While Kentucky ranks fourth in the nation for childhood bereavement — meaning children under 18 grieving the loss of a parent or sibling — there aren’t too many resources geared to helping children cope, according to Caleb Potter. So, he’s writing a book series to facilitate conversations and help children better understand that loss.
Potter has worked at Hospice and Palliative Care of Western Kentucky for the last 10 years, most of those as a grief counselor. He just published his second book of his “Caring Bears” series.
“Pretty early on (at Hospice) I recognized that we had a lot of kids coming in for counseling, and I didn’t know if that was normative,” Potter said. “I was kind of expecting to have more adults. I started looking into it. It turns out that Kentucky ranks fourth in the nation for childhood bereavement. I wasn’t finding a lot of resources that were helping me to address grief with kids.”
Potter said that at Hospice, there were a lot of patients who had children but didn’t really know how to deal with the subject of loss and grief with them.
“I thought, if there aren’t any resources I can find that I feel like are addressing this, I’ll see if we can create our own,” Potter said of deciding to write the books. “Thankfully, our leadership here gave me the freedom to pursue that.”
The books feature the main character of Jenny Bear. Children can put themselves in Jenny Bear’s shoes as they follow the storyline.
The approach was structured in accordance with the most prevalent type of loss children will encounter — first and foremost being the loss of a grandparent, Potter said. That’s why the first book chronicles the loss of a grandmother.
In the second book, Daddy Bear is terminally ill with cancer. Potter said the plot takes children through the process — from the point of diagnosis to treatment that doesn’t help to the death and subsequent grief — in an age-appropriate manner.
In the event that there are a lot of details that don’t exactly speak to a particular child’s situation — such as a different family member, a different type of loss, etc. — there are a series of questions in the back of the book that reference specific pages in the story. The questions allow children to insert their loved one or their scenario.
“The storyline kind of then starts to take shape to parallel what they are going through so that they can more accurately address some healthy grieving practices,” Potter said.
He said there’s also a guidance in the front of the book that coaches the caregiver on how best to utilize the book.
“We say something about how a lot of the things that are going to be said in the storyline are not going to directly apply to your situation,” Potter said. “Once you’ve read through the story and you start using the questions in the back of the book, you can go back and tailor the story to your situation. That’s where the opportunity would be to say, ‘our Daddy didn’t have a sickness that lasted a long time, he was just in a car accident.’ So they could broadly apply the principles.”
The first book was published in 2018, and the second was released in January 2022. Potter said the next one would be the death of a sibling, and the one after that would be the death of a classmate.
“The goal behind (the series) was really just to try to start opening up the conversation for caregivers and children rather than just letting things go unsaid or undiscussed,” Potter said.
Potter said Hospice gives the books as a gift to all the families they serve that the situations would speak to, completely free of charge.
While the second book hasn’t been out long enough to get much feedback, Potter said the response to the first book was positive.
“We’ve had lots of really good feedback from it,” he said. “Lots of families have reached out and said ‘thank you for the book, because it has prompted conversations in our household that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.’”
