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Book Foreword

Just how are we supposed to manage our grief, in a world that tells us to move on or get over it? Adults return to their jobs too soon, because taking too much time, even if allowed by employers, would mean that something is wrong, and they want to get back to normal. Teachers urge children who have lost a parent or a sibling to pay attention in class and threaten punishment, believing that a few weeks is long enough to be distracted by their grief. By middle age, many adults will have both parents die, and will proceed with the rearing of their children without grandparents, living under the unacknowledged banner of adult orphans. Pregnancy loss is trivialized, leaving children confused about whether or not they had a brother or sister, and parents feeling cautious about how much of their pain to reveal to others. Infants who die are pronounced easily replaceable by everyone, including clergy and doctors. No one knows quite how to explain it all to young siblings, who may not be as eager to accept the notion of God needing another angel in heaven as some adults pretend to be. After all, He didn’t ask them! There is very little user-friendly access to compassionate grief support in our everyday lives.

We may not all experience mental illness in our families, but someone always dies, and those deaths impact both adults and children. And while western culture is not well equipped to respond when grief comes into our lives, there is good news. We were made to grieve, and then to heal. Adults who acknowledge the season of grief and allow time and space to work through the healing process are doing themselves a favor, as well as their families. We need only sort through the years of stuff accumulated in our heads, and allow our hearts to confront our new reality to begin healing after someone dies. No one needs to tell a mourner what he or she needs. They will direct their own course toward healing, if given a chance.

The world of the grieving child is full of wonder, awe, terror, doubt, and confusion. The death of someone close to a child challenges all known paradigms of their own identity and identity of the world in which they live. Suddenly, they become aware that the world is not as safe a place as the world they have known, and yet, the harsh reality that someone has died is hard to embrace. It literally might take months for young children to get it that the person is indeed gone, and not coming back. For older children, they may struggle to reconcile the biological reality of human death to the strange new emotional and spiritual world that is now missing a very important part. It may haunt them for a while. It may raise new questions about faith principles they might have embraced, and cause them to struggle with life’s meanings, just like adults.

Even in the face of such a powerful emotional experience for a young mind or heart, children understand death in ways that might surprise adults. They don’t seem to need to deal with the death cognitively, as adults do. They can readily address the matters of the heart, and embrace spiritual struggles with greater resolve than adults. As we observe their play or other creative activities, we can see that they are very capable of seemingly reaching inside themselves and expressing what is going on inside their hearts through the work of their hands. With children, the work of reconciling grief is often done with very few words.

The world of the horse can create a safe place for the grieving family to find peace and healing. Children don’t need words to describe their experiences. They can use other forms of expression much better. And, they need to be free from the expectations of the world in which they live just long enough to discover how they are going to cope when they return to it. The non-verbal, non-judgmental world of the horse provides the perfect arena for children to work out difficult emotional tasks in fantasy play, allowing an escape to worlds that can’t be reached by the demands of family or school. Kids can embrace their grief while being fully supported by horse and human companions who allow them to search for answers in an environment of unconditional love and acceptance. Anxious adults can relax, as the horse takes on part of their burden of comforting and encouraging their kids.

In this book, we introduce you to the needs of grieving children, and propose equine assisted activities that can help meet those needs. We also assume that adults who care for grieving children should not be forgotten. In fact, the success of the grief work of children depends heavily upon the cues they get from the adults who care for them. So, we also propose activities to help the adults help the children, while helping themselves. My prayer is that families will come to honor grief as a natural, normal process, and that when it is embraced, they might find health and hope.

Michael D. Dawson Counseling Services
13791 E Rice Place · Aurora, CO 80015
(303) 481-4257 PH · (303) 481-4478 FX
EMAIL: michael@michaeldawsoncounseling.com
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