My name is Veronica and I am from Boston, Massachusetts. In January 2011 my dad passed away very suddenly. He had a heart attack in our basement on the morning I was due to start work at my new job. My family has a motto which is "there are no problems, only solutions," and therefore I have used my experience with my dad's death as a motivating force in helping me become who I am today.

Currently I am a doctoral candidate in Denver where I study family communication. As the final step in my 23 years of schooling, I am in the process of collecting data for my dissertation. Driven from my own experiences, and from substantial gaps in research, my dissertation explores how parent-child pairs experience spousal/parental death. Specifically, there is a lot of research out there that explores familial death, but nearly all of this work looks at death as an individual experience, and, as those of us who have experienced family loss know, death is an incredibly relational experience. Further, this project has also helped me come to terms with my dad's death, and has given meaning to his loss in ways that other coping techniques could not. Therefore, I am reaching out to you all to see if you might help me in my personal and professional journey. 

I am hoping to reach out to parents and children who have experienced spousal/parental death and encourage them to take an anonymous online survey. Because I am interested in the relational experience, part of participation in this survey requires that you recruit your child or parent to also take part in the survey. However, because the survey is hosted online, parents and children do not have to be together to take the survey. Although there is no limit on the time that has passed since the death, both the parent and the child must be at least 18 years of age or older when taking the survey. The survey can be found here (tinyurl.com/familylosssurvey), and is anonymous and confidential. After completion you can also enter to win one of 10 $20 gift cards.

I very much appreciate you taking the time to consider participating in my project, and being a part of my journey. If you would like more information please message me, or comment below.