EP132: What A Unique Summer Camp Can Teach About Empathy

Interview with Sara Deren / Founder of Experience Camps

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

Over 6 million children will lose a parent or sibling before they turn 18 years old. It's a large number, but a lonely lot. Sara Deren, who married into a summer camp family, has been working to reduce their isolation. Her Experience Camps has now helped 1,500 kids in 7 states and keeps them connected all year. What's she's learned can help us all be more compassionate.

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Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;25;11
Sara Deren
I think more than anything, kids come and feel the sense of relief when they recognize that there's people around them that get them and that they can be kids. Kids want to return to childhood. They want a place to be all of the things that they are. And we make space for both the grief. Right. There's I mean, yeah, there's definitely some really heavy parts of it and some moments where there's a lot of tears and, release that needs to happen.

00;00;25;11 - 00;00;40;10
Sara Deren
But after that release comes this, you know, the dance parties and the baseball games and the swimming and all the things that happen. It can't.

00;00;40;12 - 00;01;04;28
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast. After 120 plus episodes, we're doing something different this season. I'm still your host, Paul Sullivan, and we're still focused on lead dads, working moms, and how small changes at home or at work can have a big impact on their lives. What's new this year is each episode now promises to deliver actionable advice on some area of concern at home or at work.

00;01;05;01 - 00;01;27;22
Paul Sullivan
Short. Direct. Again. Actionable. Five questions. Five answers. Today we're going to be talking about summer camp. And not any summer camp, but a very, unique, important, special summer camp that I just heard about. Our guest is Sara Deren. She's the founder of Experience Camp. She's going to explain all about that. I won't I won't steal her thunder there.

00;01;27;22 - 00;01;46;06
Paul Sullivan
But it's that time of year when we begin thinking about camps. And like I said, this is a very special one. Sarah, who married into the camp business, is a mother of three. Boy, girl, boy, 15, 14 and 11. And she's here today to tell us about what she's doing. Sarah, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

00;01;46;09 - 00;01;48;27
Sara Deren
Thanks, Paul. Great to be here.

00;01;48;29 - 00;01;54;15
Paul Sullivan
All right. What is experience camps. And you know, why does it exist?

00;01;54;17 - 00;02;36;06
Sara Deren
Experience camps is a national network of summer camp programs for grieving children. Kids who had a parent, sibling or primary caregiver that died. We currently operate in or about to operate actually in seven locations, seven states around the country, serving kids who have experienced something that children aren't meant to experience at this age. Right? This this sudden loss or possibly a long illness type of loss that has rocked their world and left them feeling, and in most cases, really isolated from other kids, and isolated from the world around them that doesn't necessarily understand how to talk about grief and doesn't do it particularly well.

00;02;36;09 - 00;02;38;01
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. How did that come about?

00;02;38;04 - 00;03;01;16
Sara Deren
So as you mentioned, I married into summer camp, about 18 years ago and met my husband, John, who is a owner and director of a summer camp in Maine. And, I was working at the time in New York City and the financial services industry. And 2008 came around and I got laid off from my job and turned to my camp director husband with a little bit of a, what am I going to do now?

00;03;01;17 - 00;03;25;23
Sara Deren
What? I was eight months pregnant with my first child, their first child. And, we were at this real inflection point that started with a little bit of panic and pretty quickly moved into a place of purpose, where we recognized that we had this incredible opportunity with summer camp, with all of the amazing things that it allows, and character development, sportsmanship, growth, all the things you see at summer camp.

00;03;25;25 - 00;03;48;26
Sara Deren
But it was really for kids who both summer camps are for kids who can afford to be there. So we decided to start a nonprofit with all this new free time I had not having a job anymore. And, pretty quickly decided that, grief was the place we were going to focus in that nonprofit. So we we opened experience camps for the first year in 2009.

00;03;48;28 - 00;04;15;18
Sara Deren
We had 27 boys at that time, the camp we opened was it was a boys camp. So we started with boys. It since has obviously grown two girls and a number of other, locations. But I would say every minute of that week changed my life. It changed the trajectory of of my career. A lot of people's lives, I think, in the way that they've come into this organization and found their community, found their place longing in their grief.

00;04;15;21 - 00;04;25;23
Paul Sullivan
How did you find that that that first 27 did you have a friend who who'd lost a loved one? And what was the impetus to go out and find those those first 27 boys?

