about the book

When Hope Changes was written and illustrated by Abigail Gellene-Beaudoin, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), Registered Play Therapist™ (RPT), and Advanced Palliative and Hospice Social Worker - Certified (APHSW-C) from tidewater, Virginia. She has worked at Edmarc, a home health and hospice for children, since 2015 providing medical social work services to patients and families who endure life-threatening or life-limiting pediatric diagnoses.

In her work at Edmarc, she found that numerous resources were available for kids whose loved ones had already died, but there were far fewer for kids whose loved ones were dying or were living with a terminal diagnosis. These children and families frequently experienced anticipatory grief (the feeling of grief or loss before a death occurs), and caregivers found themselves ill-prepared to communicate the complexities of their situations to their children or even navigate the emotional challenges themselves. Abigail chose to create When Hope Changes to serve as a non-religious resource, aiming to facilitate conversations within families and empower caregivers to openly engage children in discussions about their family’s circumstances. Living with, or caring for someone with a terminal or end-stage disease is hard enough. She hopes that using this tool will make the challenging task of explaining an impending death to a child more manageable.