Children Coping with Stressors

    I was very fortunate to grow up surrounded by people who loved and wanted the best for me. I have always been close to all of my family members, especially my maternal grandmother. I loved visiting her and spending time with her. She would always greet us with a big hug, smile, and homemade treats. I remember the first thing I would do after saying hi to grandpa and her was to run to the laundry room and start snacking on her delicious treats! She meant the world to me, and was the best grandmother anyone could ask for. We had a very special bond. When she passed away, it felt as though I also lost a part of myself that I could never get back. I couldn’t imagine going into that house and not seeing her beautiful smiling face. I couldn’t imagine going into that laundry room and seeing it empty of the food she put her heart and soul into for us. I couldn’t believe she was gone. Being a young child and losing someone that means so much to you is unfathomable. My parents did as best they could helping me through the grief, but they were also grieving the loss of a parent. I became introverted for a while, trying to sift through my thoughts and emotions. That’s when I leaned to writing poetry. We had been learning poetry in school, and I found that this was the perfect outlet to get what I was feeling out of my body. I would sit and write poems about my grandmother and the times we shared, and found that this would help me to feel better about the grief. I saved all of these poems, and sometimes go back and read them to this day. The day I turned eighteen, I got a special tattoo to commemorate my grandmother, I’m not sure how she would feel about that J but it’s a way for me to keep a part of her with me forever. Although I only got a short time with her here on this Earth, I believe that she has been with me since that fateful day watching over me as my guardian angel, and for that I am eternally grateful.

    Grief can be very hard for children to cope with, not only in the United States, but also around the world. In turn, everyone copes with grief in different ways and what works for one person might not work for another. While teaching in Ghana, I came across many students coping with some form of grief. I taught at the SOS Hermann Gmeiner Primary School, and 10% of our students were actually orphans who lived on school property. They became orphans for many different reasons. These children lived ten or fifteen to a home, with only one house mother to take care of all of them. Like many schools in the U.S., there were no counselors at the school, and no opportunity for the school children to travel to get outside help. The other teachers and I would often invite our students to our sun hut after school to talk, play, and ultimately just listen. The stories we heard could range from happy to sad, but mainly we just wanted the students to know that we were there for them to talk to need be. With so many kids in one house, it was nearly impossible for the house mother to give each child uninterrupted individual attention, and we didn’t blame them. We became very close to the children that lived at the school, and it was very hard for me to leave them knowing that they would go back to having no one to talk their grief or problems out with. I had brought some pictures of my house, family, pets, and the beach with me to Africa and decided to leave them, along with a handwritten note, with the children I had become so close to. I wanted them to know that even though I was millions of miles away, I would never forget them and would think of them often. My hope is that I gave them enough strategies and tools to use to cope with their grief after I had left.