00;04;25;25 - 00;04;44;13
Sara Deren
So like I said, we had started this nonprofit actually, around that time, a girls camp in Maine reached out to us. It's called Tap Bingo, and they were running a program called Circle of Tap Lingo, a grief camp for girls. And they called us up and said, you know, we have all these girls, they have brothers. Would you consider doing the boys side of this program?

00;04;44;15 - 00;05;03;24
Sara Deren
We were not people who identified with grief. My parents were both still alive. My siblings were alive. It wasn't something that had touched our lives at that time. But once you heard. Once we heard about what they were doing, it was very hard to look away. When you heard the idea that it was like, well, yeah, that that's exactly the kind of thing we want to be doing.

00;05;03;26 - 00;05;31;05
Sara Deren
Still not entirely. When we said yes, did not entirely, I would say, understand the magnitude of what we were getting into and the impact that it would have that came in that first life changing week where those kids, you know, showed up at camp and, you know, took over our hearts, hearing their stories, seeing the way that the opportunity of being with other kids like them could so quickly change them.

00;05;31;05 - 00;05;44;21
Sara Deren
And one week we saw them become different people. And the way that they opened up. And I would say from that point, it really began to snowball into something much bigger because it was so evident how much it was needed.

00;05;44;24 - 00;06;08;19
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Question two when you bring all these, these kids together, these boys and girls now, and when you bring them all together, you know what happens. Like, what's it, what's it like? What are you going to get? I can completely, 100% understand why you would have these kids together who have this, shared experience of having lost, dad, sibling.

00;06;08;21 - 00;06;25;02
Paul Sullivan
But on the flip side of it, I could also see perhaps that's really tough to have a whole bunch of people who have all, you know, all grieving about, you know, losses that kids shouldn't have to go through. So question two, what's it like? What's it like for these kids when they come there for this week?

00;06;25;04 - 00;06;35;24
Sara Deren
I think most people would be surprised to to glimpse a scene of grief camp going into it with the assumption that grief camp is sad, right? That's your first most people's first.

00;06;35;27 - 00;06;39;06
Paul Sullivan
It it's called grief camp. So. That's right.

00;06;39;09 - 00;07;01;23
Sara Deren
Yeah. The truth is, it is overwhelmingly positive, joyful, exuberant with with all of the play and the fun of camp. I think more than anything, kids come and feel the sense of relief when they recognize that there's people around them that get them and that they can be kids. Kids want to return to childhood. They want a place to be all of the things that they are.

00;07;01;23 - 00;07;23;09
Sara Deren
And we make space for both the grief. Right. There's I mean, yeah, there's definitely some really heavy parts of it and some moments where there's a lot of tears and, release that needs to happen. But after that release comes this, you know, the dance parties and the baseball games and the swimming and all the things that happen at camp.

00;07;23;11 - 00;07;52;19
Sara Deren
And we start with camp, we start with play. We start with the language of childhood. So when kids come to camp, they arrive on their bus to a dance party, literally music going. The counselors all clapping. Everybody's jumping around and you can see the kids who are coming off that bus for the first time. Assuming that grief camp is going to be really sad, and we're probably forced to get on that bus by their parent caregiver, and they step off the bus into this party, into this welcoming, wonderful, joyful experience.

00;07;52;19 - 00;08;11;21
Sara Deren
And you can literally watch their shoulders start to drop as they walk off that bus. And the first thing we do for the first thing, we just play. They get to know each other. We play games, we, we feed them candy like we it's just it's fun. And we want to show them that they're here to have fun.

00;08;11;24 - 00;08;39;04
Sara Deren
From the very first moment they get there. And then as we go, as they get more comfortable as that common language of childhood and play begins to take shape for them, then we start to weave in our clinical programing, right? We have, license therapists that are there providing peer support, facilitating opportunities for them to talk, to, create, to, to sort of use different skills and tools to express themselves.

00;08;39;06 - 00;08;54;27
Sara Deren
Not every kid has any expressive language to talk about their grief, but we're showing them other ways to, shape their words, to tell their story, and to ultimately start to normalize what they're feeling so that they can build on that at camp and past camp.

00;08;54;29 - 00;09;00;12
Paul Sullivan
Are there are there kids at all age ranges here? They started like, you know, little kids, etc.? What is the age range that.

00;09;00;14 - 00;09;12;22
Sara Deren
Our pants go from? Ages 8 to 18. So kids are going into fourth grade and then graduating high school and then they, you know, ideally come back to be junior counselors and pay it forward to the next class of kids.

