Transcription of Valerie Jones for the show Comfort, #66
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for coming in and talking to us today. We have Anne Lynch, Executive Director and Valerie Jones who is the Bereavement Services Coordinator for the Center for Grieving Children.
Anne: Morning.
Valerie: Good morning.
Lisa: Now The Center for Grieving Children it’s an interesting thing for me because like many people I tend to put support behind organizations I hope that I will not ever really need that I always donate to but I don’t want to say it out yet because well I’m going to knock wood as I say this, but organizations that I hope I will never need but I know there are a lot of people who need the support of your organization. You have a pretty personal reason for getting involved with all of this.
Anne: Yes I do. I lost my daughter back in 1992 and it was a very sudden death. She was only in 4th grade and so the center came out to the school and helped support her classmates and also the other classmates of my 2 sons. That’s when I first became aware of this center and so had been watching and very much impacted by the fact when something like this happens who is taking care of the children. It meant a lot to me and then when the time came for me to take my 2 boys and myself to the center, what really blew me away was the fact that it was a peer support model done by volunteers. The fact that some people from the community would be willing to listen to you when you’re in a very tender and raw phase and I thought that at some point, when I was well enough I would love to come back and volunteer which I did.
The mission of the center continued to call me and when there was an opportunity on staff, I applied for a position as Outreach Director and that involved going out to schools which is something that I’m grateful too but then later back in 2001 when our Executive Director was leaving, Gail Schnaley, I applied for the position so that I’m in the hot seat since then. It’s an organization that has had a very … the mission is very meaningful to me and something that I felt I couldn’t be behind something I didn’t believe in. It rocks you to your core when you have a loss like that. The community that’s there at the center is phenomenal.
Lisa: How did the Center for Grieving Children come to be?
Anne: It’s now 25 years old and our founder Bill Hemmens started the organization back in ‘87 and it was in response to a loss in his own life when his only sister, only sibling, had a 9-year-old daughter and his sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer. When his sister died, he was struggling with his own feelings and he was looking around Portland for support for himself which he could find, but he couldn’t find anything for his niece. He happened to be listening to the TV and saw a piece about a place out in Portland, Oregon, called The Dougy Center.
He was a stockbroker at the time and his thought was we need something like this here in Portland. He gave up his job. He tapped into his savings. He went out to Portland, Oregon, came back and started the center with 4 families and 12 volunteers. Fast forward to today, we have got 125 volunteers and serve about 350 individuals in our peer support groups.
Lisa: Valerie how do children grieve differently than adults?
Valerie: Children are very much with their feelings and they express them not just in words but also in actions and activities. At the center we give them those ways to express themselves, not just by sitting in a circle and talking although that is some of what we do but we have a lot of different outlets for them such as art and drama, music and play. A lot of feelings come out during play. Children are not able to stay in a place of grief like adults are. They kind of come in and come out in waves and we understand that so that 1 minute the child can be in one place maybe sad and telling their story and the next minute they’re off and playing. Being able to meet them where they are is really important and that’s one of the things about the beauty of this center, we meet each child, each participant where they are.
Lisa: Anne was that your experience with your sons, was that they were in and out of grieving?
Anne: Yes they were. For them physical activity and sports was an important thing for them, a great avenue for them, but being boys again, it was also a different level of expectations out, the gender aspect of grieving is definitely obvious. But I kept the subject alive and obviously by being involved at the center, it was obviously was a very vivid part of our lives. They had moments when they wanted to talk, but it was different. It was different than how I was grieving and different to how their Dad was grieving. That was also something that the center taught me is that we would all be different.
Lisa: I think this is an important point and something that we brought up and we’ve talked to other guests is that there seems to be an expectation by the greater society that people are supposed to follow some sort of timeline when it comes to grieving. I think we spoke with the Reverend Jacob Watson from the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, and he was talking about this fact that you’re supposed to follow your stages in grief and you’re supposed to do within so much time and if you don’t then there’s something wrong with you, but Valerie is that really reasonable to expect that people are all going to have the same, follow the same timeline?
