Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Jonathan here. This week we're re releasing a
Speaker 1: story of mine from This American Life, about a grief
Speaker 1: counseling center for kids called The Sharing Place. We wanted
Speaker 1: to play this story for you because it involves some
Speaker 1: of the same things that we talk about on Heavyweight,
Speaker 1: where I often find myself speaking with adults who are
Speaker 1: grappling with traumatic moments from the distant past. But in
Speaker 1: this story, I'm talking with children who are grappling with
Speaker 1: those moments in the present as kids. That's coming up
Speaker 1: right after the break. A quick warning. This story involves
Speaker 1: children talking to adults about death and other sensitive subject matter.
Speaker 1: There's a house in Salt Lake City where kids come
Speaker 1: to have death explained to them, not just that people die,
Speaker 1: but how they die. It's called The Sharing Place, and
Speaker 1: the first person they meet there is Jill McFarlane. This
Speaker 1: is how she explains a heart attack.
Speaker 2: Your heart stopped working and couldn't move your blood through
Speaker 2: your body.
Speaker 1: She has a quiver full of kid sized explanations for
Speaker 1: all the ways that life can end, like kidney failure.
Speaker 2: Your kidneys are washing machines for your blood, and when
Speaker 2: your blood they stop working and your blood sturdy then
Speaker 2: you poison.
Speaker 1: Your body and you die overdoses.
Speaker 2: Overdose is when you have a sickness in your brain
Speaker 2: called addiction, and addiction makes you take medicine that's not
Speaker 2: good for you, and you take away too much of it.
Speaker 2: But not all medicine's bad either.
Speaker 1: If you dealt with a murder m.
Speaker 2: H, it's when somebody chooses to make your body stop working.
Speaker 2: It's a choice. We also do choice and not choice,
Speaker 2: like murder is a choice, cancer is not a choice.
Speaker 2: We also do contagious or not contagious, like you're not
Speaker 2: going to get my depression and you're not going to
Speaker 2: get my cancer.
Speaker 1: The Sharing Place is a grief support center for kids
Speaker 1: who've lost a family member. It's one of hundreds of
Speaker 1: centers like it around the country. Kids sit in support
Speaker 1: groups led by grown ups, but the point is to
Speaker 1: allow children to talk to other children about their grief.
Speaker 1: They're encouraged to speak in concrete language about death because
Speaker 1: the thinking goes that's how to process death's finality. So
Speaker 1: people don't pass away, you don't lose them, they die.
Speaker 1: We invest so much effort trying to shield kids from
Speaker 1: the scary things in life. We place advisories before TV
Speaker 1: shows that warn against the inappropriate language and subject matter,
Speaker 1: and what could be less appropriate than death? So for
Speaker 1: all we let on bunnies lay eggs, your mother means well,
Speaker 1: and life pretty much goes on forever. To do otherwise
Speaker 1: feels like you're breaking a basic pack that grown ups
Speaker 1: have with one another. Who did you have? My dad?
Speaker 3: Two guinea pigs, a.
Speaker 4: Dog to catch, and.
Speaker 5: My dad and that's all.
Speaker 1: The kids here are more comfortable talking about death than
Speaker 1: most adults are. Like Hayley, who lost his sister and
Speaker 1: brother to mitochondrial disease. She and her other brother have
Speaker 1: the disease too, but not as bad. They've had to
Speaker 1: deal with something that most other people haven't had to,
Speaker 1: let alone other kids. So it's hard to talk about
Speaker 1: with the kids at school.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they don't even know what we're talking about because
Speaker 4: we know all this stuff, like all these words that
Speaker 4: nobody's heard, like no, no, the other kids heard.
Speaker 6: About, like like.
Speaker 4: Neurological or or something like that, and they're like, what
Speaker 4: does that mean? Or like a feeding to what does
Speaker 4: that mean?
Speaker 3: And it's really hard to explain.
Speaker 4: It's not hard to explain, but it's hard to like
Speaker 4: tell them, and I still don't understand where it goes
Speaker 4: or what it does to help you.
Speaker 1: But this is a place where kids do understand. There
Speaker 1: are more than a dozen separate groups at the Sharing Place,
Speaker 1: broken down by age. The groups meet twice a month
Speaker 1: for about an hour and a half in a refurbished
Speaker 1: house made to feel homey and safe, so it's like
Speaker 1: visiting your grandma's. There are rooms where kids meet and
Speaker 1: talk in rooms where their parents do the same, but
Speaker 1: most of the rooms are dedicated to play. There's a
Speaker 1: costume room where kids can dress up like police, ballerinas, cowboys.
