We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Korie Leigh, PhD a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Dr. Leigh , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

In my 18-year career as a child life specialist & thanatologist, I have worked with dozens of families at their most vulnerable moment; the loss of their child. Through all of these experiences, there are two moments connected to one family that shifted my work. In 2011 I worked with a family whose baby was dying. They didn’t know how long she would live, but in whatever time she had, they poured all of their heart and soul into making her life matter; from the smallest of moments to the largest of celebrations, this family ensured their baby would leave her legacy. One of the many things I did with the family was created 3-D plaster hand molds of their baby’s hands and feet. The process is difficult with a fully grown child and with a baby, it’s even more so. At one point during the creation, this mom appeared frustrated that it ‘wasn’t perfect’. In a back-and-forth conversation, I said something like ” in a way this process is mirroring what is happening with Sara*. (Sara is a pseudonym) She is perfectly imperfect just as this hand mold is”. I remember ruminating on that interaction, did I say the wrong thing? Was it insensitive of me to phrase it like that? Days later Sara died and my work with the family came to a close after a few bereavement sessions. Nearly 8 years later, I ran into the mom of this family at a conference. She was speaking on the power of legacy and her experience at the facility where I worked with her. In her presentation, she shared about that interaction that happened more than 8 years ago. Specifically, she shared how meaningful and powerful it was to hear me say the experience was ‘perfectly imperfect’. This mom went on to publish a children’s book with that as the title. During this conference and after I heard this mom speak about the interaction I shared with her, only 2 months ago I experienced the loss of my own baby. I was raw and fresh in my own grief, ruminating on every family I had worked with wondering if I had said and done the right things now that I had been in their position. This mom comforted me in ways that I can’t really express. She gave me the acknowledgment and validation I needed; shortly after this interaction, I wrote my first children’s book about grief.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m an Associate Professor of Thanatology, a Certified Child Life Specialist, and a Certified Thanatologist. I’ll start at the beginning; from an early age, I knew I wanted to work with hospitalized children. It didn’t objectively make sense; I wasn’t a hospitalized child nor did I really know of any kids that were sick and in the hospital. I just knew it was what I was supposed to do. After fumbling through high school and landing on the profession of Music Therapy it seemed that was the pathway I would take to working in pediatric hospitals. Then, during winter break during my freshman year of college, my dad had recently changed careers to become a Registered Nurse. On his pediatric rotation, my dad called me on break and said ” Hey kid, I think you need to come shadow someone at the hospital, she has the exact job you are looking for”. Over spring break, I shadowed a woman with the title of Child Life Specialist. That was the day everything clicked for me and could be the day my life trajectory started that set me on the path I am on today. Certified child life specialists (CCLS) are experts in child development, specifically in the intersection of child development and the impact that stress, illness, and hospitalization can have on that child’s development. A CCLS most often works in a hospital setting supporting children through the experience of hospitalization; using developmentally appropriate language they help children understand what is happening to their bodies, what they will experience undergoing medical procedures, and supporting children’s psychosocial development by offering opportunities for play, coping, and emotional expression. To put it simply, a CCLS can help to minimize the trauma of hospitalization for children. During my first paid position as a CCLS I worked in 2 ICU’s; one for cardiac and one for medical/surgical. These were the sickest children and while many of them survived and were discharged home where they resumed their childhood, many of them did not. Many of them died in that hospital and I, as a 22-year-old new graduate was tasked with providing emotional support to their families as their children died. Needless to say, I was ill-equipped for such a task. My degree and training prepared me to be a CCLS but the unique needs of children at the end of life were something I had no exposure to in my training. I remember in one week, 5 children on my unit died. At that point, I knew I needed to better understand how to support grieving siblings and parents. In a flurry of research, I stumbled on the word Thanatology. The greek root is ‘Thanatos’ the god of death and ‘ology’ the study of. Thanatology is the multidisciplinary study of death, dying, grief, and bereavement. I then went on to obtain a MA in Thanatology/Community Public Health and shifted my clinical work toward pediatric palliative and hospice care. During my time working with bereaved parents and siblings I realized there was still much to learn about how to best support them in their grief. Decades of research have shown that the loss of a child is the most debilitating and destabilizing experience, leading to more intense grief that is more prolonged than other losses. Thus, I embarked on a PhD program that would allow me to further examine the experience of bereaved parents and siblings. Earning a doctorate has allowed me to deepen my clinical practice by both teaching at the graduate level and creating a curriculum that reflects the present-day challenges bereaved families face. Finally, in the latest pivot of my professional life, I have added Author to my identity. After working with families for many years I realized that within children’s literature, there wasn’t a book that I felt comfortable using with families that helped young children understand and express their grief. In August of 2020, after my own loss, I sat down at the kitchen table and a children’s book about grief poured out of me. That book titled What does grief feel like, is set to be released with Free Spirit Publications this April.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I believe that my authenticity and intentionality have been the two most important aspects that contribute to my reputation. Both child life and thanatology are very small fields, everyone knows everyone. Within these fields, like most, you can find people that you mesh with and those that you don’t. Not every position I have held has been a good fit and in working on teams where I didn’t feel connected or even felt pushback when I stood my ground in opposition to leadership I stayed in alignment with my ethics, morals, and values.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

I’ve thought about this a lot. In fact, one of my goals for pursuing a PhD was to change my profession completely. However, I find that when I try to pave my own path instead of riding the wave, I find resistance. Put simply, when I follow signs and my own intuition my professional life blossoms, when I try to ‘do my own thing’ or ‘fake it till I make it’ I usually crash and burn. I think I would still take the path I did but woven within that path there are some opportunities that I wish I would have taken such as opportunities to work abroad when I was younger.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.korieleighphd.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkorieleigh/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/korie-leigh-phd-99a5073a/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/drkorieleigh
• Other: Tiktok drkorieleigh