Finding Peace: Michael's Place at 25 Years

Chris Dennos remembers the massive burden her cousin Michael's family was forced to carry alone. 

Michael was only 14 when he died from illness all those years ago, and his family was consumed by profound and inescapable grief.

“It was devastating to the family, and I watched them be just destroyed by it, with no help, nowhere to go, no nothing,” Dennos tells The Ticker. “And it just broke my heart to watch.”

It was this experience (along with Dennos’ later exposure to a grief support center in Lansing, where she lived for a period) that led her to found Michael’s Place, which over the 25 years since its 2001 opening has become a hugely important organization for local families and individuals struggling with the loss of a loved one or friend.

“I’m overwhelmed by what has happened at this place,” she says. “We have a staff that is tireless. We have a board that is the envy – literally – of every other nonprofit in the area. And the numbers (of people we’ve helped) are staggering.”

Last year alone, the organization supported nearly 5,000 adults, teens and children across 17 northern Michigan counties. Perhaps most remarkable is that none of these people paid anything for these services.

“One of the first questions that we get when people call is: How much will this cost? And when we tell them Michael's Place is provided at no cost (through the) generosity of our community, we’ve had tears. We’ve had so many emotions at that moment,” Executive Director Mindy Buell tells The Ticker. “They’re always wondering how they’re going to pay for it.”

Though a variety of services are offered, Michael’s Place leans heavily into support groups, which meet regularly and provide collective relief to participants by showing them (among other things) that they’re not alone.

“Grief is so personal and isolating, but when someone says: ‘Let me share what helped me,’ that can be a game changer for someone who's seeking just a little light of hope,” Buell says. “There’s something incredibly valuable in being with others that have lived the experience.”

These support groups, broken down by type of loss (child, parent, spouse, etc.) and facilitated by a Michael’s Place staffer or volunteer, also provide people a network of support that extends far beyond Michael’s Place itself.

“We have an incredibly active bereaved spouse group, and there are participants in there that now spend time together outside of our doors constantly, which gives them so much less isolation,” says Sarah Schultz, who coordinates adult and community services.

Many of these people live vastly different lives and would not have found each other had it not been for Michael’s Place.

“(One dad) said, ‘I would not know any of you because our kids go to different schools. We live in different communities, we're at different churches and our community events are very different,’” Buell says. “But he couldn’t imagine one day in his life without all of (the other people in the group) because that community has become so important to him after the loss of his son."

The organization also works proactively in scores of Northern Michigan school districts by helping schools develop internal grief support teams, facilitating grief support groups and give grief responsiveness training to educators. This proactive work (done instead of waiting for someone to engage with Michael’s Place) has schools prepared for the death of a student or students struggling with deaths of their own loved ones.

“We help them create their grief crisis team, so they have a plan in place and a trained team and they know what to do,” Buell says. “And the difference between a school that has a plan and one that doesn’t is night and day.”

All of this work is supported by fundraising, which was challenging at first but became a bit easier over time as the organization touched so many lives and proved its value.

“Over the course of 25 years, we have been able to get the community to trust us and believe that we are spending their money properly,” Dennos says. “And that’s not a given for a nonprofit.”

On Friday, April 24, the organization is having a 25th anniversary celebration and fundraiser at the City Opera House. For more information or tickets, click here.

Photo: L-R, Dennos, Schultz, Buell