I had been wanting to approach the topic of grief in childhood for quite some time. It took me a while to find a publisher who didn’t say, “Ee-uuw,” at the very idea of grief and children in the same breath. Yet, children all around are suffering loss — not only the loss of a beloved pet or a grandparent, but they’re losing their contemporaries, in school and out of school, as well as parents, who are dying from dreadful diseases. There are all kinds of ways that they’re experiencing loss.
What I’ve noticed is that the rule of thumb seems to be if little Johnny isn’t acting out, little Johnny must be okay. Generally speaking, adults are so caught up in their own grief that they don’t notice what’s happening with the young people in their lives. They’re not connecting in any way, and I know that little Johnny’s dying inside. I lost my father when I was going on 16, and it was a devastating loss. There was really no one to talk to about it. You internalize these things. But they don’t go away. They surface in some other-usually unhealthy-way.
So I wanted to create a tool that would allow children who were grieving to access their feelings, to know that they were normal, and to also understand that it would pass. It’s wonderful if they have the advantage of a grief counselor, but many children don’t. So I wanted to create a tool that would allow them to walk through it on their own if they had to, but that could just as well be used as a tool by psychologists and by counselors; and to be used by parents as a touchstone point to help them connect with their children — even just to understand what their children are going through and the kinds of decisions that are critical at that time, such as giving the child the right to decide whether or not to attend the funeral. Those sorts of decisions will impact them for life.
