Kids: Coping With Grief and Loss

This episode focuses on the difficult topic of loss through the lens of kids and how to cope while growing up. Our podcasters discuss grief and loss with social worker and thanatologist Amy Keiper-Shaw, the founder and president of Hands Holding Hearts in Newtown, Pennsylvania. 

Hands Holding Hearts is a non-profit that supports all ages going through grief, with camps, therapy horses and dogs, therapy resources and other events. For more information, check out handsholdinghearts.org. 

Transcript

Brianna
Welcome to the Giving Youth A Voice Podcast where we share information to youth by youth. Stick around to hear what we've chosen to share with you in this episode. Check out more information and resources about the Neshaminy Coalition for Youth at our website, nc4youth. org. That's NC number 4 youth. org There you can find our program and resources and become a member for the betterment of our community. Also check out our Facebook page to see our news and events. Give us a like. I'm Brianna, t host of this episode, and please enjoy. 

So the topic of today's podcast is going to be grief, and today we're going to be asking Amy a few questions regarding different topics relating to grief and loss. So we want to thank you for coming onto our podcast today. 

Amy
Thanks for having me. Hi, I'm Amy Keiper-Shaw, and I'm the founder and president of Hand Holding Hearts. I'm a clinical social worker, and I'm a clinical thanatologist, which is somebody who studies Death and Dying, and I'm a certified grief counselor. I started Hands Holding Hearts with two other like-minded individuals back in 2013, when my cousin and his wife lost their youngest child, and they came to me and said, "My other two children are suffering, and we want to get them support, and we're suffering, and we want to get support." So they came to me and said, "Can you look around and see what resources are available?" When I looked, I found that there was nothing in Bucks County, at all. There were therapists, but there was nobody who specialized in grief and loss. So I started first by having a bereavement camp. I had been working at a hospice. They discontinued the bereavement camp, so I pulled over our volunteers. I rented space at my church, brought my kids' crayons and markers, and popsicles, and we had a camp. And so we'd been doing it every year since, and our campus is for 6 to 12-year-olds who've had a loss. And that is how Hand Holding Hearts started. So now we serve, I think, our youngest child is three, and I think our oldest client was 83. We really have expanded our services from just the bereavement camp. Now we do workshops. We do groups. We do individual counseling, family counseling. We have our bereavement camp, and then we have a couple workshops coming up. 

Brianna
So one of the reasons why I wanted to do this topic of grief for our podcast was because it is something that I personally have experienced a lot of. I have lost one to two family members or, many pets or animals just about every year since 2016. I don't remember a year since then where I haven't lost somebody or some close family member or family friend or pet that I've had for years. And it's multiple every single year. And it's something that I've personally struggled a lot with, and I know that other people are also going through their own griefs, especially going through COVID, and just deaths within families or family friends or stuff like that. To start off, one of the questions that we have is, what would you say are some different ways or methods of coping with feelings of loss? 

Amy
Well, first of all, I want to say I'm sorry that you're having that experience. It's so difficult when you've had just one loss, but in your case you said that you experienced multiple losses. And so we call that compounded grief. And so it's when a lot of loss has come in a short amount of time. And you're not even able to kind of wrap your head around the initial loss. So that's particularly challenging because it's not just one loss that you're grieving. There are secondary losses that come as a result of it. So for example, somebody loses a parent, and maybe that parent was the primary caregiver or that parent was a primary breadwinner, there's sometimes secondary losses, oftentimes there are secondary losses that come with that. And so maybe somebody's dad died, and all of a sudden, mom who's not been working is now out working. So who's going to get the kids lunches packed in the morning, who's going to get them to school, who's going to be there to meet the bus. So there's a secondary loss of normalcy and routine. Sometimes could then come some financial concerns. If that person who died was a primary breadwinner, and all of a sudden mom is working, but mom doesn't have a degree, or mom has been out of work for a while, taking into care of children. Maybe she's going back to work at a much lower rate, and so maybe somebody has to move. And then as a result of the move, they have to change school districts. And so they've lost their home, their person who's home, they've lost their financial security, they maybe can't take their pet with them because they're now living in an apartment. So there's all these secondary losses that happen.

