Playing with Feelings: Reflections from Session #2 of Our Outdoor Play Grief Group

Whenever I am privileged to be a part of children’s play, I try to be present to what is happening and how I’m being invited to show up, bearing witness to children’s feelings, stories, and experiences. I am also, simultaneously making meaning of these experiences with children. During our time together, making meaning can take on many different forms, and it can look like asking deep questions, shared wondering together, building on the ideas that children are coming up with and extending them into the next session, using their language and words in stories that I tell in future sessions, inviting them to tell stories around a particular concept or theme that emerges. 

In an unstructured, outdoor play support program, children are leading their play and we are utilizing the power of that play (including art and storytelling) for healing, connection and joy specifically in this program for children who have experienced grief and loss. In each session, we’ll identify and bring forth concepts into our stories, art, and opening and closing circles, that are developmentally appropriate around death, grief, and loss. We’re also listening keenly to what questions are being asked (or not asked) by the children in their play, what is appearing scary or overwhelming to a child, and what might be supportive in their processing of a death. In other words, we’re taking their lead, and attuning to their specific needs. 

It was a grey day, a long day for many, as we entered the forest for our second Outdoor Play Grief Group session. Our program runs from 4 pm-6 pm, the end of a school day, and we’re a multi-age group program so we have children ranging from 3 years old to 12 years old. For lots of young children, transitions are hard, but they can be particularly hard, with increased separation anxiety for children and families navigating loss, death and grief. All this to say, we started our session with tears, cries out through the trees, prolonged goodbyes and what felt like sudden departures for a few. As facilitators, we’re here for all of it. 

Aptly, our intention for this session was to explore the concept of ‘feelings’. We had a piece of canvas with the word ‘feeling’ written at the centre and art supplies laid out for sketching, colouring, and writing words down. The children ebbed and flowed between the mud kitchen, climbing trees, balancing on planks, and running around the perimeter of the chickadee forest, with short periods between these bursts of activity spent drawing at the picnic table. When all children showed signs of being settled into the program, (the tears had transitioned to conversations, and everyone was playing independently or with others), we called everyone together with a long H-O-W-L. The hoot or howl is a way of bringing our group together, and something we use often, particularly when we’re trying to keep a large group of different aged children together, (some who are super fast and some who need more time), when we’re out on the trails or in the forest. 

With the howl, we moved towards the opening circle and stumps, for a snack and story. This week we read the book “Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox” by Danielle Daniel. As we went through each page, we asked the children, who feels like a bear today? Who feels like a beaver today? Who feels like a moose today? And so on. In the end, we noticed that we all felt like many different animals, with combinations of feelings and states such as brave, scared, thoughtful, kind, swift, mysterious, and sly. The question was asked, “Can we feel many different feelings ALL AT THE SAME TIME?” The answer was a resounding “Yes!”

During our last session, we were focused on getting to know one another, and building relationships and trust, which continues. Today, we acknowledged that we were all gathered together for a shared purpose, for the Outdoor Play Grief Group. 

From there, we went around the circle and shared what we were most interested in doing today. it was unanimous that they were all ready to stop talking and hike the forest root trail to rocky and mossy place. We grabbed our first aid bag, a bright red bag that we referred to as the sun, and headed out. Along the trail, some children were very fast and were invited to go ahead but then got called back with the hoot every couple of minutes. One facilitator stayed at the front of the pack, and the other facilitator was a sweeper at the back with the younger children, or the children who were keen to walk and talk and move slowly. 

Out at rocky and mossy place, the group self-organized a large game of hide and seek, inviting one facilitator to play and count. Another smaller group of children scouted out trees for climbing and tested the limbs of trees that were dead or dying. Towards the end of our time together everyone came and identified a fort that had been built by someone else, and they started to create an imaginary world called “Memory Island”. They started to develop rules for memory island, you can’t walk on the ocean floor around memory island for instance, and you can only talk about memories in memory island. Looking at the time, we realized we needed to get back to the chickadee forest for our closing, but we laid out an intention to return next week to Memory Island, where we’ll share stories and build on the concept of “Remembering”. 

So, to summarize, what unfolded and what meaning can we make of it? Well, we played, hiked, explored, told stories, and found hidden gems like amazing climbing trees and a secret hideout called Memory Island. But, we also moved from relationship and trust building in our first session, towards laying a foundation for feelings mattering. The concept we explored was ‘feelings’, but the message we conveyed was that our feelings matter and are meant to be experienced, expressed and processed, and we can have many competing feelings at once! 

Although feelings are a part of our daily lives, and children are quite skilled, let’s say, in experiencing them, we (adults and children) also receive subtle messages that feelings, especially our grief, are like the uninvited visitor- inconvenient, intrusive, something to be pushed away. In this forest, we are playing with each other, yes, but we are also playing with our feelings- holding them with care, looking closely at them, learning to listen to them, being curious about them, and then wondering, together, what they need.