Beth Chamberlin
		COMING OUT OF THE DARK Beth Chamberlin (Beth) looks at life through new eyes since her father's death

	December, 1999, will be a month that GUIDING LIGHT's Beth Chamberlin (Beth/Lorelei) never forgets. While most people were putting the finishing touches on holiday plans, the actress found herself going through the hardest of personal heartbreaks: having to say goodbye to her beloved father, Stanley, who suddenly passed away due to congestive heart failure. "My father dying was a huge shock, because he wasn't sick at all," professes Chamberlin with a tear in her eye. "I had just seen him at a wedding two weeks before... I had no idea that would be the last time I'd see my father." The Day That Changed Her World The actress was at work the day she learned her father died, just as the "Beth Is Pregnant With Phillip's Baby" storyline was getting underway. "My husband, Peter, came to tell me, and we immediately drove to [my hometown in] Vermont," she recalls. "I was on the cell phone with my mother — and of course, we're all just sort of half-there because of the shock. My mother told me that the doctors had come to her and asked for her permission to remove my father's organs —he was a donor —and she granted it to them."    After a long, reflective pause, Chamberlin sighs, then continues with her most personal tale. "I didn't say it to her at the time, but in my head, I was thinking, 'No, no, no, no. I don't want anybody touching my father or cutting him up. Don't touch him!'" she says. "I still felt that way after the funeral and everything. It's really interesting because I'm okay with me donating organs, but I wasn't okay with my dad doing it.    "What most people don't know is that even if it says you're a donor on your license, as did my father's, the family still has to give permission," Chamberlin explains. "Many people who want to be donors aren't because family members say no at that moment. And I understand it, because that was my reaction. I never dreamed I would have that reaction, but I did." Mending A Broken Heart For months after her father's death, the normally perky actress still carried around a tremendous amount of anger and frustration, and found it nearly impossible to move forward with life. "That spring, there was a ceremony for families of donors and recipients out of the New Hampshire hospital where my father's organs were donated. I did not want to go to that ceremony at all, because somehow going made it all so real," Chamberlin confesses. "But my mother wanted us kids to go, and I couldn't say no to my mother."    Little did Chamberlin know that the ceremony would be the first step in her healing process. "It was the most amazing experience," she declares. "It was such an emotional day that I can't really remember certain things, but all these people are there for the same reason you are. Sharing stories, sharing pictures. It was so amazing to look at all these lives and realize that all these families are going through what your family is going through. And the recipients who spoke were so grateful. This big, burly guy is up there crying because he's so thankful, and a young woman in her 20s who ran the Boston Marathon two years after a heart transplant with her donor's family watching her. It was so beautiful." Reaching Out To Others    As the second anniversary of her father's death approaches, Chamberlin knowingly admits that though she will never be the same person, that day taught her the greatest of life lessons: forgiveness, healing and hope. "That event was a big part in my starting to heal," she acknowledges. "Because I just wasn't able to before that. I just couldn't come to terms with his passing and was having such a bad time that I couldn't move on past my father's death.    "It was a very powerful experience. I so encourage people to become donors themselves," pleads Chamberlin. "And, God forbid, if they find themselves in a situation where they have to give the okay, give it. Don't be like me and say, 'No, no, no.' So many people die because they're waiting for a donor, and it never happens."  — Michelle Ann Moro