There are some myths of grief, and one of the myths of grief is to stay busy. And sometimes that can be a really helpful way to cope with grief if you're keeping some kind of routine. But if you're using that too much and you're avoiding your grief, that's where it can become problematic. So I think the basic things of I've had this loss, how do I cope, the basic things of making sure that you're sleeping, making sure that you're hydrated, that you're eating, that you're going to school or going to work, that you're keeping some kind of routine, that can be really helpful. It's also helpful to have periods where you're not doing anything because we're not human doings, we're human beings. And so it's important to just be with the grief. And that takes a lot of courage and strength to say I have these really uncomfortable feelings. I'm feeling really low. I'm feeling lost. I'm feeling angry because all my friends still have their parents and I don't. To sit with that grief, it takes a lot of courage and strength. But it really is essential. The only way to get through grief is to go through grief. Allowing yourself time to sit and cry, allowing yourself to punch a pillow and scream. It might not always be how I feel, but right now I'm angry, right now I'm jealous, right now I'm sad and to sit with that. 

Brianna 
I know that as like I said, as somebody who's gone through multiple experiences of grief, I think every experience of how I've grieved has been different in a way. I know there's been times where I just don't end up talking to people and I completely shut myself away. Or other times where I know in 2023 I lost my pop-pop and I had musical rehearsal the following day. It was in the middle of summer and I had to be back here for rehearsal and I couldn't make it through the rehearsal just because I, I was so close with him. So getting through the day knowing that he had passed, it was hard to just do something as get through the day. And being around a bunch of people in what can be stressful environment, not that it's necessarily stressful, but when you're constantly working, even though sometimes that's a good thing in that moment, it wasn't. So I know that there's many different ways that you can tackle grief. And my mom has always said, because I have many different sides of family and she has always told me especially to my friends who have gone through grief and like with me being there for them, she's like grief can come in waves. Like you can feel it one moment and then not the next and it can hit out of nowhere. And that there's no, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just how it works sometimes. 

Amy 
If you think of being out at the beach and you're walking into water, you know you first start walking in and the waves are pretty low. But as you get out deeper further in your grief, the waves get stronger. And if you try to dig your feet into the sand and say, I am not going anywhere, it's not going to knock me over, what happens? You get knocked over. Because you're fighting it so much and you're using all your energy and your muscle strength to not fall. Whereas if you stepped out another step and you dove under the wave and let it go over you and just took it. And then you pop your head on the other side, you're like, I got through that. And so I agree with your mom. You know, grief does come in waves. And I think another myth that we hear in grief and loss is to be strong, have an upper lip or people sometimes will say it's been six weeks since your grandfather died. It wasn't your dad. And they try to minimize our grief. But they don't know what our relationship is with a person who died. And so I think that we internalize these things and then we put these expectations on ourself of like, I should be over my grief by this time or I shouldn't be expressing my grief this way. And I think it's important for us to say it takes as long as it takes. And the latest research about grief and loss is that as long as we miss the person, we're going to be grieving them because they matter and they're not physically here. And so we're always miss them. Hopefully the intensity of that loss dissipates a little bit. But that as long as they're not here, we're going to miss them. Yeah. Yeah. And so just giving ourselves permission to express however, and however long it takes. 

Patrick 
I was to think of a response, but I didn't know what else to say. 

Amy 
You know, grief is a hard topic. 

Patrick 
It is a hard topic. 

Amy 
You are not alone. I mean, adults struggle, older adults struggle. I think sometimes the mistake that people make in grief is that they don't say anything rather than what you just did really, really well, saying, "Gosh, I don't know what to say." And I think if we can be real with people who are grieving and say, "Gosh, I can see you're hurting" or, "Wow, it sounds like you're hurting." I don't even know what to say to make it better, but I'll sit here with you. Here's the tissue. That can be so powerful and healing to someone who's grieving. 

