Mindful Monday: Calm Waters' 'Camp Courage' helping children process grief

Oklahoma City-based counseling provider Calm Waters is providing a new way to help children find ways to process their grief.

Camp Courage is a one-day event that Calm Waters is set to host. The event will feature multiple volunteers and activities that can help children express themselves.

Calm Waters Program Director Bailey Maxey joined the News 9 team on Monday to share more about the upcoming event.

Q: What is Camp Courage, and how does it help children as they are dealing with grief?

A: Grief really produces a lot of cortisol in our bodies, which is a stress hormone, and in order to get rid of that, it's good to participate in rhythmic activities that have a natural end or closed-ended activity. Art has the ability to be both of those things. If you think about dance, it's rhythmic. It comes to a natural end. Even crocheting it's like a rhythmic pattern and it has a natural end to it. Art is a great way to cope with all of the stress that comes with grief, and so Camp Courage is a one-day art camp for children ages 6 to 12 who've lost someone through death.

Q: What type of art and art techniques does Camp Courage offer? 

A: We are doing yoga, and we've done leather making in the past. We had a guy come in who did leather making and talked about how he had actually gone through a grief event, and he talked about how he coped with that. A lot of the anger that he felt was through leather making, you have to bang a mallet, and so that was a good release for him, and the kids loved making key chains and stuff like that.

Q: At the end of this camp, what are you hoping that these kids who go to the camp are going to be able to take away from this?

A: Our artists are volunteering their time for this day, and they're talking about how their preferred art medium helps them cope with loss. We're talking about how grief feels in our body, how we can express that through creative expression, and hopefully, our kiddos leave with more regulatory tools. Hopefully, they live with a passion for some kind of art medium that they can use to regulate their nervous systems as they process, and hopefully learn to cope. One in ten children in Oklahoma is going to lose a parent or a sibling, which is higher than the national average, and that's why we really want Camp Courage to be a special day just for kiddos. If you think about it, a parent or sibling, that's not an extended relative, that's someone who's probably in their home with them. Someone very close in their life every day, and so we want to create Camp Courage to be a special day just for those kiddos to learn how to process and also connect with other kids who have been through something similar and give them a safe space.

Q: For families watching at home, what are the details? Where? When? How much?

A: We host Camp Courage at our center at the corner of Northwest 4th Street and North Walker Avenue here in Downtown Oklahoma City. We have the registration online, calmwaters.org. We'll need some information about your kiddo, it's about $50 to attend. It's from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in July, and we're really excited and looking forward to hosting all those kiddos there.