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Title:              Grief Gardens and flower pots…
Organization:  Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, Child Life Department
Artist:            
Other:             “Each year we select a Camp Theme and this year our Theme was Grief Gardening, inspired by Alan Wolfelt’s “The Gardener and the Seedling” parable. We have four grief groups and each group had a collective grief garden. During the first grief session the garden was introduced with only the fragile columbine seedling (representing our campers at the beginning of their grief). During each succeeding grief session, the campers developed their garden with symbols that represented the challenges of their grief and the coping tools to help them face these challenges. They ended with creating a reconciliation garden within their grief garden.”
“During one of the sessions, the campers had the opportunity to create a memory plant container. On the inside section of the container they wrote about their loved one and then on the outside they covered their messages with a collage of tissues. They were given flower seeds and dirt to plant their memory flowers at home."