00;09;12;24 - 00;09;46;07
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Question three. And this is about kind of, you know, I, I, you know, I was a camper and I remember those eight weeks of summer camp so. Well, but I also remember having, summer friends who, you know, back then pre Facebook pre, you know, social media, pre phone. I would, have an amazing time with and then, I would miss them for a couple weeks when I went back to school and then a couple weeks before camp would start, I'd, reach out to them again, and.

00;09;46;07 - 00;10;08;10
Paul Sullivan
And they're my summer friends. What's it like, though, for these kids who are going to experience camps, are going to, you know, talk about their grief. You know, question three is really, you know, are you developing, or do you have, you know, programs that extend beyond this one week of, of being in person to keep them connected?

00;10;08;12 - 00;10;12;05
Paul Sullivan
In this community, positively throughout the year?

00;10;12;07 - 00;10;41;12
Sara Deren
We do. And, I think every kid needs something different. I talked to a lot of kids who come to that camp for one week. They have a text group with their friends. They either use it daily or twice a year, and they that's what they need. That's all they need is to know that those people are there, the connections they make in one week at camp, I think, are deeper than anything else they can find or will find in their in their lives in some cases.

00;10;41;12 - 00;11;01;20
Sara Deren
And they will tell us that we have kids that have, you know, been coming for years and years and years are now counselors, and those are still their best friends. The level of connection that happens so quickly and so intentionally is just like unlike anything you're going to have at school or on a sports team. There aren't those opportunities to, like, sit down with your 12 year old buddy and like, talk about your feelings, right?

00;11;01;20 - 00;11;23;24
Sara Deren
That doesn't happen in most places in the world. So what happens at camp really happens quickly and very it really gels quickly so the kids will will stay in touch throughout the year. And that's a big part of their experience at camp is a continuation. They have past camp just in that informal way. And then we provide for the kids who maybe don't follow that same path.

00;11;23;26 - 00;11;40;01
Sara Deren
We provide programing throughout the year as well. So we do a couple camper reunions for the kids that come to camp. We have some virtual programing and now what we're doing as well as for kids who don't come to camp and there will be many who don't come to camp, right? We have 1500 kids coming to camp this summer.

00;11;40;04 - 00;12;03;20
Sara Deren
There will be 6 million that will grieve the death of a parent or sibling. By the time they turn 18, in this country alone. Right. So there's millions of grieving children. They're not all going to come to camp. But our goal is to ensure that every grieving child can live a life which, with possibility, can connect to a community of kids that are grieving or to the, the language or the systems around them that will support them.

00;12;03;22 - 00;12;22;07
Sara Deren
So we're now working on different programs that can reach kids, what we call beyond the bunk, right outside of camp, virtually in person, through social media, through digital platforms that can articulate all of the wonderful things we know from camp and from our kids, but to a wider audience.

00;12;22;10 - 00;12;44;29
Paul Sullivan
That's great. I love this, you know, question for I mean, we're obviously, the company of dads. We come out of a lot of issues through the lens of, of fathers. We know from mortality rates that, you know, dads die younger than than moms. And obviously, I know that this is the siblings are involved.

00;12;44;29 - 00;13;10;11
Paul Sullivan
They're grieving the loss of siblings. Of course. Obviously grief. Some kids are grieving the loss of moms. But when it comes from that, you know, that role model, you know, point of view of these kids who who no longer have, you know, a dad in their life? What what does experience camps try to do to help those, those boys and girls, who don't have that dad, role model any longer?

00;13;10;13 - 00;13;29;17
Sara Deren
It's a really good question. And we do as you mentioned, we see that a lot. We do see statistically, that many of the kids that are at camp disproportionately have dads who died. I don't know if that's because a mom is more likely to sign them up or because the dads or the people are dying more regularly in kids lives.

00;13;29;17 - 00;13;47;18
Sara Deren
I think it's probably a combination of both. But what we do see is that because of, let's say, cultural norms and the ways that, kids exist in those relationships, the boys come in a little bit more hesitant and less, further along in their expressive journey. Right? We see the girls come in and the programs are separate.

00;13;47;18 - 00;14;09;00
Sara Deren
So you have a girls camp, the girls come in and they start talking right off the bat. They're used to talking. They're used to that sort of normative social, you know, conversational flow with their girlfriends, the boys a little bit less so. So they come in and you hand them a basketball and that's how they're going to start kind of connecting with each other and building a common language through play.

