Reaching Out to Grandparents
By Kerry J. Bickford, VOICES Editor
I am trying to remember what life was like prior to becoming involved in (and employed by) SADOD. Like most peer grief helpers, my involvement began when my son’s life ended in 2018. Although I felt like I was sleepwalking through that first year, I recall snapping out of it in the fall of the following year (2019), when a colleague approached me about becoming a support group leader.
I had been trained to facilitate children’s grief groups by Good Grief at Boston Medical Center over ten years earlier, and had worked with children who had lost a parent or sibling, but I felt somewhat unprepared to provide support for something that was so devastating to me personally. On the other hand, I thought long and hard about how much we needed to build more support locally for an alarming trend that was causing us to lose a whole generation of young people. Not only that, but many of these young adults were leaving their own children mother/fatherless - and yes, occasionally both – and another trend was exploding. Grandparents were stepping in to support their children's children and EVERYONE was grieving…the schools were suddenly full of children who were being raised by their grandparents and no one was prepared for the complications this would add to an already overloaded system. One thing was certain, and that is that we (as a society) needed to step it up and provide support for these grieving families.
I heard about a weekend facilitator training SADOD was offering in November of 2019 and quickly registered and discovered it was just what I needed to give me the confidence to move forward in that direction, while having a professional peer group to fall back on if I felt like I needed ongoing support.
Nathan’s Circle was just getting off the ground in early 2020 when the Pandemic exploded onto the scene. So many barriers presented themselves in those early days, and I began to realize it was somewhat my responsibility to do what I could for the parents and grandparents I knew who were suffering from an overdose loss. I began to research local organizations that worked with substance use disorder and groups that provided grief support. While most in-person groups had shut their doors temporarily, many began to offer virtual support, and the world as we knew it in January 2020 no longer existed. Doctors, therapists, and support groups became available to us - in our own living rooms — where we could access the outside world as we remained indefinitely trapped.
I began to meet weekly with the grandparents I worked with when we talked about how they were coping with the added responsibility of homeschooling and socializing their grandchildren 24-7. It was a difficult time for most of them and there was no respite, so those groups became lifelines for concern, empathy, support, laughter, tears, and friendship. The group reached out to each other between meetings and reported to the larger group as they navigated their new world and served as a resource network to each other. Their ability to cope with an often frustrating situation grew stronger and allowed them to take back what control they could of their lives. I could see their leadership skills emerging as they advocated for their grandchildren and each other, and I couldn’t believe this had happened in the face of so much adversity.
It was still not without its challenges as frustration over school closures mounted and children were not able to get outside and be children. Most grandparents who are raising their grandchildren will tell you how exhausting it is to raise grandchildren on an average day, so imagine being cooped up for months without schools, sports, playdates, or any other social gatherings. Simultaneously, many of these grandparents are raising grandchildren whose parents suffer from SUD or who have died of an overdose. When did they have time to grieve? So many issues were illuminated during this time and the focus still seemed to be on COVID 19 - not on how to support these new-age families.
Beginning this month, I am hoping to talk with grandparents and grandparent support services around the state to see if we at SADOD can come up with a strategy to support you. If you are interested in contributing information or ideas, please let me know so I can include you in conversations in your community. We want grandparents to know that you are never alone - there are so many others, like you, who are grieving the loss of a child or grandchild - and help is on the way. Please stay tuned as we slowly roll out our new grandparent peer support initiative!