Lucia Isabel De Jesus lost her father when she was just 7 years old. As the days and months passed, she wondered if she would ever stop feeling overwhelmed with grief.
Relief came in the form of the Imagine Center, near her town of Mountainside, New Jersey. There, counselors and other grieving kids made her feel less alone.
“I didn’t really feel my dad when he first was gone,” she said, “but Imagine really helped me feel like he was here.”
Imagine provides free grief support for more than 300 kids and families from 55 towns. They have rooms that help children and their parents tap into their emotions, including a creativity room with costumes, board games and a piano; several rooms to talk it out; and a “volcano room” with padded walls to release anger.
“Grief is not a disease or a disorder,” Lindsay Schambach, Imagine Center’s executive director, said. “It’s not a diagnosis. When kids come to Imagine, they don’t need to be cured or fixed. What they really need is community and space to share their experience of grief.”
Imagine staff also go into schools and workplaces to teach grief education. Last year, they helped pass a state bill mandating all public schools teach middle and high school students about grief and loss. According to the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model, 1 out of 13 children in New Jersey will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 18.
“The opportunity that exists with grief education is to create a shared language, to not perpetuate the trauma that a family is going through and to help people know how to show up with kindness,” Schambach said.
Learn more about the Imagine Center in the video above. Find out more about its resources here.
