Bereaved kids learn to manage grief at a camp called Blue Butterfly. — Photos: ANNETTE RIEDL/dpa
THE CHILDREN picked out beads to make bracelets. None of the bracelets matched, none followed a discernible pattern.
Jackson, five, chose a purple bead. It symbolised his mum’s death. Next, he chose a pink bead because she died of cancer. The black bead meant he felt lonely. The girl next to him picked a white bead. Her sibling had died.
A yellow bead symbolised death by natural causes. A red bead meant murder. An orange bead, suicide.
It was their first day at Blue Butterfly, a camp in Manatee County in the US state of Florida for bereaved children.
The campers attend support groups and learn coping techniques from certified counsellors, but they also process their grief with puppies, meditation and stuffed animals from a teddy bear library.
The first day meant introductions – of the campers and their “special person” who died.
As young as four, many children in this group could not yet read or write. Instead, they strung together beads like sentences in their grief story.
The bracelets were also tools for Blue Butterfly counsellors to explain words like murder, suicide, burial and cremation.
Later, Jackson picked stickers to decorate his name tag. A lion, his favourite animal. A turtle, his mum’s favourite. And a lion with big hearts for eyes because he loved his mum a lot.
”She loved turtles,” Jackson said, “and she loved pictures of me.”
When Blue Butterfly director Danielle Visone was 10, her dad was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He died 65 days later. Visone’s mother enrolled in support groups. The group for grieving children gave Visone an outlet to discuss her feelings with other kids.
”It made me feel heard and less alone,” she said. “It made me feel like people care about me as a grieving kid, but also about my dad. I was allowed to talk about him and that was huge.”
Visone never forgot that community. She remembered it when applying for college, studying for undergraduate psychology exams and earning her master’s in social work; when she volunteered to help launch Blue Butterfly five years ago; and when she walks by the picture of her and her dad hanging at Blue Butterfly’s facility, where kids are invited to hang pictures of their special person.
Giving children clarity
One of Visone’s goals is to help them understand when someone dies, they can’t come back. Talk of angels and promises of their special person always being there can confuse children, she said.
One child told her they just need to find some pixie dust and then their special person will come home. Another described their plans to visit their special person in heaven – they couldn’t grasp the difference between that and a trip to Orlando.
”This age group still has that magical thinking mentality,” Visone said. “It’s a lot of reassuring that when this person dies that means their body stops working, it shuts down, it can no longer work.”
A hundred bereaved children attended camp for free this summer thanks to a grant from Manatee County and donors from the Tidewell Foundation, a Sarasota based non-profit that provides grief counselling and other support services.
Campers participated in 10 support group sessions, each focused on a tool to help them heal.
Before joining a group, each child meets one-on-one with a counsellor to evaluate if they are ready to discuss their grief in a group setting.
”We want everyone to know that everyone in the circle has had someone die – even me, even the volunteers, even the other staff,” Visone said.
Many children acknowledge they are afraid of being bullied if they speak up about their person, Visone said.
”They get told ‘I don’t want to hear that because it makes other kids uncomfortable,’” she said.
More than any one part of the curriculum, Visone said, the connections formed between campers help heal.
”Coming here, it’s not only about learning and really processing,” she said. “It’s about camaraderie.”
Chapman said children often grieve twice: first when the person dies, again when their memories of the person fade.
Checking-in
Lendy Chapman sat crisscrossed in a circle with campers on a recent morning. A pile of unlit electric tea lights lay beside her.
Every support group starts with a check-in. Campers share their name and the name of their person who died. They describe how they’re feeling, and they light a tea light in memory of their loved one.
This week was the “littles” turn at camp. The youngest children in the circle were just four – the same age as Chapman when her grandfather died.
Some could not verbalise their emotions. Instead, Chapman helped them decorate little stick-figure versions of themselves to place into jars, each labelled with a face – sad, happy, angry.
A child life specialist who spent 17 years in hospitals before coming to Blue Butterfly, Chapman is familiar with grief. She has lost multiple close family members. While counselling the “littles,” she chose to check in by remembering her grandfather.
Chapman said children often grieve twice: first when the person dies, again when their memories of the person fade.
”It’s not just about the death of the person, it’s about the death of experiences, the death of things you’re going to miss, the death of things you’re going to forget, the relationships, the milestones, all the things they’re never going to get to see,” she said.
By the end of support group, the glow of electric tea lights illuminated the room.
Making campers smile
A cluster of campers lined up in front of a door after morning support group.
The door swung open and revealed a litter of squirming puppies. The campers rushed to hold them.
The puppies from Nate’s Honor Animal Rescue did not play a role in any exercise about processing grief. They were not trained therapy animals. Their job was to make the campers smile, which they did.
But even during the playful moments, the campers remembered their special person.
Adrianna, seven, marched around camp in the pink leather boots her grandfather, who she called “Nonno,” had given her, and she told other campers about music from four decades before she was born. She talked about AC/DC and her Nonno’s favourite song, Long As I Can See The Light by Creedence Clearwater Revival. During craft time, she drew a portrait of her Nonno.
”Even though his hair didn’t really look like this, I wanted him to look like a rock star,” she said.
Paisley, seven, and another girl talked about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers while they coloured. Their dads had loved to watch football.
At Blue Butterfly, grief is a way to make friends. ”I made two friends today and one yesterday,” Paisley said.
”In dark times, hope glows.” The words on the walls of the grief cave glow. The dark, closet-sized space is the campers’ haven. If a camper needs a moment alone, they visit the cave. Once the doors shut, the camper is enveloped in darkness. Then, the walls glow.
The walls are black dry-erase boards. Campers, in their darkest moments, use glow-in-the-dark markers to write messages.
The older campers write letters to their dead loved ones. ”Dear dad. We got a new puppy named Zoey,” one reads. “Since this puppy is an English Mastiff, she will be twice the size of Cricket.”
Some draw pictures. In one, two stick figures, one big and one little, hold hands. Other messages read more like cries for help. ”Can’t wait to see you guys again, it’s been really hard without you,” one says. “My mental health is not the best right now.”
The final category of messages are attached to arrows. After one camper wrote “depressed,” another drew an arrow to the word and wrote “Are you ok?” along with a heart.
The messages accompanying the arrows ask questions, check on their peers and offer hope. One reads: “I will love you no matter what.” – Tampa Bay Times/dpa/Emma Uber
