WASHINGTON –– Grief is always around the corner.
On a humid Saturday in July, it was specifically 2.2 miles from my home in Washington, D.C. I spent the day at local non-profit the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing’s grief camp, a camp devoted to caring for children and teens who’ve experienced loss.
They painted flags honoring their dead fathers and mothers. They wrote soothing messages to themselves on small wooden hearts. They broke a sweat dancing to go-go music. They cried, but they smiled and laughed, too. Because grief is not just one thing – nor is it something a day-long event tackles on all fronts. It’s something I’ve been learning too, after my dad died of a rare disease three years ago. Alive, and seven weeks later, not.
“Because it’s just a day camp, we don’t do a deep, deep dive into the grief,” says Jerri Anglin, the center’s director of clinical services. “We name it. We talk about the person. We connect with others and the biggest payoff, is usually kids being able to see that there are other kids with similar circumstances.”
‘They come out on the other end, in a different space’
Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC this summer included three day-long sessions at a local school, for ages 6 to 9, 10 to 12 and 13 to 17; I embedded myself with the teenagers, 24 in total. They’re split up into small groups of between five and seven campers, all of whom experienced similar losses. Like losing someone to homicide, or losing a sibling.
Before the day begins, the campers bring items that represent their loved ones to place on a memorial table. A ring, a seashell, stuffed Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle, pairs of sneakers and a Burger King hat all rested on a black and red tablecloth. After some intro activities, they gather in a circle and the camp’s director, Stephanie Handel, asks everyone who has experienced a significant loss to step in. The catch: Everyone always steps in. All involved with the camp have grieved, from the volunteers to the shaved ice vendor. The kids internalize the message: You are not alone.
Campers honor their loved ones with mementos.
The day includes grief group sessions, art therapy, theater exercises, mindfulness, an open mic session with campers’ families and various rituals to honor the people they’re grieving. “These kids come, lots of them are nervous and scared and apprehensive, but they stay and they come out on the other end, in a different space,” Anglin says.
If they want to duck out for a few minutes due to sensory overload? Quiet rooms are available for overstimulated campers, stocked with noise-canceling headphones and fidget toys. They also receive welcome and coping bags to calm them down if their emotions go haywire, or if they’re unable to name their feelings. Think bubble wands or balloons, sensory objects like putty.
Campers can calm down in this room with sensory objects, like bubbles.
‘It’s OK to be sad’
Midday, art therapist Jordan Potash explained they’d be making memory flags through an Indonesian art form called batik. You draw with wax or oil, then paint around it. The liquid won’t spread, creating a colorful mosaic surrounding words or symbols.
A grief group meets for campers to share their feelings.
“A memory flag is a way of consolidating just some of the aspects of a person that we want to remember, and a flag can then be displayed, or it can be put away and taken out for just special occasions to either share with someone or to keep private for ourselves,” says Potash.
The familiar smell of a glue gun perked up my nostrils. I was suddenly a child again in art class.
They drew stars and crosses and doves through stencils with wax, and covered their flags with acrylic paint. Why’d they pick certain colors? Why that symbol? One girl told me pink was her favorite. Another shared her loved one’s favorite color was red, and that’s why she chose it. These kids sobbed and expressed anger in their grief groups. But they were cool, calm and collected as they expressed themselves through art.
One young girl’s flag featured puzzle pieces. She told me it represented her relationship with her father and how complicated it was. Others crafted in a more literal sense, writing “Daddy” and “1974-2024.” Either way, they were making sense of something in their lives that made no sense at all.
A camper’s puzzle piece memory flag, pictured here.
Anne Howard, 38, a social worker who volunteers with the Wendt Center, empathizes. Her mother was killed in a car accident more than two decades ago when she was just 16. The organization offered her space to heal, and she’s happy to help others find the same peace.
One of the boys in Howard’s group of 12-year-olds divided his flag in half. On the top, unhelpful words people offered about grief: “You’ll get over it soon.” “At least you’ll have memories of him.” On the bottom, what he wish they said.
“One of the things he wrote that – I was done, was like a puddle – was just, ‘it’s OK to be sad,'” Howard says.
Campers wait to get their memory flags dried.
In case you missed: My dad died of a one-in-a-million fatal disease. I live with the trauma.
‘The beauty of art is that it’s never done’
When you take the flags home, they fold up. You can put them away. You can take them out for a special occasion. You can share it with somebody else, or not share it.
“The beauty of art is that it’s never done,” Potash says. At some later point, you realize there’s another symbol you want to add, you can add it. More colors you want to add, you can add them. An ongoing piece.
A volunteer, about my height and age, struck up a conversation with me as students painted. Both of our dads died several years ago and unexpectedly. An immediate comfort and understanding rippled through me – not many people in their early-to-mid 30s understand grief like that. Much like these campers, I felt less alone.
Stop lying to your children about death. Why you need to tell them the truth.
‘Something that will always stick with me’
A lively pizza lunch followed the subdued activity. D.C. Retro Jumpers stopped by for some double dutch. Volunteers, Wendt Center staff and campers all jumped for joy (literally) as the jumpers twirled ropes so fast you could barely see them whiz through the air. No onlooker would have thought trauma engulfed the minds of everyone cackling and clapping along.
“Some of them have been just through a lot,” says Damien Savage, a 37-year-old from Maryland, who has been volunteering with the center since 2013, “and to see them open up and resonate with other campers is something that will always stick with me.”
Later, during a theater exercise, campers stood in a circle, feet shoulder width apart and elongated their spines. Most kids participated but others lingered at the sidelines, playing with fidget toys. Perhaps the energy was too much. Even among those participating though, some giggled and guffawed, while others stayed stone-faced.
The theater instructors asked campers to make themselves into shapes: A circle, a square, an exclamation point. The asks bordered on silly. “Can you show me with your body how you feel about doing your homework?” Two students fell to the ground, laughing.
Megan Hunt, a grief and trauma psychotherapist, talks with a camper about his flag.
“They’re at that stage of life where they’re kind of too cool,” Savage says. “Everything is not cool … with these students, they come in, sometimes they’re a little shy, they don’t want to talk. And within the matter of three or four hours, they’ve opened up and they’re sharing and they’re talking and they’re listening to their peers, and they’re comforting their peers.”
Later, in a session on mindfulness, grief and trauma psychotherapist Erin Hill gave us small wooden hearts to draw on with markers. “It could be a message that you want to say to yourself,” she said. “It could be a message that the person or people who have died gave you, or maybe something that was said to you that brings you comfort, joy or hope, something like that. And I would like you to take a moment to write it down.”
We all need a little help sometimes,
I wrote: “I love you.” I’m still not sure whether I wrote that for my dad, or for myself.
But, back home around the corner from camp, I’m smiling.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Grief stages, counseling, support: An inside look at kids grief camp
