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| that's me -- bottom row, third from the left |
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| I'm on the left, seated |
My goal was to lend a hand, not to learn anything new, but the exposure to a successful silent auction with fewer items and fewer attendees became a great teacher of new ideas I ended up applying a month later. I’ve held firm in my resolve not to participate in the Champagne Brunch this year. I still need that mental break; but I allowed my friend Bill Bastas to talk me into handling registration and checkout for The Smile Never Fades gala last Thursday. There I worked at the registration tables almost the entire night so I didn’t observe the event in action. For ¡Qué Maravilla! I wandered around during the live auction. ¡Qué Maravilla! became an emotional experience.
I think the strategy was brilliant. They called child life specialist Kim Fryar to the lectern for a short speech before the live auction. She spoke about the services Wonders & Worries provides for families around Central Texas. She spoke of the number of clients they help each year and how their services are special. I adore Kim because she taught our Child/Parent Relationship (CPR) class that my husband and I attended last year and her gentle, accepting manner is perfect for supporting and guiding families through difficult times.
Kim spoke about Wonders & Worries. A client spoke about the service she had received. And then the live auction began. I stood at the back searching for cocktail napkins to wipe away the tears in my eyes. People raised their paddles and bid on fantastic items. The auctioneer worked the crowd and the items sold. I strongly suspected that many of the people attending the event were just as moved as I had been.  |
| people pledging cash with their paddles |
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| the silent auction area |
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| back side of the silent auction area with beautiful old tree |
Wonders & Worries is a non-profit organization in Austin, Texas that helps children and their families cope with the life-threatening illness or incurable disease of a parent or caregiver. They have wonderful, compassionate, trained child life specialist on staff and their services range from private sessions between a child and a counselor, to group sessions, to counselors traveling to schools, to classes conducted for parents. The first thing they helped us understand is what a "child life specialist" does.
When children are sick and in the hospital for cancer or other life threatening illnesses, a child life specialist generally comes to the hospital to help the child cope with the ramifications of the child's illness. To quote from their web site's "About" page:
Meredith Cooper, MS, CCLS, LPC and Melissa Hicks, MS, CCLS, LPC, RPT are two certified child life specialists who have attended to the psychosocial needs of children with cancer and blood disorders for several years. Both began work with pediatric oncology patients and children affected by other chronic illnesses. This work expanded to services with children who have a parent with a chronic illness, primarily with cancer. In 2001 Cooper and Hicks created the W&W program because they saw the need for more formalized psychosocial services for children and adolescents who have a parent diagnosed with a chronic or life-threatening illness. As professional Child Life Specialists (CLS) working in a hospital setting, they saw first hand the devastating effects a family member’s illness can have on the emotional well-being of the entire family.
I first attended an open house at Wonders & Worries in 2007 that invited the Pink Ribbon Cowgirls members. My cancer was diagnosed just before Kelric was born and my treatments all took place during his infancy, so Kelric wasn't directly affected in ways that he can remember. Do we tell our child that Mommy had cancer? we asked during that meeting in 2007. The answer was, "Yes. He needs to know that cancer is part of your family's collective history. If he learns about it unexpectedly somehow when he's older, it can be a traumatic revelation. It should just be a part of things that he feels comfortable discussing and asking questions about, and not a deep, dark secret that he uncovers one day by accident."
They suggested that we wait until our son was three before bringing him in. We wondered if he would really need any counseling after all, but after losing our dog Wendy in December 2008 (when he was two) and Kelric’s great grandfather the following April (just after he turned three), we saw profound effects on our little boy and decided it was time. I’ve even written about that in earlier blog entries. We took the Child/Parent Relationship class at Wonders & Worries in 2009.
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| Kim Fryer 2nd from left |
Since then I’ve been able to talk with my young son about my having had cancer and about his great-grandfather having died from cancer. We’ve worked towards using the parenting and communication skills we learned in the class.
I’ve come to view Wonders & Worries as an amazing resource for families. It’s a powerful thing to know in a time of stress that you are not alone. Wonders & Worries helps parents communicate with their children at age appropriate levels, and they give the children tangible proof that those children are not alone, and their feelings – even strong negative feelings such as anger and fear and resentment – are not only normal but acceptable.
The value of this service goes to that place beyond words. It is priceless.
And yet…there are dollar values attached to things because we live in the real world.
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| Kim Fryer |
During the live auction they stopped the auction part to conduct a cash donation portion. The auctioneer would announce an amount, and would solicit people to pledge to donate that amount in cash. Kim stood once again at the lectern stating succinctly what that amount would buy. Certain amounts would buy enough supplies for them to support one family for a year. Other amounts would pay for the food for an entire 8-week CPR class. Kim described the goals, and people contributed generously. I stood around in awe that in this economy there are still people who will contribute to causes like this. I hung back, deliberately trying to be inconspicuous and unnoticed, and felt enormously proud that I was giving my time to support this cause.
After the CPR class in 2009 I made a point of telling Kelric that his great grandfather's death was not his fault -- that nothing he said or did caused his grandfather to get sick or to die. My goal was to inoculate our egocentric preschooler from the typical young child reaction of thinking the world revolves around him so the death of a family member must somehow be his fault. Kelric didn't quite take that message to heart the way it was intended, however.
Shortly after that conversation our little boy brought up the subject at dinner one night. He started crying, telling us how Wendy died and he missed Wendy, and how his grandpa had died and he missed his grandpa. Then he added (while looking thorougly depressed), "It's all my fault." Oh! That broke our hearts into a thousand pieces! We quickly reassured Kelric that these losses were NOT his fault. We held him and comforted him and wondered if he believed us. It's so hard when a child asks "Why?" and the answer is "It's just one of those things that happens."
The important thing, however, was that our little boy was actually talking to us about these feelings. He was trying to work things out. He was trying to wrap his young mind about the enormity of death.
It was a painful process, trying to guide our child as we dealt with our own grief over these losses, but we kept at it and made healthy progress. Wonders & Worries helped us figure out how.
I think other groups like Wonders & Worries exist, but none are exactly like them – and that’s a shame because this group should exist everywhere. Wonders & Worries provides all of their services free of charge for their clients. They have wonderful flexibility on when and where their child life specialists work with the children. They actively try to reach out to underserved communities. Most of all they help innocent children cope with experiences so stressful, so traumatizing, and so painful that most people turn away because they don’t know what to say. Wonders & Worries makes an impossible situation bearable, and they do great works in helping to heal the human spirit.
Their goal is to someday have a Wonders & Worries in every major city (and small town) to support this large and vulnerable population of children. I hope this goal gets realized.
Previous - 82 My Time on Capitol Hill - April 2010
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