Patrick 
So, for me personally, I've never experienced too much of grief and loss. I've had a lot of family members that passed away when I was either really young. Though I was just simply too young to fully understand. And the loss I really do feel is that what-if scenario, if they had just stayed here longer, I could have had the actual time to grow up and actually get to know them. I had my grandfather and had died when I was 15 months old. I hear stories all the time about him. I really appreciate when they tell stories of him because they tell stories of how he's a great man, he used to own his own barbershop business and just how much everyone loved him. And I do feel a sense of loss. I was just simply too young to get to know him personally. A big part of me just wishes that he'd just stayed here longer. So, I was able to actually talk to them, get to know him. But in a way, it is good to know people of my family are like telling stories of him. That's showing that he has impacted the people's life that he was a part of in a really positive way. So, I was able to hear their stories and actually get a good sense of who my grandfather was without actually meeting him. So, in a way, my family was showing me and teaching me things maybe not exactly fully realizing that they were teaching me. Well, this overall situation is negative. There was always a positive come out of it. 

Brianna 
It's sort of like a, what-if contradicting side of things? Because I was told that I was very lucky. Because I have so many sides of family, I had my poppy and mom-mom Joyce and they were my great-grandparents. So, the fact that my poppy passed in 2020 and mom-mom Joyce was the first person that I really remember passing in 2016. So, I had so much time with them. And I'm so grateful for all those moments that I had, but it's also hard because you know that they're the great-grandparents. So, you can have all this time, but then you know that you're not going to have as much time with them as your other grandparents or other family members. So, it's like the hard part of it. You're grateful for those moments, but those moments are hard because you expect them a little sooner. 

Amy 
Well said. Losing somebody significant in your life, whether you're fifteen months or fifteen years, you know, it's hard because it sounds like your family has an excellent job of creating legacy. And so, in a way, your grandfather is living on through his stories and through photos, and he's an active part of your life. So, it kind of speaks to what I said earlier is that when you lose someone you love, you know, years ago, psychiatry used to say, you know, in six months if you're still grieving, then there's something wrong. You should go see a therapist. And now they really have pulled that back and they said, you know, as long as you love somebody you're going to grieve. On the flip side of that, as long as someone's gone, your family has been able to create legacy and keep him alive in a way. 

Patrick 
Exactly. 

Amy 
You know, kind of in your case it was, I didn't know how wonderful this person was to miss. And in your case you said, well, I had time with them and I learned how wonderful they were and now I miss them. 

Patrick 
In terms of feelings of loss, how do you cope with that? How do you cope with the feelings of loss? 

Amy 
So, again, everyone copes very differently. It depends on the type of relationship you had with the individual and it depends on your own, like internal resources. So, do you have supports? Do you have a history of mental health challenges? Do you have a history of substance use? So, there's a lot of factors that depend on how to determine how you cope. But I think the first, most important thing is to talk to somebody, to let them know that you're grieving, that you're hurting. It is challenging sometimes because when we're hurting, it's hard for us to reach out. On the flip side if you're someone who cares about someone who's grieving. It's important that you check on them. You know, whether it's a text like, "hey, I'm thinking about you, " or "I'm home tonight if you want to talk and we can sit and hang out". Coping is, you have to let people know that you're hurting and that you've had this experience and that takes a lot of energy. I think the person who's grieving, the hope is that people will see that you're hurting and they'll reach out. But sometimes people disappoint us. Sometimes people aren't there in the way for us that we hope and need them to be. 

