Play is Enough. You are Enough. Reflections from Session One of our Outdoor Play Grief Group

 

Our first session back in the forest for the Outdoor Play Grief Group. This is our second year running this new program, and as time passes our approach to working with grief, holding space for children’s and caregiver’s grief, is starting to become clearer. Where have we landed, one year later? With a deep knowing that play is enough. We are enough. Let me explain. 

 

As our session got underway, our new and returning caregivers dropped their children off at the chickadee forest, where two facilitators were ready with materials (loose parts, mud kitchen, picnic table strewn with art supplies) and with a feeling of Fall surrounding us (leaves starting to fall, pine needles and acorns gathering at the base of the trees, and the smell of bog and early decay). The caregivers then made their way to their own site, just a few yards away, at the yurt where two other facilitators were waiting.

 

What happened this session, the play itself, felt like magic. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that no matter what else we did, no matter how we facilitated beyond these experiences, this play was enough. With an adult, educator and psychotherapist lens, what was also unfolding at this time was a group of children coming together and sharing who they were, their unique ideas, their unique stories, and in the case of this grief group, also beginning to share the burdens they carry from their unique losses and experiences with death. The play provided a safe backdrop for testing of limits, safely sharing inner worlds, building relationships, and establishing trust that will only continue to fuel our play and the unpacking of our grief in each session from here.

 

Within this first group we had a closing circle, where we shared our names, our favorite color, and we answered the question “If you could be one animal in this forest, what would you be and why?” We didn’t talk explicitly about grief on day one, we didn’t need to. 

After our session ended, our four facilitators from the caregiver and children’s group came together for a debrief, which happens every session. In it we talked about the fact that play is an upstream, preventative, mental health strategy. Again, play in and of itself is enough and has such important benefits for children, particularly children who have experienced adversity or trauma.

We then went on to talk about how no matter what we’re working on as parents, no matter what questions we hold, we, too, are enough.

We then laughed and pointed in the forest in a million different directions: “You’re enough! And, you’re enough! And, you’re enough! And, you’re enough!”

 

In coming weeks we’ll be building on this play and these relationships, from a foundation of trust, (which takes time). As we move forward, we’ll have more explicit conversations and art prompts around death, dying, loss, feelings, where we’ll hold space for the hard stuff. We learned last year in a certificate course with Andrea Warnick that when children don’t have the opportunity to to talk about death or to process their experiences out loud, with trusted adults, they will often come to their own conclusions around what death means or why a death occured, and most significantly often come to the conclusion that they are to blame.

 

As we move through the next ten weeks we’ll bring our stories, experiences, feelings, and questions to the surface so no child and no caregiver feels alone in their loss, and so all that is unsaid, the stories and conclusions we come to, can be held up the light of day and questioned, together. With these intentions, and with this facilitated process, our play also becomes a very targeted early mental health intervention.