Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Winter 2015 | Page 25

faculty spotlight

Dr. Erica Goldblatt Hyatt has a MBE, MSW, and DSW from the University of Pennsylvania. Over the course of her career,
“Dr. E” has served as a hospital administrator, researcher, private therapist, and clinical social worker. Her specialties include
death, dying, and bereavement, serious mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and crisis intervention.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She worked
with military veterans and others dealing with
PTSD at University of Maryland Medical Center and
Veterans Administration Hospital. She has watched
many people die, and has experienced first-hand the
sacred sphere that fills a room as someone passes
away from this life.
One of her most impactful experiences came
while she counseled children with cancer and brain
tumors. “The children’s resilience amazed me. Right
up until those last moments, kids were kids. They
were wise, and they were fun. You’d see these bald
heads running around these hospital wards and
they were just being children. It was inspiring. That
job has always been close to my heart.”
On Goldblatt Hyatt’s office wall hangs a
lithograph of a poem and a drawing from one of
these young cancer patients. “It’s a way of having
her with me.” Goldblatt Hyatt said, “She changed
my life. She was amazing. She was beautiful in so
many ways. When radiation affected her hair, she
shaved part of her head and grew a Mohawk. She
was artistic. She was a photographer. She wrote
poetry. She was wise. She was an old soul.”
Goldblatt Hyatt worked with this young
woman right up to her death and maintained a
close relationship with the family. “One of the
things I remember very well was that at her funeral,
a hummingbird hovered over her casket. And it
was like a sign from her that she was okay, and that
she was free. Ultimately, as a result, I feel that she’s
always with me and guiding the work that I do.”
This memorable patient ultimately inspired

Goldblatt Hyatt’s first book, Grieving for the
Sibling You Lost. Goldblatt Hyatt noticed that her
patient’s younger brother struggled very much
with his sister’s death. Goldblatt Hyatt explained,
“When I looked
to the research, I
realized that there
wasn’t a whole lot
out there for teen
siblings of cancer
patients that had
passed away.” When
Goldblatt Hyatt
went to complete
her doctorate, she
decided to focus
on grieving teen
siblings. A couple of
years after finishing
her dissertation,
the leading selfhelp publisher,
Goldblatt Hyatt’s first book is now
New Harbinger
available at www.newharbinger.com/
Publications,
author/erica-goldblatt-hyatt
approached her
about writing a self-help book. They said, “It would
be th H