CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A North Carolina man, with years of personal experience dealing with grief, is still using a high school project he made 15 years ago to help others.

The project, part of a senior class project to graduate high school, landed him an A and led to a professional career of grief counseling and therapeutic services.

What You Need To Know

  • Former high schooler, now professional psychotherapist, still using book he wrote in high school to explain grief to children

  •  Copies of the book were sent to both Sandy Hook and Uvalde communities after mass shootings at schools

  •  Author and psychotherapist Jesse Roberts says his own experience of losing 14 relatives by age 26 has inspired both his book and professional career

Jesse Roberts, now the owner of Charlotte Counseling and Wellness, says professional psychotherapy and counseling has become his passion.

“We are a group psychotherapy practice that specializes in various areas of helping people with mental health issues, life transitions, relationship concerns, grief, bereavement, trauma,” Roberts said in his Charlotte office.

Roberts has worked in counseling for several years, including at a hospice center and medical organ donation team. He says he enjoys helping other people trying to find peace or happiness out of bad experiences.

“I love being able to have a part in helping people create the best versions of themselves,” Roberts added.

But his journey to professional counseling actually started in 2007, when he wrote a book as part of a high school senior year final project.

“It’s a children’s book that creatively helps adults explain the emotions of grief that come with a loss,” Roberts said while flipping through the old project.

"Katie the Ladybug, Explaining Emotions of Grief to a Child" comes from his own experience with grief and loss.

“I lost both my parents very unexpectedly at different stages of my life, my mother at the age of 4, my dad at the age of 16,” Roberts said.

After high school, Roberts said the project sat on his desk gathering dust. At the same time, by the age of 26, he had lost 14 relatives.

So, he decided to publish it in college as he did internships and other entry level jobs dealing with grief counseling. 

“All of those experiences, my life experiences, have kind of led me to this field, so to speak. Hopefully able to use those experiences to make a difference in the lives of people who need that,” Roberts said.

Soon after publishing the book in 2012, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting occurred. So, through donations and other public support, Roberts sent more than 500 copies to Connecticut.

The book eventually faded from his mind again, until last year, when there was another mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas. One of Roberts’ friends sent copies of his book to the Uvalde library after he reprinted 1,000 copies in November.

Roberts says the shootings, 10 years apart, show the sad relevancy of his book 10 years later.

“It’s very heartbreaking to me that there’s still such a need for this book. But, it’s very evident that this is not something that’s going away. And so, it’s my hope that this book can be a tool that’s used to help kids that are around the age that I was, or even older, be able to better understand the emotions that they’re experiencing as a result of these tragic losses that continue to happen and plague our country,” Roberts said.

Locally, Smart Start of Mecklenburg County bought 125 copies of the book for each of their classrooms after Roberts reprinted it in 2022.