Speaker 3: I'm spider Man, so you can do whatever I call
Speaker 3: you too.
Speaker 1: And beside it is a room called the soft Room,
Speaker 1: which is full of props and toys, including an old telephone.
Speaker 1: One little girl who watched her mother have a heart
Speaker 1: attack spends an entire play session pretending to call for
Speaker 1: help High nine one one. She'd say, my grandma's dying, hurry,
Speaker 1: come quick. Then she'd hang up and dial again, high
Speaker 1: nine on one, my dad's dying, Hurry, come quick. One
Speaker 1: of the most popular rooms is a padded room called
Speaker 1: the Volcano Room. The Volcano Room, it's full of cushions
Speaker 1: and large rubber yoga balls. It's even got an adult
Speaker 1: sized dummy to wrestle and punch. The kids can scream, yell,
Speaker 1: pound the walls, and throw things around. They love it.
Speaker 5: Wow, boom bam, no buck in.
Speaker 1: A back nag, whoa, it's a release. Eve is nine
Speaker 1: years old and her father died about two years ago.
Speaker 1: She knows that feeling of keeping it all bottled up inside.
Speaker 1: She says she can go days at school like that.
Speaker 3: It kind of feels really overwhelming and it's like you
Speaker 3: you'd like don't know what to do. And on the
Speaker 3: inside it's like hurting somehow, in like a feeling way,
Speaker 3: like hurts somehow.
Speaker 1: Where do would you say it hurts?
Speaker 3: Usually with me it would hurt its throat and kind
Speaker 3: of in my stomach. It's like something that needs to
Speaker 3: come out. But just I really need to learn how
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 7: I think there are people who in this world who
Speaker 7: can grow up and don't really know how to talk
Speaker 7: frankly about lots of things.
Speaker 1: Nancy Riiser is one of the co founders of The
Speaker 1: Sharing Place, and this is what she says when children
Speaker 1: ask her how people die.
Speaker 7: We'll close your eyes and listen and there isn't the
Speaker 7: next breath. Does it hurt? I don't think so. I
Speaker 7: don't think so. Their face doesn't look like it hurt.
Speaker 1: Nancy's a therapist who works with young children. For a
Speaker 1: long time, the very concept that children do, in fact
Speaker 1: grieve was hotly disputed. Freud said that it was difficult
Speaker 1: for children to even conceive of such loss and does
Speaker 1: a culture. Nancy says, that's pretty much the idea that
Speaker 1: we operate under.
Speaker 7: Oh, look she's playing, She's okay, she didn't really understand
Speaker 7: what happened. Well, she's playing, but then half an hour
Speaker 7: later she's in the house holding her Teddy bear and
Speaker 7: sucking her thumb and crying. So we need to let
Speaker 7: people know that children grief and help them when they
Speaker 7: grieve so it's not stuck inside and comes out when
Speaker 7: they try to have a relationship. Later, when they start
Speaker 7: to get intimate, Wow, they cannot bear it and they
Speaker 7: go off and they.
Speaker 3: Don't know why.
Speaker 1: Nancy says, children just grieve differently than adults, Especially little children.
Speaker 1: They grieve in fits and starts. They can't focus on
Speaker 1: it for very long, and grief is more physical for them.
Speaker 1: They'll ACKed out their anger, maybe kick a door, which
Speaker 1: is the reason for the volcano room at the Sharing Place.
Speaker 1: They might also regress suddenly using baby talk or sucking
Speaker 1: their thumbs, and if they're potty trained, they might become untrained.
Speaker 1: They're also magical thinkers. I heard stories of kids who
Speaker 1: were afraid to go to sleep because Grandma went to
Speaker 1: sleep and didn't wake up. One little boy wandered away
Speaker 1: from his mom at the emergency room, saying, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for dad. We left him here last time. Another boy
Speaker 1: said he just wanted to die for a few days
Speaker 1: so he can go to heaven and teach his little
Speaker 1: sister how to ride a tricycle. Children also regrieve. That is,
Speaker 1: with every new stage of development, they experienced their grief
Speaker 1: anew and with every mile stone when their braces come off,
Speaker 1: when they get their driver's license, when they graduate, they'll
Speaker 1: inevitably think, I wish my mom was here. And given
Speaker 1: all of this, the thought behind the Sharing Place and
Speaker 1: other centers like it is that kids can help one
Speaker 1: another in a way that adults perhaps can't help them.
