Back To School

Our ten-year-old daughter came home from fifth grade one day with a piece of paper that made her cheeks blazing red. She wouldn’t say anything other than, “its a permission slip,” before racing to her bedroom.

A permission slip for health class.

“Two weeks of awkward humiliation” she exclaimed when I asked her about it later.

Damn straight. I remember health class..(in FACT the woman who taught my health class might be reading this — we are friends on Facebook — Hi Mrs. Cutts). I remember the tittering, the eye-rolling, the dead silence of “any questions?”

But Mrs. Cutts let us write down questions and put them in a basket. I’m pretty sure they were all mine. Questions I would never have otherwise asked any adult in my life, or admit my ignorance to friends.

My daughter lived through it. We’d covered puberty before — puberty for HER, but to be honest, it never occurred to me to hit the highlights for her male counterparts — or, as is now a part of the curriculum, what it might mean for adolescents falling outside of the binary genders.

The chatter among parents included the age-old, “it wasn’t like that in my day,” and it wasn’t. Our kids are exposed to so much more, so much younger — which includes puberty by the way. Parents have mixed feeling about sex education, I get that, but most seemed grateful for teachers willing to push through the seventeen layers of awkward to teach our kids about the changes of the human body.

Puberty happens to everyone.

So I hate to ask the obvious:

Where is our class on death and dying/grief and loss?

Because teammates, we are all headed in the same direction.

Human health class makes sense in fifth grade because it goes alongside an adolescent’s social-emotional and physical developmental timeline. We teach it because its timely and kids need the information and support.

In fact, when children and teens experience a loss they often DO receive support in a way that wouldn’t have been typical when I was a kid — school counselors, therapy is more common and accepted.

Often isn’t always. When my middle son was going into first grade, a little buddy who battled a rare form of cancer suddenly died. I took an incredibly tense phone call standing in the produce section of my local grocery store, with the newly minted school counselor.

“I’ve been in each classroom and the kids look good, so we are going to just move forward.”

My startled reply sounded something like, “Oh, I should have said this to start with, I’m a trauma therapist…”

Because when my family was touched by the tragic death of a beloved teen the summer before I entered third grade, the adults around me were so heartbroken and traumatized themselves they never mentioned the loss to my school. I will always remember the look on my teacher, Ms. Ross’ face when she held me back from recess to ask about an essay I’d written about my summer. Her face was full of fear. I’d seen it before. I was suffering but, she was afraid of me.

But when we know better, we do better, right?

So WHERE is our class?

I’m not going to tell you how many books, podcasts, and websites I’ve devoured on grief and loss. You’ll pass judgment. It’s a LOT.

Here’s what they generally say:

This is one of the hardest things anyone has ever had to do
We don’t do it well.
Try these lists.

I’m not here to bash anyone’s efforts. God love these authors for trying. But we trauma therapists will tell you, that our brains are not awesome at processing information (we literally have hundreds of books on this) when they are all jacked up on grief.

Like handing me Michael’s Phelp’s manual on how to do the breaststroke when I’m already in the water swimming for my life.

Thank you, I guess?

I have some ideas on how to do better, but let’s put those aside for a second ( I’m a trauma therapist whose early childhood was tattooed with loss, lost a beloved friend in a freak accident in his 20’s, lost both my parents two years apart, and suffered debilitating PTSD all by age 45. Of course, I have some ideas).

Let’s just start with the concept of accepting that death is a developmental stage that touches all of us. We deserve to be supported. There are so many good ideas that could be so helpful if the timing was better. Like maybe in college?

Like grown-up health class.

And look, I promise you the class would be really good. Not every book sucks. Some ideas are great, novel even. The field of grief is filled with truly compassionate clinicians and lay folk who have had their card personally punched by loss and have earned the right to suggest ways forward.

Are you skeptical? Are you saying, “my experience was unique and private, and nothing could have helped?”

I get it.

But let’s just see.

When I was pregnant with my oldest child I took a class at the local hospital — it was a whole day — on what to expect on the day of delivery. I remember walking in thinking, “do I really need this?” A group of twenty heavily pregnant women and I watched a horrifying video of a woman giving birth, got to hold every piece of medical equipment involved in delivery and ask question after question.

The most important part of the day for me was when I paid the least attention. They had each woman lay on a mat as she would on delivery day and staged what the room would look like during a natural delivery (a doctor, a nurse, a laboring mom, a birthing partner), and a c-section (an entire NASCAR pit crew). It was effective. When I had the c-section I’d been so sure I wouldn’t, I looked up at the over dozen faces in that room without panic. I’d seen it before.

Can see you see my soapbox? Well, I’m up here now.

It’s time to do this whole thing better. Colleges require a grief and loss class? Churches, synagogues, elk lodges, yoga centers, Whole Foods…offering regular community events that offer an educational platform as well as connections to resources…stay tuned. I have thoughts.

And don’t worry…Personal stories, too.