Arriving at Camp: It’s a hot July day in 2008 and the swinging bridge reminds me of the flips my stomach is doing.
I can barely make it across the bridge, how am I supposed to stay here all week? And what is grief camp anyway? Why am I signed up? Did I pack everything they told me to? Will they send me home if I cry all week?
I finally made it across the bridge.
What’s next?
“Hi, it’s my first year. Where do I go?”
Everyone is smiling. Don’t they know this is grief camp and people have died? Or maybe I missed the memo because I’m not as happy as they are.
I walk up to the cabin.
It doesn’t look like anything magical like people told me. It’s just a cabin in the woods. I must have signed up for the wrong camp because they described Disneyland. These people act like they know each other, like they see each other more than once a year, like a family reunion not grief camp.
I meet the other people in my cabin. “Hi, it’s my first year.”
Will they like me? Can they tell I’m nervous and haven’t unpacked because I might go home?
I see my brother at dinner. He seems to be settling in.
What’s wrong with me? I miss my mom. I miss my bed. How am I supposed to be here away from my stuff and air conditioning for a week?
Therapy Day #1: She says “Please tell the group your name and who died.”
What? She wants me to do what?
“My name is So & So, and So & So died.” I hear this once. Twice. Three times. Now it’s my turn “My name is Amanda and my father and grandmother died.”
Am I really crying already? Hold it together. Hold it together. Don’t fall apart.
I cry anyway.
Therapy day #2-5: Rinse and repeat. I hear words and share a few. I shed more tears. More tears than I ever knew I had.
It’s been awhile, why am I crying so much? At least I don’t feel judged. No one is looking at me weird. That’s a plus.
Outside of group, I’m getting the hang of things. Downhill for meals, uphill to shower and sleep. They told me to follow the wood chips if I get lost – I do both.
Closing Ceremony: I follow more wood chips to a crowd of singing peers and waiting families. I pretend to sing the songs I haven’t memorized yet. I look around for familiar faces, but am not greeted by anyone there to pick me up. More tears, by me and others.
What is happening? I’ve been waiting for today all week and now I don’t want to go. Can one of the hardest things also be one of the best?
I pack. I cross the swinging bridge slightly more gracefully. I leave.
I count the days until July 2009.
Although this experience may have been what the 90+ campers were feeling that week in 2008, and many years before and since, this was actually my experience as a first-year cabin buddy. I was 21, not a kid or teen like the campers. I wasn’t supposed to feel like the campers did, but I found myself in their shoes. Identifying my then immature grief journey to theirs more than my adult peers.
I told myself my father’s death and my grandmother’s death were not new. My grief was old. My tears were not justified. I should have held it together better than I did.
What I learned was I was doing the work in 2008 that I should have begun in 1991.
My journey, until then, had few words along it and never in public. I came to realize that I hadn’t had a safe place to share and I didn’t know I had long-been searching for it. What I quickly recognized in that hot week several years ago, was that I had found it. I found my safe place under the auspice of volunteering to help and heal children. I did that, but along the way I also helped and healed myself. I am glad to now be a part of the therapy team, where I get the joy of combining my occupation as a Licensed Professional Counselor with my personal growth.
To all parts of that magical place and its staff, thank you. Thank you Camp El Tesoro de la Vida for being that safe place for me, for my peers, and for the children you welcome year after year so they don’t have to wait for their healing to begin.
Amanda Esquivel is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a therapist for Camp El Tesoro de la Vida. She has volunteered for the program since 2008.
