Camp Firefly is a grief camp for children and youth who are grieving the death of a loved one.

But what are grief camps exactly?

Grief camps are like grief-therapy summer camps, but they are done in a really fun and accessible way.

At these camps, between forty and fifty youth spend the weekend alternating between traditional camp activities and grief-therapy activities. Kids are swimming and zip-lining one minute, and making “memory pillows” right after. The whole weekend is spent alternating back and forth between these different types of activities (fun, emotional, fun, emotional), and that specific formula has a really powerful impact on our grief campers.

Grief camps help young people to make sense of their painful feelings around death. It might help to think of grief camps as a safe place where kids go to learn how to grieve, in healthy ways. Though many grieving youth have loving and supportive families trying to help them process their grief at home, it is often more helpful for those youth to go somewhere new and unconnected in order to do so (as strange as that sounds). Grief camps represent that safe space and opportunity to do so.

And finally, grief camps usually act as the first time and place where grieving youth can truly identify with all the other youth around them. Everyone at these camps is grieving the death of someone they loved, and everyone is doing it together. As a result, grief camps usually represent the first moment where grieving youth allow themselves to feel their painful feelings in big ways, and begin learning how to work through them.

Grief camps are incredibly powerful for all those who attend them. Grieving children and youth often make more personal progress over the course of one weekend at grief camp, than they do in months or years within their communities.