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KotaPress Loss & Compassion Journal

ISSN 1931-342X

KotaPress Mission Statement

The mission of this organization is to provide grief support to bereaved parents and those who care for them after the death of a child.

Please note: We are not affiliated with any company or website that discriminates against bereaved families by recognizing only "children who lived after birth" or some other kind of line in the sand. We provide support to any family regardless of the cause of the child's death: miscarriage, stillbirth, neo natal, SIDS, SADS, accident, suicide, homicide, disease, etc. If you have been hurt by a company that has discriminated against your child because they "did not live long enough" or some such fake "qualification," then please be assured, you have found a safe space with us! We will not ask that your children "qualify" for anything before their lives and deaths are honored.

Means to an End...

We founded KotaPress after the death of our son Dakota in 1999. We both work as commercial artists; Hawk doing photography through KotaGraph.com; and Kara doing Grief & Arts Coaching through MotherHenna.com. Much of our commercial work is the means by which we fund the heart of our outreach here at KotaPress proper. Any book you purchase, class you take, private session you schedule, or other contribution you make toward any of our work helps in some part and parcel with the costs of KotaPress. From print run books to maintaining storage space and bandwidth for the site; from materials & postage for carepackets to Mrs. Duck project development; from outreach time to site updates -- all of this is made possible by your contributions to the press and toward any commercial services you choose.

KotaPress Objectives

The goals for our mission are:

• To bring the Mrs. Duck Project to full fruition as an educational tool including animation of the story, documentary of the bereaved parent experience along with an expanded version of the Mrs. Duck book in print
• To increase education and awareness in hospitals, birthing centers, nursing schools, and families about Thanatology (study of death and dying with an emphasis on the ethics of grief) and the uses of Expressive Arts for Transformation
• To provide a communal resource space for artists, parents, and caregivers to seek and provide information about the grieving process
• To offer a home for expressive art works created while on the transformational path of grief

Range of Services

Print media outreach:

• The Mrs. Duck Project is providing free copies of the original grief storybook Mrs. Duck and The Woman to bereaved families around the world in both the English & Spanish languages.
• This same Project is now also providing free PDF ebook version, fully print-ready, of the Expanded Mrs. Duck and The Woman book offering the story plus support articles aimed at parents and professional caregivers.
• A variety of books with a focus on grief and healing such as Flash of LIfe, Bone Marrow Boogie, and more.

Electronic outreach:

• KOTA: Knowing Ourselves Thru Art Blog for bereavement support and any issues secondary to the death of a child
• KOTA: Knowing Ourselves Thru Art eZine, exploring expressive arts for healing
• "A Different Kind of Parenting: a zine for parents whose children have died" filling the gap in service left by regular parenting magazines who ignore issues of bereaved parenthood and life after the death of a child
• Dictionary of Loss, created originally by lexicographer Kara L.C. Jones as a way to create language for addressing the realities of bereaved parenthood
• An eStore for the sale of support materials and services.

Empowerment Consultations:

• Home Workshops
• One-on-One Grief Coaching sessions
• In-person Sacred Events, Presentations, and Workshops

Commercial Services :

• Henna BodyArt & Visual Art
• Photography
• Custom Web Design

All together, these diverse products and services work to support our mission.