I think the first part of coping is acknowledging that you had the loss and feeling that. And I spoke a little earlier about different ways that you can cope. You know, for some people it's using arts or physical exercise, joining a support group. For some people, it might be my loved one died of lung cancer. So I'm going to do a 5k to raise money for lung cancer. I know that my uncle loved to go to the park. So I'm going to buy a bench and have his name on it and he'll always be part of the park. You can get really creative in your coping and the hard thing about grief is that you've never had this particular loss before so you don't know what's going to help you feel better. And how you feel Monday might be very different than you feel in Tuesday. So if you do something on Monday, Monday you go for a walk and say, "Wow, that really helped." Tuesday, maybe it's raining. You can't go for a walk. Or you go for a walk and you're like, "Wow, that didn't really help. I'm still sad." You have to kind of go into your toolbox of coping and say, "What else do I have in here that might fit? That might help." I think a big part of coping with loss is like I said, acknowledging it, naming it. There's a phrase name it to tame it. So naming what you're feeling. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling desperate. I'm feeling jealous. And then giving yourself permission to feel that and then say, "Hmm, what might help from my toolbox to help me feel better". It's not going to change that this person died. It's not going to change that I'm going to be sad. And that my life looks different. But what might help in this moment? So it doesn't feel so all-consuming. And it takes some time to you know what tool works with how you're feeling. 

Patrick 
I do like how you phrased how you do cope with feelings and how you do need to like search in the toolbox sometimes and to see what helps you. Because as helpful as one thing it could be, it might not be able to be used like every single day to help you. So I do like that to almost use multiple like outlets or just multiple activities, just to help. 

Brianna 
Obviously everybody's grief is different. But there's some cases of grief where it's not just using somebody. There's different circumstances that go along with that. So would you recommend different things to different people? I don't mean to keep bringing up my own experiences. This is just by going through all of it, this is how I'm able to talk about it. Some of the ways that I've found out about grief are getting a text about it, getting a call, finding out from a different family member, or my Mommom--a different Mommom--she was living with us for years and she passed away in front of me. But that felt different. Or even the pet's things because some of them I was there for some of them I wasn't. So it's like the difference between losing somebody and finding out about it and losing somebody and being there for when it happens. So would you say that you have different advice or different resources or ideas for people based on different scenarios of how their grief comes? 

Amy 
That's a good question. I think that grief is grief. But what I have seen in all my years of working and I've experienced, I've lost both my parents, all my grandparents, great grandparents. Unfortunately I'm familiar with a lot of loss as well. I will say in my personal life as well as my work life professionally, when people aren't there when someone dies, I tend to see more feelings and expression of guilt. If I had only, I said this myself, if I had only not gone to work that morning or if only I had hurried up and I got there, maybe they wouldn't have been alone or maybe I'd feel different if I was there at their bedside. I tend to see people struggling a little more with guilt if they're not there. However, individual deaths are individual deaths or not our deaths, not under our control and sometimes we give ourselves more of a sense of power. Of like if only I had done x then y wouldn't have happened and guess what? y would have still happened, whether you were there or not. But we as human beings beat ourselves up, we're really good at finding out one thing that we could have done different that would have had maybe a different outcome. And ultimately we don't have that much power. Life and death really is not in our hands. So I see that with people who, they know that the death is coming. If it's an unexpected death, I still see some of that guilt and that like if only I had done this then maybe this wouldn't have happened. But loss is loss. 

Brianna 
What would be like the top piece of advice you'd have for somebody who is struggling with that guilt part? 

Amy 
So I think learning about grief and loss, there are so many great resources. There's online support groups, there's books and the support groups could be at funeral homes, at hospices, at churches, you know, just in your local community. I think learning about the grief process and knowing that guilt is part of it and knowing that guilt is really us trying to manipulate a situation that we didn't have control over. And so what I see sometimes is that people are replaying things again and again and again in their head. And so I ask them to break that down. You know, it's a little bit of like cognitive behavioral therapy, like so if I have guilt about this, what do you have guilt about that situation? Why have guilt that if I go on to see them in the morning? All right, so that's what your guilt is about. So if you had gone to see them and they died, would you still be beating yourself up about it? No. Might you still be beating yourself up about something else in there? I stepped out of the room. I was there but I stepped out of the room to get a bathroom. Might you still be beating yourself up about something else? Oh, true, possibly. Or might you be saying I should have said this or I shouldn't have said this. We are really good at just being hard on ourselves and we don't look to all the things that we did right and all the times that we did say we love them and all the times that we did hold our hand, we look to that one time that we could ever feel like we should have done something different. So you know, I think learning about the grief process and knowing that guilt is just part of it and kind of playing out that guilt. All right, so if I feel guilty about this, if I had done things different, what would have been the outcome? What's the evidence that what I did was directly related to their death? Well, I mean, I don't have control over that. I don't control if somebody has cancer or their lung stopped working. And often times, most of the times, we realized that we couldn't have done anything different and even if we had the outcome would still have been the same and we'd still be grieving and possibly beating ourselves up about something else. 