Valerie: No it’s not. Again that’s the beauty of the center because we realize that everyone’s grief timeline or journey, that we like to refer to it, is different. We see families come to us and there’s such a relief for them when they find out that if they’re not following some pattern than that’s okay. That whatever they’re feeling at any point is okay. Often times people are surprised at the fact that maybe some time has passed since the death, maybe a few years but that grief comes barreling back when they least expect it. They can be at the Center during those times. We offer services when people feel they need it and they come when they feel they need it and they end when they feel they’re ready to leave. We leave that up to them.
Lisa: Well tell me about some of your specific programs that are available.
Valerie: Okay. What we’re probably best known for is our Bereavement Program and we offer bereavement peer support groups for ages 3 through adult. We offer that three evenings a week and the groups are broken down by ages. What that does is it gives children the experience of being with others of similar age who have also experienced a loss and that really reduces isolation that they may feel in other aspects of their lives like at school or with friends or other things they do out in the community. Being with peers can be enormously healing to be able to share feelings around that. It’s the same through the adults.
We offer two adult groups on each of our nights of bereavement for adults who have children in the program and then we have two kind of adjunct groups for adults those who’ve experienced the loss of a child of any age and those who’ve lost a spouse or partner.
We also have our tender loving care program which is for families who are faced with a serious illness and they come to the Center for support around that because we realize that illness doesn’t just affect the person that’s ill but the entire family dynamic. So it runs on the same type of model. It is peer support same age groups type of thing, and that program runs in segments so that families can choose to come, because illness is so up and down, so families can choose to come for a certain segment may be while their loved one is going through a treatment. They can come and get some support around that.
Our other program is our multicultural program, and we work with currently with two schools with children who have suffered loss on many levels, not just loss from death, but also loss of culture and country and sometimes language, and we help them build a community where they can be who they need to be. That again reduces isolation and helps them assimilate to being in this country while being able to honor the culture in the country that they’ve come from.
Lisa: Anne, it’s hard for me to sit across the microphone from you without actually remembering when your daughter died because my sister Sarah was on the soccer team.
Anne: That’s right.
Lisa: With your daughter and it was sudden.
Anne: Yes.
Lisa: I remember taking Sarah to the wake, and this is, I think Sarah was may be a little older so I don’t know if she was fourth or fifth grade. I was the older sister, 10 years older, feeling like I should be responsible.
Anne: Right.
Lisa: I didn’t know really how to support her. I didn’t really know how to support my sister through something like losing a classmate.
Anne: Right.
Lisa: What types of suggestions can you offer to people who are in that situation where they may not be the one who knew the child that died, but they want to support somebody who is in loss?
Anne: Well I think by being present with them and as you did, you attended the wake with her. I think an important thing is to listen to what she wanted to do. I think if you remember back there was a lot of children who were there and I think that kind of blew people away that. Actually these kids didn’t want to move. They wanted to hang around and they wanted and in a way it kind of I think maybe freaked some adults out that this was happening. That’s what we find at the Center is that the kids really know what they need and the important thing is just to listen to them and to ask them what do they need and take the lead from them so that you don’t feel like you are over…that your flooding them with information.
Answer their questions as realistically as you can and if you don’t know the answer at the time, it’s okay to say, “You know what? I don’t know about that. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.” I am sure for you being present, you had the issue of how your sister was hurting and what that was like and the need to protect her from that pain. The scariness that it was at that time that it was a sudden death of a 10-year-old.
Lisa: That is … a really important piece is that, even as a parent now with children who are older and I should say that my kids have all benefited from your son’s soccer instruction in Yarmouth High School and through the Yarmouth Colt’s Program, I know that your family was involved in starting the coach program, a Yarmouth youth soccer program. I think even now there is this inclination to want to protect my children though I wanted to protect her, protect from grief, protect from sadness, protect from all the bad things, “bad things”, “dark things” but I’m not sure that’s always the right path.
