Lynn Palmer Barton Papers

Lynn P. Barton grew up in Selma, AL, graduated from Smith College and Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University (BA), and received her MSSW from University of Tennessee School of Social Work, Nashville. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Board Certified Diplomate in Clinical Social Work. She has received training to be certified as a Rule 31 Divorce Mediator and as an Advanced Practitioner Member of the Association for Conflict Resolution. She has received additional training to be a Collaborative Facilitator, helping couples divorce using a Collaborative Divorce Process. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Ms. Barton was a co-founder of Alive Hospice of Nashville and served as the second president of its Board of Directors. She remains on the Alive Hospice Advisory Committee and the Alive Institute Advisory Committee.

She was a co-founder and first board president of the Nashville Area Association of Family Mediators; co-founder and first board president of the Mediation Association of Tennessee; and a founding board member of Tennessee Association of Professional Mediators and the Nashville Conflict Resolution Center. She has also served on the Board of Temple Ohabi Shalom and Jewish Family Service of Nashville. She has received the Loving Kindness Award from JFS for community service.

Ms. Barton has always been interested in the area of grief and helping people work through the process of grief, whether the grief is caused by illness, death, divorce, aging or other losses that have occurred. She has done this in her private therapy practice, by educating people in conferences and community speaking engagements, and through volunteering in various capacities. She has also taught in the area of marriage and couple relationships.

She was honored by Jewish Family Service with its Chesed (Loving Kindness) Award in 2010 for work with JFS and within the Jewish Community. She was also honored with her husband in 2014 by the Nashville Business Journal with its Health Care Heroes Lifetime Achievement Award for co-founding Alive Hospice of Nashville, one of the first hospices in the United States.

Ms. Barton has been married to David Barton, a psychiatrist, since 1961. They have two sons, both also psychiatrists (Ms. Barton questions whether there’s an unidentified gene in there somewhere), a daughter who’s an attorney, three children-in-law (an Ob-Gyn, a Creative Director in advertising, and a Landscape Architect), and seven wonderful grandchildren. Her interests include laughing with family and friends, reading, playing bridge, traveling, and trying to keep up with all her husband’s myriad activities. Importantly, Ms. Barton attended Sky Lake Camp for eight weeks every summer from 1954 through 1958. For her, Sky Lake was definitely “more than just a summer.”