Weep... and suddenly your heart is healing. Let your tears cleanse you like the falling rain.
For the past three years running, I have spent one weekend in August at camp. This isn’t just any camp. It’s a camp for grieving children. Kids from the ages of 6 through 13 who have lost someone they love; a parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, cousin, etc. come to learn about grief. Through exercises and sharing sessions, skits and storytelling, they learn that anger is normal, sadness and depression is to be expected and confusion, frustration and lack of focus are also feelings that can be part of the process. They find that they are not the only ones who feel lonely, guilty, betrayed. They learn that being brave isn’t about not feeling scared, but about doing something in spite of feeling scared. They cry, they laugh, they share, they listen and they support one another. I always come away in complete awe, with utter respect for these brave and hurting young souls who leave their families behind to come to this unknown place with a bunch of strangers to openly address the pain of loss. No easy feat for a young child. No easy feat, period.
I also see that by Sunday afternoon, they have become living metaphors of the story that is referenced throughout the weekend about the caterpillar who slowly and painfully emerges from the cocoon to blossom into a beautiful butterfly. They have courageously touched their pain, and in doing so have opened up to a world of healing for themselves and others.
Grieving in life is unavoidable. It shows up in all shapes and sizes and isn’t linear in it’s process. We know grieving comes with loss, but not just with the loss of a loved one, it can appear in so many different kinds of passings that we experience throughout life. The thing is, we don’t always recognize it as such – like the loneliness that can come after a dear friend moves away or the anger after a divorce, or simply the melancholy we can feel as summer comes to a close. It can even show up with those self-imposed finales, such as a sense of disconnect after retirement.
Allowing ourselves to take the time to grieve can be tremendously healing - to cry, or eat or sleep or talk or not talk - to take the time to recognize our loss, be gentle with ourselves and open to the world of healing that awaits to transform us into beautiful butterflies.
Greetings and Sat Nam! from
- Lady Guru
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3 comments:
I guess it is nice that there is a "CAMP" available for children to come to learn the grieving process but to me what is the saddest part of this is that these children have to go to stranger instead of their own family for support. It seems that society today finds it easier to send children to doctors, camps, schools, or to some other outside source for teaching inside of parents being parents. Maybe if more parents took the time to be the "parent" instead of the "friend" children today would not be so messed up.
thanks for your comment, anonymous.
i know there are situations where responsibility can be shucked and the boundaries of parent/friend can be blurred. but, i feel places like Camp Nabi are godsends. sometimes family just isn't equipped to deal with certain issues and i take solice knowing there are alternative places to go for help. no single parent or person can heal all wounds - especially when they are working on healing their own. life extends beyond immediate family, and in the broader sense of the word we are all family - and we can all help each other in so many different ways.
LG
when I was a young girl, my parents split, and my mom was clearly not equipped to handle her pain, not to mention take care of the three of us. The worst part, besides all that went on, was that there was literally no one for us to talk to about this. this loss was the single biggest loss we had ever incurred, and it shaped me, to this day. Perhaps having a place where I could have gone to see first and foremost that I was not alone in my pain, would and could have made a huge difference in my life.
there are many places that parents send their kids when they cannot "parent". there are all kinds of camps, from the "harsh wilderness experience camps" to emotional growth schools, to therapists and too many to count. For those parents that do that, sure, they may be shucking their responsibility from an outsider's point of view, but I believe they do it in the belief that it will help their child, in a way that they believe they cannot. In the meantime, to know the difference between a place where a child can see they are not alone, and to find a healing versus a harshness in this world is beautiful.
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