Anne: Well, I think it’s very natural but the important thing, which is what we try to invoke, is to listen to your children because sometimes parents do try to overprotect them and overcompensate and the kids end up having kind of two realities. There’s what they’re thinking and then there is what the parent or the caregiver is telling them and that can be very confusing. We encourage people to be open to it. It’s not easy and that’s why we field over a thousand phone calls a year and have coached people and helped them with how to have that conversation because it’s not an easy conversation because you don’t want to see your kid in pain.
Lisa: What about the holidays? It does seem that a lot of people are impacted by not having their loved ones around, but they aren’t necessarily able to share that with the people around them who are in joyful spirits and happy moods and unwrapping presents and celebrating Hanukkah. What types of suggestions can you offer, Valerie, for people who are going through this or people who are trying to support them?
Valerie: Well I think one of the most important things is that people give themselves kind of a break. There’re so many expectations around the holidays and if people kind of are seeped in tradition or rituals that they always did, it can be really hard to kind of decipher what is that we want to do. I know when my husband died and my children were 12 and 17 at that time, and that first year was really hard. We had always either gone to see family or family came to see us and that year we decided to do something entirely different and that felt right for us and so we encourage families to do what’s right for them but in doing that communicate with your loved ones.
They are there trying to keep things as it was even though for the person who’s grieving, it will never be the same. Being able to say, “You know I just don’t know if you’re going to have the energy for that” and “Can I make that decision a little bit closer to the actual date?” If people can kind of understand where you’re coming from, it helps them be supportive. Know your limits. Often, grief brings out physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, and if you add the holidays on top of that, it can just be way overwhelming.
So we really encourage people to do what they feel is right for them and their families. For some families that means starting new traditions that first year, but it really is important to talk about it and find out what’s important to people. Find ways to honor the person. So often people won’t mention the person that died and that can be very hurtful especially around the holidays. Being able to speak about that it’s really important that we bring his name into the room, that we remember him. Sometimes engaging the children in an activity, one activity for instance that anyone can be involved in is making a paper chain that can go throughout the holiday season where children and family members can write memories or stories or pictures if the children are very young and they can add to it throughout the holidays and that keeps the person there in present for them.
Lisa: Are your loved ones that have passed on, are they still with you in some way?
Anne: I have times when I believe that they’re in touch. It could be a song that comes on the radio. It could be just the sense that you’re close and obviously for me as I said already it’s how I’ve chosen to live it in terms of a career but definitely there are coincidences that happen that you say, “Yes.” That was something that, we’re in sync, we’re thinking about one another. That’s a nice warm feeling. It’s not a sad feeling. It’s a warm feeling.
Valerie: I feel the same way, every time I look at my boys and they have a mannerism or they remember something that their Dad taught them. Like my younger son was, we were talking the other day about golf and he said, “Well, Dad taught me how to do it like this” and to me that was so special because this is a child that has never picked up a golf club since. It’s just not his thing but he remembered that. It’s just amazing how mannerisms, whether it be the way they sit in a chair or something they might say… It’s like, “Oh my gosh! That is coming through” and it’s unbelievable to me, but it is definitely there. Definitely.
Lisa: How can people find out more about the Center for Grieving Children?
Anne: They can go on our website www.cgcmaine.org or call us at (207) 775-5216.
Lisa: Do you have a Facebook presence?
Anne: Yes we do. We have quite a social media presence and it’s not my forte. I’m glad that I have others at the organization who love to do that. We want out to be out there for all ages and try to be in front of as many audiences as possible because we serve all ages and that’s important too that we serve the teams and the young adults.
Lisa: Well it has been my pleasure to spend time with you today talking with Anne Lynch, the Executive Director and Valerie Jones, the Bereavement Services Coordinator at the Center for Grieving Children here in Portland. This is an important holiday topic, believe it or not, for those I hope who were listening that they now believe it. I urge people to go to your website to your Facebook page to find out more about your organization, may be consider volunteering or reaching out, donating money, all kinds of different ways to get involved.
Anne: Yes. Absolutely. Volunteers are crucial to our organization.
Lisa: Well thank you for coming today.
Anne: Thank you for having us.
Valerie: Thank you for having us.