Hello, I’m Carol Schoneberg.
I have been a hospice educator and grief counselor since 1992.
I believe you have the capacity for resiliency and the wisdom within to find your way up and out of grief — and you can help yourself by letting an experienced guide join you on this journey.
Recently relocating from Maine to Northern Illinois, I have served as an end-of-life educator and grief counselor at Hospice of Southern Maine, developing and managing their bereavement program since its inception in 2004. In my 30+ years’ professional experience, I’ve provided end-of-life education to staff, volunteers, correctional facilities, healthcare providers, universities, and the community at large.
Certified as an Advance Care Planning Facilitator Trainer through the Respecting Choices program at Gundersen-Lutheran Hospital in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 2001, I firmly believe helping people talk about their choices for end-of-life care can make a huge difference in the way families experience the dying process.
Why I Do What I Do
I have the perfect job. For 30 years as an end-of-life educator, I have been allowed to share my passionate belief about the difference hospice care can make for patients and families. As a grief counselor, I have been given the opportunity to bear witness to the remarkable resiliency of the human spirit and its capacity to heal.
There is something miraculous in witnessing a grieving person’s arduous journey out of darkness, from the depths of despair to a life that is once again worth living, though forever changed — a journey that does not seem possible when we are newly bereaved.
My clients are my teachers, sharing their profound sadness, fears, uncertainty, courage, and wisdom. In doing so, they are helping prepare me for the grief journeys I too will take before I die. How fortunate I am to walk with these people for a brief part of their healing journey. I can’t imagine any other work that would bring more meaning to my life.
Grief is the unavoidable price we pay for loving someone, and none of us will manage to escape unscathed. Whether it is the mother who has lost both of her daughters to suicide, or the husband who lost his beloved soul mate of 40 years, or the 36-year old woman who lost both parents suddenly within the space of nine days, or the adult son who can’t imagine life without the father who emotionally supported and guided him for 35 years — each of them have wrestled with moments when they don’t care whether or not they wake up in the morning. In spite of this, each of them has had the courage to go deep and discover their own resiliency and capacity to heal. Their journeys are not over, but they are on the way to a life that will once again have meaning and joy. If asked, they would likely tell you that they have grown more through this time of sorrow than at any other time in their lives.
Doing this work well challenges us to bring our best selves to the table.
The poet Kahlil Gibran asks us, “What is it to work with love?” He tells us, “It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth; it is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house; it is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit; it is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.”
I am grateful for the opportunity to do work that enriches and deepens my life, and, in my best moments, to be given the grace to do it with love.
When you’re ready to work through your grief together, I am here for you.
My role as a grief counselor is to listen, to provide a safe space for you to talk about your loss, to help you understand what grief looks like in its many forms, to gently guide as you work through the pain of your loss and learn how to carry your grief in meaningful ways as you eventually move toward healing and rejoining life.