00;14;09;03 - 00;14;26;05
Sara Deren
What we do though is because we, we have a separate, you know, boys and girls program, the boys just naturally will have all of these male mentors around them from the time they get there. You know, we have these volunteer counselors that come in in their 20s and 30s and 40s. They are they have had lived experiences.

00;14;26;05 - 00;14;45;21
Sara Deren
Many of them have had losses themselves. Many of them have had similar losses to these kids, whether it was their mom, their dad, their sibling. But they can really connect with them on their grief. And they can also show these kids that, like, I survived this, right? They are they are incredible role models and incredible people. And we say there's no jerks at grief camp, right?

00;14;45;21 - 00;15;13;21
Sara Deren
The people that are coming into volunteer, pretty exceptional people. Yeah. And these kids connect so deeply with them because of those shared experiences and stories, because they look up to them and because in many cases, they're missing that male role model in their lives, that these volunteers are sort of filling that place for them in their modeling of what masculinity looks like, in their modeling of what a a father figure or a brother figure can look like in their lives.

00;15;13;23 - 00;15;43;22
Sara Deren
And it's really impactful. You can see it in the way that they kind of come together with that group, their bunk, their counselors, the connections they have, and the counselors stay with them year after year as they move up in the different age groups. So they really build a very genuine and deep relationship with them. One of the favorite, one of my favorite activities we do at camp for the older kids is we have a a session called adulting 101, and it is for the reason of exactly what you're talking about.

00;15;43;22 - 00;16;15;01
Sara Deren
A lot of the kids might not have dads that are showing them how to tie a tie, how to shake a hand, how to have an interview. And we kind of leave it up to them to guide us. Like, what do you want to know about? And the kids questions are so interesting and so insightful and the things that like, of course, they need to know about these things and whether they have a dad that died or a dad who's at home super busy because the mom died, or a sibling or whatever the case is, the parents are stretched and they might not have the same level of attention that they get when they're at

00;16;15;01 - 00;16;23;14
Sara Deren
camp. Or they can ask these questions. They can be vulnerable and they can really learn what that male father figure, a role model, can look like.

00;16;23;17 - 00;16;43;26
Paul Sullivan
Wow. You're right, because, I mean, so much of what our kids learn from us is by observing, you know, not so much listening to us and observing what we're doing. And if you are, you know, the surviving parent, if that's the case and you're doing double duty, you probably don't have that. You don't have that time to sort of pause and say, okay, that's how we do.

00;16;43;28 - 00;17;04;11
Paul Sullivan
That leads it directly into the fifth and final question. And that is about, you know, parents, you know, when I eat, my kids go to day camp, they don't go to sleep away camp. But when I, you know, a lot of the parents in our community whose kids go to sleep away camp, they talk about, oh, we get a break, they're gone for fill in the four weeks, seven weeks, whatever we're going to go do X, Y and Z.

00;17;04;13 - 00;17;32;13
Paul Sullivan
What are the do you provide services or support for the parents whose children go off to experience camp? Because should they need they're going to get a break too. But that break may be very different for them. They may not they may not have a partner, or they may have lost a child and they may be missing. The other job is experience camps in a position to, support the parents of the children who who get to attend new programs.

00;17;32;16 - 00;17;53;15
Sara Deren
We do, and we are. That's one of our biggest areas of growth coming up as well. So as you mentioned, I think that one of the biggest gifts that they tell us we give them is just that time, right? They are parents who are parenting grieving children and often grieving themselves. And it's very hard for them to find time to put their own oxygen masks on.

00;17;53;18 - 00;18;15;29
Sara Deren
Right. They're not able to take care of themselves because they're so worried about their kids. So when we're able to take their kids away for a week and then show them, we send hundreds of pictures, we send detailed emails every day. We show them, your kids, okay, we got this. Go take a break. And by the first day, I think they're sort of, you know, they're not hitting refresh as often on those pictures.

00;18;15;29 - 00;18;32;13
Sara Deren
They're starting to, you know, feel a little bit more confident in their child being okay at camp because like I said before, most of them had to really, like push them onto the bus and get them out of there. So they're already feeling guilty and worried. And then we kind of shift into, okay, everything's fine. I'm going to go take some time for myself.

00;18;32;13 - 00;18;58;12
Sara Deren
And that can look a lot of different ways. So I think the first thing like you said, is just encouraging them, letting them know, we've got this, you will take care of you. And as you also pointed out, one of the things we're building on now is providing more caregiver support, providing more community for the caregivers to connect with each other on the journey of being caregivers of grieving children, and as well as being on the journey of being grieving people.

