About Us

Our Vision

Our Purpose

Board Bios

Advisors

Our Vision

We are not physical beings who happen to be having a spiritual experience,

we are spiritual beings who happen to be having a physical experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We agree with this quote, as you may, too -- that at our core we are spiritual beings. Our innate ability to care and act compassionately is evidence of our spiritual nature. It is natural for us to reach out and support each other in our times of need. One need only think how we respond to another's personal tragedy, or how so many are moved to action when a disaster occurs in the world. That is who we are.

We are also beings who share the inevitable experience of having sorrow or hardship at times in our life which can make us feel isolated, overwhelmed, and sometimes hopeless. That is our truth. The most powerful and helpful thing we can do when we have to face difficult circumstances is to connect with another who has had the same experience and truly understands what we are going through. 

Through the simple act of voicing our pain to someone we can trust to understand, our sorrows can strengthen us and deepen our experience of life.  Our sorrows and challenges do not define who we are. When we are in league with others, we are resilient, courageous, and wise.

Our Purpose

Our purpose is to establish a place for heart-to-heart sharing where people facing the same challenge can voice their sorrow and tap into their inner wisdom and strength, and:

• help ease the pain in their own and each other's minds, hearts, and spirits;
• call upon a 'power greater than themselves' to help them in their difficulty;
• face their truth, their struggle, and their power and be strengthened and transformed by them.

We are guided by the belief that only together can we face what we must, live each day fully throughout, and experience the blessings of our sacred nature. It is our purpose to help in that process.

Board Bios

The Sharing Sorrows... Healing Hearts Board is a working board.  Each member has a separate area of responsibility, as well as the shared work of guiding and growing the service.

Ellen Allan

Ellen brings to Sharing Sorrows...Healing Hearts a strongly shared vision of its purpose and potential, along with her ability to connect compassionately and effectively with people seeking recovery and emotional and spiritual support. She is actively involved in a program of recovery that provides guidance and sponsorship of people looking to develop a way of life that leads to fuller living experiences. Ms. Allan has 15 years' experience in information resources management and systems implementation, and 15 years' experience in customer service, training and business development in the business information industry. She is married and the mother of one daughter.

Rita Lombardo, Founder

Wanting to spend her senior years working for a public good, Rita’s months of prayers were answered when the idea of Sharing Sorrows... Healing Hearts came to her and inspired the design of the website and the organization’s logo. The vision of meeting the need of people around the world to voice their sorrows and reach out for the understanding, inspiration, and wisdom of others will be its driving force. Her business career of over 40 years includes almost 20 years of running her own business which provided sales services to business information publishers, in which she exhibited a talent for understanding and serving the needs of her clients and their customers. She is a Benedictine Oblate, the mother of three wonderful sons, and the joyous grandmother of six.

Amy Spernak

Inspired by Sharing Sorrows....Healing Hearts, Amy shares her photographs seeking to bring tranquility through the eye of the camera. She is currently a volunteer in her community. Ms Spernak's experience as a caseworker for the Dept of Public Assistance and as a 6 yr teacher in elementary schools in low-income areas around Washington, DC at the beginning of her career led her to develop an abiding concern for people facing crisis. While residing in Charlotte, NC, she was a volunteer interview counselor at Crisis Assistance Ministry, a group representing individuals, congregations, and foundations which assist those with low-incomes facing a financial crisis. Later she served as coordinator for the St Vincent de Paul Society at the Newman Center (U of Oregon) providing support and assistance to the homeless and low-income households in Eugene, OR. She is married and the mother of one married son.

Erika Wind

For Erika, Sharing Sorrows... Healing Hearts is the embodiment of how the internet can be used to improve well-being and quality of life.  She is the president of WindWebWorks, Inc., in Bethesda, Maryland. WindWebWorks is committed to using the Internet for the benefit of people and the environment, providing websites that work effectively to engage and serve. For example, Sharing Sorrows.. Healing Hearts not only provides a safe community for people, but also all of the electricity usage used at WindWebWorks to create and run Sharing Sorrows... Healing Hearts is offset by pure wind power.  Working on Sharing Sorrows... Healing Hearts has allowed her to use her programming experience, from her days as a computer science college professor, as well as her outreach skills, from working with the EPA and Landmark Education. She also volunteers on various service projects at the schools of her two wonderful teenage boys.

Advisors

Charmaine L. Chiardi, Ed.D., N.C.C. - Author, and Child, Parent and Family Mental Health Counselor

Bill Dietrich, retired Executive Director, Shalem Institute, www.Shalem.org

Beverly Lunsford, RN, Ph.D. – Associate Director, The George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health (GWISH), www.gwish.org

Gerald May, M.D., deceased – Author, Psychiatrist, and Senior Fellow in Contemplative Theology and Psychology, Shalem Institue, www.shalem.org

William Cope Moyers – Vice President, Public Affairs, Hazelden Corp., www.hazelden.org

Carolyn Stevens – Director of Development, House of Ruth., www.hruth.org

Phil Stone – Founder, Find the Divine, Directory of Spiritual Retreats, Religious Retreats, and Conference Centers, www.findthedivine.com

Rev. Eugene Sutton – Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland