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KINGSTON TWP. — When children attend Bereavement Camp, they find they’re not alone.
The week-long summer program, which will return to The Lands at Hillside Farms this year for its third summer, gives campers a chance to spend time with other young people who also have lost a loved one to death.
“It’s been an awesome experience for them,” said Diane Baldi, chief executive officer of the Hospice of the Sacred Heart, which co-sponsors the program with The Lands at Hillside Farms. “It’s not ‘let’s sit down and talk’ in a classroom setting. They’re feeding animals and going on hikes.
“They’ve told us one of their favorite activities is making a ‘memory rock’ — art is very therapeutic — and planting it in a memory garden.”
Another therapeutic component of Bereavement Camp is the setting — a farm where children can learn about the life cycle of plants and animals, and bond with some new four-legged friends.
“There’s something so special about the animals,” said Hillside Farms director of education Lindsey Sutton. “They help the children form a connection.
“We never force the children to talk about what they’re going through,” she added. “It’s completely up to them, if they want to open up, what they’d like to share and if they’d like to share. But we provide a safe, comfortable environment. They get to be kids, and to get hands-on with nature.”
Because Bereavement Camp has been so successful, Director of Development/marketing Suzanne Kapral Kelly said, Hillside Farms is happy to host it for its third year.
For the first time this year, she said, Hillside Farms also will host two sessions of Grief Camp for Children, which is designed to offer comfort to kids who are suffering loss of a different sort — not a death but an ongoing stressor, perhaps the trauma of having a loved one incarcerated or going through addiction.
Luzerne County Judge Jennifer Rogers said she will be happy to recommend children who would benefit from the Grief Camp program.
“When grief finds it way into our lives — not just from death but from the loss of a relationship, the loss of a connection, when you put those life stressors in the heart of a young child,” she said, “that requires vigilant attention.
“It’s wonderful that we’ll have a program in our community that can help,” she added. “We’re certainly going to take advantage of it.”
Sutton said children who attend the camps will learn that some of the animals on the farm have experienced challenges similar to what humans sometimes go through — separation anxiety, loss of a loved one, even bullying by peers.
Along with working with animals, taking hikes, playing games and seeing nature up close, she said they will have a chance to plant a flower and place a rock they have painted in a memory garden behind the greenhouse. “It’s completely for them to make their own and use it to heal,” she said.
Bereavement Camp traditionally ends with a butterfly release, Sutton said. “It can be very emotional, and very cathartic.”
The camps are designed for children ages 8 to 13 and, Kelly said, funding has been secured for both camps so there will be no charge to a child’s family.