Speaker 1: That's why they're brought together in these groups. In short,
Speaker 1: kids speak the same language. It is turned on what
Speaker 1: do you think about this Before the session At the
Speaker 1: sharing place, I sit down with Gavin, who's six, and
Speaker 1: his brother Aiden, who's eight. They're both dressed in matching
Speaker 1: long sleeve polo shirts. Gavin sits on his mother Nichole's lap.
Speaker 1: Aiden sits beside them. Oh, do you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 5: I'm Aiden. My dad died vice suicide.
Speaker 8: Suicide.
Speaker 1: His little brother Gavin points his finger to his head
Speaker 1: and pulls the pretend trigger. He snaps his head back.
Speaker 5: Yep, that's what happened.
Speaker 1: What did you just do there?
Speaker 3: He shot his head.
Speaker 5: And then we didn't know he was dead, right, Mama?
Speaker 5: We didn't and then we then he said, wake up dad,
Speaker 5: No you didn't see him. Mommy found him and he
Speaker 5: was already he was already dead.
Speaker 3: Did you turn over?
Speaker 5: I didn't touch him.
Speaker 3: Okay, she knew he was like dead because she saw
Speaker 3: blood and things.
Speaker 5: On his head.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And he was like a terrific guy, so nice,
Speaker 3: so generous.
Speaker 5: He would always help anyone. H he was a terrific guy.
Speaker 5: What would what did you learn here that helped you
Speaker 5: the most to understand how he died?
Speaker 1: Sometimes that task telling the kids that their parents committed
Speaker 1: suicide to Jill McFarlane because the surviving parent or guardian
Speaker 1: might be so inside their own grief that they can't
Speaker 1: bring themselves to do it. Jill explained suicide as simply
Speaker 1: as she does other kinds of death. There's a sickness
Speaker 1: in your brain called depression, she says, and it can
Speaker 1: make you decide to make your own body stop working.
Speaker 1: She says it's required that the kids know how their
Speaker 1: brother or sister or mother died before starting the group.
Speaker 2: Why had one family say he died because he was sick.
Speaker 2: One family said that he died in a car accident.
Speaker 2: One family said that he accidentally shot himself he didn't
Speaker 2: mean to.
Speaker 1: It was Jill who helped their mom break the news
Speaker 1: to Aiden and Gavin that their dad shot himself. She
Speaker 1: says that conversation was especially hard.
Speaker 2: The boys immediately said, you don't know my dad. Why
Speaker 2: would you say that you don't know us? And I said,
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know you. But your mom's here
Speaker 2: today because she needs She needed my help in telling
Speaker 2: you this, because this is a really hard and scary
Speaker 2: thing that happened. And your mom told me that that's
Speaker 2: what happened. And Aiden just was like, you're crazy, lady.
Speaker 2: There's no way that we're going to talk about this.
Speaker 2: This is not what happened. It was horrible and it
Speaker 2: was awful, and I cried that whole night. It was
Speaker 2: just awful. I just felt so horrible, and my husband
Speaker 2: was like, you can't do this. You have to quote
Speaker 2: to the director and tell her that you can't do
Speaker 2: this again.
Speaker 1: Suicide is always one of the highest, if not the highest,
Speaker 1: cause of death for Sharing Place families at any given time.
Speaker 1: There's actually a special group devoted specifically to suicide, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the stories you hear in that group
Speaker 1: are so horrible that you can't help. But wonder, why
Speaker 1: tell the kids what happened at all? Why not just
Speaker 1: say they died and leave it at that. According to
Speaker 1: Jill and her colleagues, we need to tell children so
Speaker 1: they won't find out later in life and wonder what
Speaker 1: else did they lie to me about. They also don't
Speaker 1: want to have to cloak it in a way that
Speaker 1: suggests it's unspeakable and shameful. They get enough of that
Speaker 1: idea at school. This is Eve again, whose father also
Speaker 1: shot himself.
Speaker 3: Well, some people at school, they say, this makes me
Speaker 3: feel really sad too. They say that when somebody kills
Speaker 3: themselves that means they go to the wrong place. I
Speaker 3: don't believe that, but it just makes me feel really
Speaker 3: sad when they say that, like instead of going to
Speaker 3: a happy place, they would go to a sad.