Patrick 
I do agree that certain ages can mean like different ways of grieving. And I think it kind of goes back to what I said earlier about me and my grandfather and stuff like that because I was only 15 months when he passed away. So the simple fact is I didn't know what that means when I was 15 months old. And it was only when I got older, when I started hearing stories, that was able to feel that sense of loss. 

Amy 
Right. 

Patrick 
And while it's a shame that I'll never be able to experience that or just be able to meet him and talk to him, heal the exact same way, pretty much to rest of my family as well. It is good to know that I was still able to get like a good image of who he was and so on. 

Amy 
And you're right. What we see in practice. So maybe we'll have younger kids come and see our movement therapist and then maybe when they're eight years old, they're able to understand the loss on a different level because developmentally their brain is developed a little more and they're like, wait. So that means so dead means the body's not working. So I'm not going to ever see this person? They're not going to ever be here for Christmas? And then maybe they get to 10 or 12 and they're like, wait a second. So when everybody else has their grandparents for the holidays, like I'm, I'm not going to have my grandparents and wow. So I'm not going to know like the history of my family. And so you're able to process that on a different level. So sometimes we'll see kids come to us early and then they reach another developmental level and they're like, wait, I need to reprocess this loss and they'll come and see us. And then they get to another developmental level and they're like, wait, now I understand loss differently. I can understand a little more and I have more questions. And so we will see sometimes families throughout the years, they might come and see us for several sessions and then they leave and they go and they live their life and then when they get to that next developmental level, like you're talking about, they're like, wait. So wow, this loss really actually is affecting me because I've never had the opportunity to have a relationship with him like some of my friends have with their grandparents and I want to talk that out. That's why our organization is a little different. We don't do like long term therapy. We give people tools to put in their toolbox at their current developmental level. And then when they get to next level, they haven't found some other tools that might work for them. They come back to us and we brainstorm with them and give them some other options. 

Brianna 
What can we say to people who are grieving? 

Amy 
I think that's a really good question. What do you say to somebody who's had a loss? And I think we spoke earlier about, it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there. You're putting yourself at risk if the person could get upset with us. If we ask how they're doing but it's really important that somebody when they're grieving that someone asks, how are you? One thing that I learned is to leave off instead of, "how are you doing?" to just say, "how are you?" Because the doing sometimes can imply that they should be doing something. Grief is all encompassing. Grief is emotionally, how you're feeling. Grief might be spiritual. Do I believe in a heaven? Grief is intellectual. All right. Let me wrap my head around, so what does death truly mean? It's social. You know what? I might not want to spend time with my friends because they don't get what it's like to lose a parent. And now I'm not Amy but I'm "that girl that lost her dad". Grief affects us on every level. But what we need as grievers is someone to let us know that they care. Your comment earlier if you're like, I don't always know what to say. That is perfect to say, you know what? I don't know what to say but I'm here for you.

Patrick 
Exactly. And I always say that because as someone too young to understand like loss simply because I can't know what the other person is going through because simply I'm not them. 

Amy 
Yeah. Perfect. 

Patrick
That's why I always like if you need me to do anything like please let me know. If you need space, if you need me to like, maybe help you with a few things, maybe do something for you, just please let me know. Because you're showing, you're doing your best to like help and care. 

Amy 
Yeah. 

Patrick 
And it's really just up to the person who's grieving to like either like accept the help or just say like, "hey, no, I just need space." And if that's the case, then that's completely fine too. 

