, asking about Riley... and Bing Bong pours out the story of the day they flew back in time and had breakfast twice. “We were best friends.” “Yeah,” says Sadness. “It’s sad.” He cries. He leans on her shoulder. Then he stands up: “I’m okay now. Come on... the train station is this way.”

What the scene gets right is almost every action that the Heartside Five teaches: say the true thing (1), put the ball down(2), sit beside them(3), remember out loud(5). Notice, too, who does it. Not the bubbly friend with the best intentions, but the one our culture tries to suppress. Pixar hands the rescue to Sadness. Comfort doesn’t come from making the sad go away. It comes from making the sad person less alone. The final Heartside Five action sneaks into the end of the clip. After someone truly sat with him, Bing Bong found the train station himself. The normal world was still there, waiting for him to do the normal things(4)... when he was ready. Showing up was enough until he was ready.

Scene from Inside Out (Disney·Pixar, 2015), written by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley. Quoted briefly for commentary, with admiration.

First Issue Wrap-Up

That’s it… The first issue of Heartside Magazine is complete. Now comes your part. (I’m talking to you. Yes, you… the one reading this.) Let me know what you really think. Too short? Too long? Which section was your favorite? Do you have a scene from a movie or television show that would be perfect for Heartside Lens? Do you have a personal Heartside Hero story to share? Let me know what you think. This mission cannot be accomplished on my own… It’s too big. So I value your support and input.

Leave a comment

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends.

See you next week… We’ll save you a seat.

Jepper

Here’s what’s inside:

Framework Focus: Action 1 of the Heartside Five: Say the true thing. The Foundation gave your Heartside Heroes the map... this is the first close-up.

The Big Idea: Honest, simple words help a hurting friend; cheer-up words quietly ask the sad person to feel better for our comfort.

Heartside Heroes Will...

• Explain why true words help more than cheer-up words.

• Say the One True Sentence from memory.

• Spot common fix-it phrases and know what to say instead.

Every Heartside Lesson Plan runs in a 20-minute core, shrinks to 10 minutes for those in a time crunch, and grows with extenders... with adaptations for Grades 1–12 and versions for whole-class, large-group, small-group, and one-on-one.

Downloadable Resource List

• The complete Heartside Lesson Plan (PDF)—The complete lesson plan

• True Words Scenario Cards—Hands-on activity

• “True Words We Can Say” Anchor Chart—The lesson at a glance for the wall

• Lesson 1 Family Note—Ready to copy and send home

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster—The map for every lesson, on one hand

After our launch period, the Heartside Lesson Plans section and downloads will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. Feel free to use this lesson with the young people in your life. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the lessons themselves.)

Everything you need is right here, ready to print:

• The complete Heartside Lesson Plan (PDF):

  

  Heartside Lesson 1 Say The True Thing

  230KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• True Words Scenario Cards:

  

  True Words Scenario Cards Lesson 1

  336KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• “True Words We Can Say” Anchor Chart Poster

  

  True Words We Can Say Anchor Chart Poster

  314KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Family Note

  

  Lesson 1 Family Note Say The True Thing

  312KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster... the same map from the Foundation Lesson, here again so it is always within reach.

  

  Heartside Framework Hand Poster

  4.04MB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

New to the Heartside Framework?

Start with the Foundation Lesson: Becoming a Heartside Hero

Let me know which ages and adaptations you choose—and how it goes. I am always open to constructive feedback… from pointing out typos and misspellings (I promise that I try to scan for those…) to suggestions for the adaptations and activities. We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

The guesses came in low.

• Four researchers, thirteen studies, one stubborn result…

• What’s waiting inside is the machinery.

• How each experiment was built.

• What the numbers actually said.

• The study where the researchers set out to break their own theory.

• The thing they tried that flat-out failed.

All this, plus an honest accounting of what this research can and can’t tell us about showing up for someone who is hurting.

Fifteen minutes, and you’ll know the research well enough to argue with it… agree with it… or study more about it.

After our launch period, the Research… Explored section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the PDFs themselves.)

→ The Research: The Surprise of Reaching Out (PDF)

→ The Research Explored: The Reach-Out Gap (PDF)

The Reach Out Gap Research Explored Heartside Magazine

68KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Let me know what you think of this study. Were you surprised by the results? Might it change your behavior?

We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Leave a comment

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper

Here’s what’s inside:

Framework Focus: The entire framework at the map level: the Heartside Promise, the five actions of the Heartside Five, and the Backup Rule. Each action will have its own full lesson in the coming weeks.

The Big Idea: Nobody can fix a friend’s sadness... and nobody needs to. Showing up is the whole job, and it can be learned.

Heartside Heroes Will...

• Say the Heartside Promise from memory.

• Name the five actions of the Heartside Five, counting them on their fingers.

• Explain the Backup Rule and when to call for backup.

Every Heartside Lesson Plan runs in a 20-minute core, shrinks to 10 minutes for those in a time crunch, and grows with extenders... with adaptations for Grades 1–12 and versions for whole-class, large-group, small-group, and one-on-one.

Everything you need is right here, ready to print:

• The complete Heartside Lesson Plan (PDF)

  

  Heartside Foundation Lesson Becoming A Heartside Hero

  219KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Heartside Framework Hand Poster (PNG and PDF)

  

  

  Heartside Framework Hand Poster

  4.04MB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Trace-Your-Hand Worksheet

  

  Heartside Trace Your Hand Worksheet

  214KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• My Backup Team Cards

  

  My Backup Team Cards

  681KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

• Foundation Lesson Family Follow-Up Note

  

  Foundation Lesson Family Follow Up Note

  601KB ∙ PDF file

  Download

  Download

After our launch period, the Heartside Lesson Plans section will move to the paid tier. But for now, it’s open to all subscribers. Feel free to use this lesson with the young people in your life. (Feel free to refer others to this page as a resource… but please do not share the lessons themselves.) Let me know which ages and adaptations you choose—and how it goes. I am always open to constructive feedback… from pointing out typos and misspellings (I do try to scan for those… I promise!) to suggestions for the adaptations and activities. We are on this mission together, and I value your opinion.

Please leave a comment or shoot me a message... I read them all!

Let’s raise a generation that knows how to show up for hurting friends...

Jepper