Speaker 1: But even if you even if you don't believe it
Speaker 1: and you know it's nonsense, it's still kind of hurts
Speaker 1: that someone would say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, because like it's like somebody judging, judging
Speaker 3: my papa, which it's not a bad thing. A lot
Speaker 3: of people do that, but you know, just kind of
Speaker 3: feels a little weird, like on the inside. It makes
Speaker 3: me feel like I'm gonna scream and like do something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: What are the things that you wish that people would.
Speaker 3: Say, Probably, it's okay that that has happened, and we
Speaker 3: can help you with feeling better and understanding you. No,
Speaker 3: that's probably something I'd want somebody to say.
Speaker 1: Once a child knows how their loved one died, they're
Speaker 1: encouraged to say it out loud. There's a kind of
Speaker 1: sorcery to it, naming the dragons so you can defeat it.
Speaker 1: I sat in on the suicide group, which is different
Speaker 1: than the other groups, and that kids tend to come
Speaker 1: to meetings for a longer period of time, partly because
Speaker 1: they didn't get to say goodbye. The kids sit in
Speaker 1: a circle at the beginning of the meeting and hand
Speaker 1: around a talking stick. One by one, they say their name,
Speaker 1: who died, and how they died.
Speaker 3: My name is Eli, and the person who died was
Speaker 3: my dad, and he died by shooting his hisself with
Speaker 3: the gun, and he and he wanted to die.
Speaker 7: Hello.
Speaker 8: My name is Lindsey. My dad died. He died by
Speaker 8: a suicide, and I regret not seeing him because I
Speaker 8: hadn't seen him for a couple of months before his death.
Speaker 1: There's also a different question they respond to each time
Speaker 1: they meet. What do you miss most about the person?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you don't miss? Tonight's question is what
Speaker 1: do you regret?
Speaker 3: My name is Ethan, and the person who died is
Speaker 3: my dad. He died by shooting his soaf inm the hood,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if I have a new regret,
Speaker 3: so I just can't remember.
Speaker 1: It can take a long time for them to get
Speaker 1: to this point where they can say the word suicide.
Speaker 1: The sharing place never corrects any of the kids or
Speaker 1: forces them to say anything they don't want to, but
Speaker 1: they noticed when a child is finally able to say it.
Speaker 1: The night I was there, Aiden, the nine year old
Speaker 1: I talked to who had a hard time saying the
Speaker 1: word suicide, was finally able to say it in group.
Speaker 5: So how about Aiden?
Speaker 1: The volunteers set around and talked about it afterwards.
Speaker 6: It was hard for him. I could tell he wasn't
Speaker 6: about to say it, but he said it, and I
Speaker 6: was proud of him. But it took him probably at
Speaker 6: least a minute to actually get those words out.
Speaker 5: He had asked his mom if it was okay to say,
Speaker 5: so she wasn't coaching him, no anything.
Speaker 1: He was good. On the other hand, Aiden's brother, Gavin,
Speaker 1: the six year old, talks about his dad's suicide incessantly.
Speaker 1: He also draws guns during playtime and even sculpts them
Speaker 1: out of Plato. This is Joe McFarlane again.
Speaker 2: He tells everybody at school, my dad shot his brains
Speaker 2: and it freaks everybody out, and so then he gets
Speaker 2: in trouble at school, which then he was like, well,
Speaker 2: I guess I can't ever talk about my dad. But
Speaker 2: this is how kindergartner's talk and process things. It's just
Speaker 2: easy for them to talk about, but it scares other people.
Speaker 1: Is it okay for kids to other kids in their
Speaker 1: class to hear that kind of thing?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what's is there a right answer to that?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know either. If I were a parent, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure i'd want my kid hearing that kind of
Speaker 1: thing at school. And while Jill doesn't have an answer,
Speaker 1: she does think kids being allowed to express themselves is
Speaker 1: much healthier than sending them a message that it's wrong
Speaker 1: to say this kind of stuff out loud, and that's
Speaker 1: got to be a step in the right direction.
Speaker 9: I have very, very, very fond memories of this place.
Speaker 9: I actually tried to come through the side door because
Speaker 9: that was the door that I always came in through.
Speaker 9: Then I was like, I can you use the adult entrance?