Brianna
Yeah. There's a lot of ways to help with it, somebody that I used to know, I remember she lost her mom and I ended up going with her to the funeral. And it was just the matter of having somebody there who you could lean on per se, having somebody in a crowd full of family members, a friend to just take a little bit of that stress away. And like Patrick said, there's so many different ways people can go about helping others and even you had said it about just giving them space, hanging out with them, bringing them food, taking them out, just being someone that they can talk to. And there's never going to be a right way per se to do that. It's what that person needs in that moment. And what we can do is just try our best to fit what they need in that moment and communicate and see what you can do to help. 

Amy 
But I think, you know, the mistake that people make sometimes is is avoiding the person or not saying the individual's name who died. And it's so important to say her name was Anne. And her legacy is that her name is going to live on. We're going to use her name. It's not the person who died, it's Anne. And this is what Anne meant. So giving that person a safe space, naming the person, helping them identify the feelings that they're feeling, maybe go for a walk with them and risking yourself to say--they might, they might snap back at me. They might say that that's not helpful. But I care about this person enough to try. So if you do make a comment to somebody and they shoot back at you, it could be that things are just so raw right now or it could be that they were really offended. But that doesn't mean that you can't ever have a conversation again. If you say something, they have a really strong reaction. You could always go back and say, I'm sorry if what I said upset you and I was trying to convey this. And that can actually lead to a richer relationship and conversation because it shows that you're human and they're human and that you're being human together. So just being genuine and even saying, like, I can't even imagine what this must be like. Would you like to tell me a little bit about your loved one or here's a memory I have of the person who died. Just giving them that safe place to express whatever they want to express without judgment is huge. I see at work too when somebody's lost a parent or a child or somebody's significant. I try to have the conversation with them before they come back of how do you want people to know about your loss? So in a work or a school setting, that could be a really important question too. How do you want us to let people know that you've had this loss or do you not want people to know? Do you want your teacher to know? Do you want your guidance counselor to know? Do you need any special kind of accommodations around that? If they're talking about Mother's Day or Father's Day, do you want to have an IEP? Do you want to pull in your ear three times and the teacher knows that that means you need a break from the room? That can be really helpful prior to the person coming back, so that people who are in school a person or working with a person can have some time to wrap their head around like what might I say when I see them. 

So our organization, Hands Holding Hearts is based in Newtown, we're on State Street and we offer counseling both in our office in Newtown as well as virtually. And then we also have a partnership with special equestrians, so they have therapy horses and quarterly our organization partners with special equestrians to have an event around the loss and then you have an opportunity to groom and ride the horses if you want and then Saturday and Sunday it's for three hours. So we have therapy dogs from angels on a leash, they come Friday, they'll be their Friday and Saturday, we have miniature horses that come on Sunday. And then in the summer we have our annual children's bereavement camp for 6 to 12 year olds and that's based in Newtown. Those are some resources that we offer, some other great online resources are the Dougy Center and what's your grief. We can help to support you, please give us a call or shoot us an email. And we're always looking for volunteers, especially for camp, if you think that you're going into like the helping field or teaching or something like that, it could be a really good experience. Loss doesn't have to just be a sad topic, in the spring of 2026, we have a concert, it's a Phil Collins tribute band, it's a lot of fun. So we do fun things too and we're always looking for people to help support that too. 

Patrick 
Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. I think this was an amazing podcast to be a part of and I think it's going to be a really helpful podcast for those out there who might be struggling with grief and loss and we really appreciate you going on today to shine a light on those topics. 

Brianna 
We definitely really appreciate it and like I said at the beginning, this is a very important topic to me. So I'm glad that we were able to talk about it and dig into it a little deeper. 

Amy 
Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity and it's been a pleasure to meet both of you. 

Brianna 
It's been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you. 

That's it for this episode. Thank you for listening to Giving Youth A Voice. Any questions about this podcast or coalition can be emailed to podcast@nc4youth. org. That's our podcast @ nc number 4 youth. org. Make sure to follow us on your favorite podcasting app and sign up to our email list on nc4youth. org so you don't miss our next episode. This project is made possible by funding from the Drug Free Communities Grant. I'm Brianna wishing you a happy and healthy future. See you next episode.