Dolly Parton’s death highlights the grief we don’t always recognize

One Dolly Parton's death is bringing an outpouring of grief from people around the world, including many who never matter. But grief doesn't always come from losing someone. We know personally a song, a movie, a childhood memory or even a public figure can hold a deep personal meaning for us. So joining us now is Lisa Amen, executive director of Kate's Club, an Atlanta nonprofit that supports grieving Children, teens and families for more than 30 years. So Lisa, thanks so much for stopping by today. Thank you. Good to have you here in such a timely topic. Uh, as this, you know, the loss of Dolly Parton has has touched touch so, so many of us. So let's start by talking about this. You know, it really can cause real grief, even though we didn't personally know Dolly, right? Absolutely. So, um, often grief comes about or you have those feelings when it's somebody you knew who died, somebody that was important to you. Um, we actually often say that it's somebody we loved. It sometimes isn't. It just means grief comes when you have a relationship or when they had a meaningful impact on your life. So Dolly Parton, you know, all of her songs, her movies, uh, her imagination library project. If you were a child or a parent of a child who received a book through that work that she did, she had an impact on your life and you will grieve her death. No doubt. What about disenfranchised grief? What is that? Disenfranchised grief refers to grief that people think is not valid. Uh, so somebody dies that you didn't necessarily know personally, like Dolly Parton, you don't necessarily have a right to grieve. Um, we don't believe in that. All grief is valid at Kate's Club. Many of our kids, the type of death, um, can be disenfranchised. So if somebody dies by suicide or by homicide, drug overdose, those types of deaths are often often have stigma associated with them. And somehow people think that they're not as important to a child. Um, that's disenfranchised grief and grief. If I can go on a little bit further is is often more intense when the relationship with the person who died was complicated when it was a strange see often. Yeah, yes, it's more because you grieve the loss of you had hope that the relationship could get to a place and now you've lost that to makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it really does. So what are some ways that grief can show up that just beyond sadness that many of us may recognize? Yeah. So, um, with many of our kids at Kate's Club and many people in general, um, sadness, of course, but you can also have feelings of guilt, uh, anger, relief, especially if the person was sick for a long time. Numbness, of course. And for kids, often they're very confused. Uh, they don't really. It's hard to process the fact that somebody has gone forever, and that can create a lot of confusion. You don't know where they went, which is why we are very intentional about using the word death and died. If you say to a child, we've lost somebody. We have kids who say, Well, let's go find him. Oh, yeah. So it's very important to be truthful, factual and literal with Children who are grieving. I'm so glad you mentioned that we're gonna stay on this topic of what to say, and I guess more so what not to say to a child who's grieving. It's really easy. People tend to slip into things like, well, at least they lived a long life or at least you. You knew them for however many years. Uh, at least they're in a better place. And those two words are something we would ask people not to use because it minimizes the feelings that a child is having. We rather suggest, um, to ask child lots of questions. So if you think about it, you often will. You might be inclined to say, How are you feeling? We asked Children. What are they feeling? And that difference between how and what opens up the conversation. Um, and another thing that can open up a conversation for somebody who's grieving is to ask him to tell a story about the person. So when a child or family comes to Kate's club, we never met the person who died, right? We don't know them, but clearly the child does. So tell us what your favorite thing to do was. What was your favorite thing to do with your dad? Or what was your mom's favorite food? Something like that. Now we'll open up the space. It creates a space for a child to talk about their feelings. Tell me what we're looking at right now. There's video. I don't know. Was it some kind of camp? It looked like the kids were doing activities. So what was what was the, uh, Kate's club activities happening? So that is our camp. Good morning, which we have twice a year. And then we also hold a family camp twice a year, and we partner with Camp Twin Lakes. We go off and we're three days together. And what that shows us actually is that grief is all those feelings. We talked about sadness and anger, but it also can be a lot of fun. And those two things are not mutually exclusive, and we emphasize that with all the families we work with. You know, I feel like one of my big takeaways from from some of what you share today is that if someone is feeling grief from the loss of, you know, maybe it's Dolly Parton. Maybe it's it's someone else that they didn't know well that they're valid in their feelings and that they're not alone in their feelings, right? Absolutely. And Sunday is National Grief Awareness Day, Sunday, August 30th. And that is all about what you just mentioned, which is normalized in the conversation about grief and helping people understand that we don't want them to navigate it alone. Kate's Club there with you every step of the way as well. Yes, Lisa, thank you so much for coming in and sharing this with us today. Thank you for having me. Definitely appreciate the help and to learn more about Kate's Club, you can head to Kate's Club dot org will also share a link on our website Fox five Atlanta dot com. Just look under the good day section.