Danielle Wondrak is well acquainted with the subject of grief. A licensed clinical social worker with Empath Health in Sarasota, she is the creator and manager of the Blue Butterfly Family Grief Program, which provides counseling for children and teens who have experienced the death of a family member.

Wondrak was 10 years old, living with her family in West Palm Beach, when her father was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of thyroid cancer. He died 65 days after the diagnosis, leaving his family in shock. Her father’s death also created an overwhelming sense of guilt in Wondrak. She’d been told at her private Catholic school that if she prayed for her father, he would be fine. “After he died, I was under the impression that I didn’t pray properly, and that God didn’t want to save my daddy,” she says.

But despite her confusion, she remembered her father’s hospice care the day before he passed away. “They had a music therapist and a beautiful music room where we got to play instruments and write a song about our dad and our love for him,” Wondrak, now 33, recalls. “[The hospice workers] recorded it onto a CD for us, and we brought it up to his room and played it for him before he died. That’s one of the most special moments that I can remember.”

Wondrak realized how powerful grief counseling could be. “At school, no one asked me about my dad or his death,” she says. “At the hospice care center, people asked me questions, and they let me talk and share about him.” She didn’t know it then, but the experience opened up a career path.

Wondrak earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in social work at Florida Gulf Coast University. While in college, she volunteered at a bereavement camp for kids. Her first job out of college was helping a colleague set up a grief center in Fort Myers. Two years later came the opportunity to move to Sarasota to work with Tidewell Hospice and create Blue Butterfly. “Blue represents sadness,” she explains, “and the butterfly represents renewal and hope that things will get better.”

Blue Butterfly offers free services to grieving families, through evidence-based activities and support groups, which bring
together children who have experienced a significant death in their lives.

“There are more than 6,500 grieving children in the counties we serve,” Wondrak says about Blue Butterfly's reach. “The need is there. I’m grateful that I was in the right place at the right time to get this program started.”