Packing for Heaven.
A daughter's story, a counselor's companion, and a faith-anchored guide for the long walk home.
Eighteen years apart, the same hospital room held a son's first breath and a father's last. A licensed counselor and grateful daughter shares the season she lost both parents within eighteen months — and the hope that held us, and is holding you, too.
Packing— for —Heaven
A Daughter's Story & aCounselor's Companion Working Title
I feel like I am walking through a door. Gloria Cobb — April 2016
A counselor.
A daughter. A grateful witness
to a faithful God.
- Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)
- Certified Trauma, Grief & Forgiveness Therapy
- M.S. Clinical Counseling — Mount Mary University
- M.S.Ed. School Psychology — Duquesne University
- Certified Leadership Coach (GiANT)
- International speaker & teacher
- Wife. Mother. Gigi.
Heather Fields is a wife, mother, grandmother (Gigi to her littlest love), and a Licensed Professional Counselor whose work has reached from urban Milwaukee to India, Europe, and the Caribbean. For more than two decades she has sat across from people in their hardest seasons — couples in marital crisis, parents in family crisis, individuals carrying grief and trauma.
Then her own hardest season came home.
Her mom, Gloria — featured four times in Woman's Day in the 1970s, a beloved fashion and interior designer, motivational speaker, and "Glo" to those who knew her — battled Lewy body dementia and went home to Jesus in April 2016. Her dad, Richard — pastor, administrator, and founder of a 25-year men's Bible study group called "Bibles & Bagels" that drew over 80 men from across Milwaukee — followed her home in November 2017, in the very same hospital room where Heather had given birth to their grandson Jake eighteen years earlier.
On his deathbed in Room 208, her father gave her one last assignment: "Make sure to write this in a book."
This is that book. Packing for Heaven is a memoir, a counselor's notebook, and a Christ-centered companion for the season of caring, losing, and going home. It is for the daughter and son walking aging parents through dementia, hospice, and the long goodbye. It is for the believer wrestling with what faith looks like at the bedside. And it is a warm, open invitation for any reader — of any faith, or none — who is wondering whether the hope Heather's parents carried is real, and available, today, to them.
"I do not feel like I am dying. I feel like I am walking through a door."April 2016 — spoken in her last days, eighteen months before her husband would walk through the same door.
"Heather, almost true, my dear. I am only going to have a 'delivery' into heaven — no 'labor' for me. That is what Jesus did on the Cross."Room 208 — October 2017 — spoken from his hospice bed in the same room where his grandson had been born eighteen years earlier.
For the daughter, son,
or spouse walking
someone all the way home.
Death is not the end of the story — it is a doorway. And just as we are born once into this world through labor and water, we are born again into eternity through the failing of the body.
Drawing on her dual lens as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a daughter who walked her mother home through Lewy body dementia and her father home through pulmonary fibrosis, Heather Fields weaves Scripture, story, and a counselor's wisdom into a Christ-centered companion for the long goodbye. Packing for Heaven is part memoir, part teaching, part workbook — built around the truth that every human life is intricately designed, intimately known, and lovingly carried, from conception all the way through the doorway into eternity.
It is a book for caregivers. For the sandwich generation. For those grieving, those anticipating, those wondering. And for any reader who has ever asked: does God really have a plan for me — even now, even in this?
The Innermost Design
Every life is intricately knit, intimately known, and lovingly planned by a God who promises a hope and a future. The book opens with this truth and returns to it at every bedside, in every season.
Delivery & Doors
We come into this world through one delivery, and we leave it through another. Heather's signature framing — labor, delivery, and the threshold into eternity — gives caregivers a quiet, hopeful theology of life's last days.
Hope That Held
The honest truth of what Christian faith does — and doesn't do — when caregiving gets dark, when dementia rewrites your parent, when grief and grace sit at the same bedside. Practical wisdom, biblical anchor.
Four expressions
of one calling.
Same message. Same person. Different rooms. A reader of the book may become an audience member, then a small-group participant, then a client. The work flows from a single source — the conviction that the long walk home is sacred, and that no one should walk it alone.
Writing
The forthcoming book Packing for Heaven, a weekly letter for the Reader's Circle, and longer essays on faith, caregiving, and the doorway between this life and the next.
Speaking
Keynotes, retreat weekends, breakouts, and small-group teaching for churches, women's ministries, hospice and senior-care organizations, missions agencies, and conferences.
Counseling
Clinical counseling under Heather's Wisconsin LPC license — for individuals and couples navigating caregiving, anticipatory grief, end-of-life family dynamics, and marital strain.
Consulting
Family consulting on caregiving decisions and sibling dynamics. Ministry consulting for churches building caregiver support. Training for senior-living and hospice teams serving Christian families.
"It takes a great capacity of soul to hold both the pain and the hope. The only way I have ever found to do that is by faith — beyond my circumstances."
Bring Heather to your
church, ministry, or community.
Heather speaks with the warmth of a counselor, the conviction of a believer, and the honesty of someone who has lived it. Her sessions blend Scripture, story, and practical wisdom — and leave audiences feeling seen, encouraged, and pointed gently toward hope.
She is available for keynotes, breakout sessions, retreat weekends, podcast guesting, and small-group teaching series. International invitations welcome.
A skilled, Godly therapist who is for you.
What we found in Heather, from our first visit, was a skilled and Godly therapist who made it clear she was "for" us and our marriage. She listened, advised, and even cried with us. She pointed us to Christ and reminded us of our status as forgiven and loved by God. We will celebrate 28 years of marriage this year, and we are so thankful God directed us to Heather. Our marriage is stronger for it.
— G & J · Marriage CounselingAfter over 20 years of marriage, my husband and I reached a point where it was either counseling or divorce. Heather was a God-send. Her approach was easy conversation, talking through tough issues with no blame or reprimand. Using biblical principles, she led us to the answers but allowed us to have our "Aha" moments. Our marriage today is stronger than ever, and we still use the tools she gave us.
— B & L · Marriage CounselingWhen I first met with Heather, I was a very broken, fearful woman. My marriage was in crisis, along with issues with our young adult daughter, my aging mother, and my sister. Through several years of counseling, Heather guided, strengthened, and encouraged me. I always appreciated Heather keeping the Lord, my Truth, at the center of my life.
— CU · Individual TherapyHeather served as my soul and spirit helper as I was working through a very difficult time dealing with the loss of family members. She reinforced the relationship my husband and I had, so I could lean on that relationship. I found Heather enabled me in developing tools to successfully address my challenges.
— AG · Grief CounselingWritten from the joy of knowing Jesus — for everyone walking the road of caring, losing, and going home.
Heather writes as a Christian. Her hope, her language, and her steadiness all flow from that well. But this work is not a sermon, and her audience is not only the church.
If you already know Him, you'll find Scripture and theology that take the hard parts of caregiving seriously — a sister sharing the road, a counselor offering practical wisdom, and a daughter telling the truth without flinching from the hard parts.
If you don't yet, you are warmly, honestly welcome here. Heather's mother Gloria spent her whole life inviting people, gently, into the same hope that walked her home. Heather is doing the same — through this book, through these pages, and at every speaking event. No pressure. Just an open seat at the table, and the same invitation Heather's parents lived: come and see.
Stay close to the work.
Join the Reader's Circle for early chapters, caregiver letters, and updates on the book and speaking schedule. Or reach out directly to invite Heather to speak, work with her family, or build a caregiver ministry at your church.
Heather Fields, MS, M.S.Ed., LPC
Cedarburg, Wisconsin
hello@heatherfields.co