Speaker 1: Finally, Sarah Muhammad hasn't been to the sharing place for
Speaker 1: a full six years. She's twenty one now. Well, when
Speaker 1: she was eleven, her older hanged himself, even though he
Speaker 1: was supposed to be babysitting her. Her parents had told
Speaker 1: her to keep an eye out on him because of
Speaker 1: his past suicide attempts. Obviously what happened was in her fault,
Speaker 1: but she blamed herself, which is something I heard other
Speaker 1: kids here talk about too. It's easy for an adult
Speaker 1: to say, don't be silly, it's not your fault, but
Speaker 1: it's a whole other thing to talk with a kid
Speaker 1: at the sharing place who says, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about it.
Speaker 9: It was kind of nice seeing the older kids whose
Speaker 9: you know, loved ones had been gone for a few years,
Speaker 9: how they were able to go to school normally and
Speaker 9: just live their normal lives. Because I just didn't want
Speaker 9: to go to school. I didn't want to be with
Speaker 9: kids who just didn't know. It was just it was
Speaker 9: too hard.
Speaker 1: I asked Sarah if there was a turning point, a
Speaker 1: moment when she began to feel like maybe she was
Speaker 1: doing a little better. She said, yes, she was in
Speaker 1: the courtyard with a bunch of other kids.
Speaker 9: We were just out there painting rocks or something for
Speaker 9: a fundraiser, and we were just talking, just talking like normal,
Speaker 9: and I realized that I hadn't had a conversation like
Speaker 9: that in about a year, just where where I felt
Speaker 9: one hundred percent free and just laughing and not feeling
Speaker 9: guilty about laughing and just happy and that was Yeah.
Speaker 9: That was really the first time in a good nine
Speaker 9: months after my brother had passed that I felt okay.
Speaker 1: It's the kids themselves who decide when they're ready to
Speaker 1: stop coming to the sharing place, but on average they
Speaker 1: stay about two years. When they're ready to leave, they
Speaker 1: have to announce their intention to times in group before
Speaker 1: their final goodbye.
Speaker 5: Any of you that would like to say something to him,
Speaker 5: which I'm sure several of you will.
Speaker 1: The goodbye is ceremonial, and on the last night I
Speaker 1: was there, at the end of the meeting, they said
Speaker 1: goodbye to a kid named Robbie. He sat in the
Speaker 1: circle with the other kids and volunteers, and anybody who
Speaker 1: wanted to could pick up the talking stick and say
Speaker 1: a few words. His friend Jessica was the last kid
Speaker 1: to do so.
Speaker 6: I'll definitely miss you because you're like one of my
Speaker 6: best friends in this group, and I'll miss seeing you
Speaker 6: and our major fight that we had in the volcano room.
Speaker 6: It was not my fault, yes you did. No, it
Speaker 6: was just really fun and I'm gonna miss seeing you
Speaker 6: and miss hanging out with you.
Speaker 1: At Robbie's last meeting. There was a kid who had
Speaker 1: just shown up. It was his first meeting. He had
Speaker 1: long bangs hanging over his eyes, and except for his name,
Speaker 1: didn't say anything the whole time. Whenever it knew person
Speaker 1: joins the veteran kids have a chance to gauge their
Speaker 1: own progress, to remember what they were like when they
Speaker 1: first showed up and think about how bad it used
Speaker 1: to be and how now it isn't as bad, And ultimately,
Speaker 1: like Robbie, they'll make way for someone on the long
Speaker 1: waiting list, a list on which new names are added
Speaker 1: all the time. They'll say, I think it's time to go,
Speaker 1: and then they'll say it again. This story originally ran
Speaker 1: on This American Life in twenty fifteen. It was produced
Speaker 1: by Sean Coole. Special thanks to the team at This
Speaker 1: American Life for letting us share it here. It was
Speaker 1: mixed for Heavyweight by Emmamonger with music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 1: Blue Dot Sessions, Bobby Lord and Poddington Bear. If you're
Speaker 1: feeling depressed or just want someone to talk to, you
Speaker 1: can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at one eight
Speaker 1: hundred two seven three eight two five five. Since this
Speaker 1: story originally aired, The sharing Place has expanded to three
Speaker 1: locations in Utah and also partners with local schools and organizations.
Speaker 1: You can find out more about their work at the
Speaker 1: Sharingplace dot org.