00;18;58;14 - 00;19;19;25
Sara Deren
So we're developing caregiver support communities. We had, family camp programs for the first time this year so that we could address the whole family unit. And we're looking at different ways that parents and caregivers want to receive support, either virtually or in person going forward, that will help them on their their own journey to reinforce the whole family unit going forward.

00;19;19;27 - 00;19;35;06
Paul Sullivan
Amazing. So how do people I know, I know experience camps at the nonprofit? How do people find out about you if they have, a child they want to send to one of your programs? And how do they find out about you if they want to make a donation to to what you doing?

00;19;35;09 - 00;19;56;17
Sara Deren
Well, thank you for asking. They find out about us mostly through word of mouth at this point, a lot of social media and then a lot of outreach that we do when we move into a new region. For instance, we're opening a camp in Connecticut next summer where we're here in Connecticut telling everyone about it. So we want to make sure that that every child who wants an opportunity like this finds out about it.

00;19;56;17 - 00;20;29;14
Sara Deren
So we do a lot of outreach and making sure that we're putting our fliers in the right places. Everything happens on our website. So the camper application, the donation link is all at Experience camps.org. And we also have a great social media presence. As I mentioned before, millions of views on TikTok with our content to grieving teens as well as to adults, just telling the stories of grieving kids and helping people to better understand how to support the grieving people in their lives.

00;20;29;16 - 00;20;55;09
Paul Sullivan
Sara Darren, founder of Experience Camps. Thank you for being my guest on the Company Dads podcast. I said five questions, but I have a bonus one for you because I've just enjoyed our conversation so much and that, you know, sometimes, you know, really well-meaning adults, well-meaning children say awkward, challenging things when it comes to grief because we don't know what to say.

00;20;55;09 - 00;21;12;14
Paul Sullivan
It's as somebody who's been working, you know, doing such important work since 2009, in this space, what advice would you give to people who are struggling to find, you know, the right thing to say? And of course, like any, you know, top things to avoid? That'd be helpful. What what advice would you give to listeners?

00;21;12;16 - 00;21;29;13
Sara Deren
Oh, my gosh, there are literally lists of things I would say or kids have told us to avoid saying that they've heard, people so often just they don't know the right thing to say. So they say nothing. So that would be my first piece of advice. Don't say nothing. Always say something. Even if it's the wrong thing.

00;21;29;13 - 00;21;55;15
Sara Deren
You can always sort of correct it. Right. So it's it's moving away from the silence and leaning into the discomfort of maybe not saying the right thing. But if you want to avoid saying the right, avoid saying the wrong thing. I would advise never start a sentence with the words. At least nobody wants to hear that. At least this, or at least that it it minimizes what is a very real sense of pain and grief.

00;21;55;18 - 00;22;12;20
Sara Deren
When you start a sentence with at least, the other one is this really can be hard for people to kind of hear, because it's such a common thing that kids tell us all the time they don't like to hear. I'm sorry for your loss. And it's not that it's the wrong thing to say, but it's very overused.

00;22;12;20 - 00;22;13;20
Paul Sullivan
You hear it all the time.

00;22;13;23 - 00;22;42;11
Sara Deren
Over the years. Yeah, and it feels empty to the person who's hearing it. So you can still say, I'm sorry for your loss, but then follow it with something like, tell me about your person. That must be so hard. Do you want to talk about it? So as long as it's followed with a little bit of extra context or content, I think it can be used, but it is overused and usually in a way that's just like a check the box kind of, and, and it's not landing.

00;22;42;13 - 00;22;48;10
Paul Sullivan
Sarah Darren, founder of Experience Camps. Thank you again for being my guest on the Company Dads podcast.

00;22;48;13 - 00;22;51;16
Sara Deren
Thanks so much for having me. This is great.

00;22;51;18 - 00;23;16;29
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to the Company of Dads podcast. I also want to thank the people who make this podcast and everything else that we do at the Company of Dads possible. Helder Moura, who is our audio producer Lindsay Decker, handles all of our social media. Terry Brennan, who's helping us with the newsletter and audience acquisition, Emily Servin, who is our web maestro, and of course, Evan Roosevelt, who is working side by side with me.

00;23;16;29 - 00;23;34;20
Paul Sullivan
And many of the things that we do here at the Company of Dads. It's a great team. And we're just trying to bring you the best in fatherhood. Remember, the one stop Shop for everything is our newsletter, the dad. Sign up at the Company of dads.com backslash. The dad. Thank you again for listening.