The Children and Youth Artists’ Grief Deck

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected EVERYBODY. Whether through direct illness, or the illness of loved ones, or through the transformation of what we had taken for granted as normal, everyone has lost something these past 2 years, and the losses continue to mount.

Humans process loss through grief, and humans ordinarily grieve in community. Because the pandemic affected our ability to come together to move through loss, we developed the first Artists’ Grief Deck.

2 years into the pandemic, evidence is mounting that the biggest burden of grief is being carried by the youngest generations - children and young people who have not only lost loved ones, but their whole ‘presumptive normal’: birthday parties, graduations, social gatherings, school routines, sporting events, and so much more.

Kids living through the pandemic will be marked for life; but how well they are able to integrate and understand the losses they’re experiencing may determine their future mental health and capacity for healing.

This Is why we collaborated with the National Hospice Cooperative, Experience Camps, the Boys Clubs of New York, and 58 artists and writers between the ages of 6-26 to develop the Children and Youth Artists’ Grief Deck, a unique toolkit that leverages artists’ ways of knowing to enable the consideration and processing of loss for the young.

Now we want to share this resource with as many young people as possible. You can order individual copies of the deck here; but if you work for a service organization, school district, or youth-facing support group, please GET IN TOUCH and let us explore how to share the Youth Grief Deck with you and the kids you care for.