Club Hope is helping children grieve the loss of loved ones
Follow this linkOne of the hardest things a child can experience is the death of a parent. When local teacher Lisa Tolliver Lehman lost her husband to cancer when her two kids were in elementary school, she started a group at her school for grieving children.
Club Hope was soon formed, and the impact it's having on kids is life-changing.
When you enter Lehman's classroom at Moon Area Middle School, you can't help but feel at home. The soft lighting, relaxed atmosphere and warm vibes are comforting. Club Hope holds bi-monthly meetings after school where grief brings the kids together, but the activities that lead to conversations and connections keep them coming back.
"My main goal is to make sure that they never feel alone in their grief," Lehman says. Lehman's husband, Mike, died in 2016 from prostate cancer when he was 46. Their son, Teddy, helped create Club Hope, and is now in college, but still joins in person or over Zoom.
"A big issue when you're that young and you lose someone is that that rarely happens with other (kids)," Teddy says, "so, we made Club Hope to try and, you know, make people feel welcome and that they're not alone and that there's other people going through this journey with them."
Teddy's friend, Braden Winters, also helped create Club Hope and is now a college mentor. His father died in 2020 from a brain tumor.
"Whenever I lost my dad, I was alone," Braden says. "I was like the only child going through it, and it's just very hard to go through alone, and I would never want any kid to not be able to have someone to talk to about all this."
"Counseling is great, but I feel like (Club Hope) gave them the peer-to-peer connection that they're helping each other. They're sometimes not saying anything at all and doing crafts together to honor their loved ones," Braden's mother, Kendra White, said.
In one project, the students cut out pictures from magazines that represent them and their loved ones who died. It's helping eighth-grader Connor remember his dad, who died from COVID in 2021.
"He played football," he says as he shows the pictures representing his dad. "He rode dirt bikes. He liked classic cars. He was a cop, and we always went riding dirt bikes with his friends."
Lehman then joins the pieces of paper as a chain symbolizing how they're all interlinked and are never alone. Many of the activities, like Memory Boxes, Valentine's and planting flowers, are designed to keep the memory of their loved one at the forefront.
Some ideas come from the Highmark Caring Place for grieving children, which Lehman says has been an incredible resource for her family and many in the club.
The parents who've seen their kids struggling say having Club Hope right at school has helped.
"Keira was really struggling in school and with her peers, completely different than her bubbly personality of what she is, and that made me realize something was wrong," parent Alyssa Dixon, said.
Another parent, Brian Smith, says of his son who's in the club, "It was such a blessing for me and my family, because, you know, he needed something. He was really hurting. He had a lot of lot of issues."
Moon High School senior, Morgan, is a mentor in Club Hope and helps the middle schoolers.
"These are the rocks I introduced," she says, showing rocks the students painted that say "Club Hope" and inspirational phrases. "My grandma loved painting the rocks before she passed away, and so I kind of got to introduce this activity."
Morgan, Teddy, and Braden are all mentors who were in Club Hope and now return to help the younger kids. Instead of directed questions, conversations happen organically whenever a child is ready to talk.
"It's created a sense of community. Even though we don't necessarily have to state what we're feeling, we all know that we're all here for each other," Morgan explained. "When you walk in this room, it's a safe space, and I know that these other people are having the same feelings as me, so it really makes me feel safe and loved."
Smith says of his son's experience, "Club Hope really gave him a safe place to talk about some things that he couldn't talk about with me or with other family members. He could sit here with other like-minded kids his age and (they were) able to strengthen each other."
Lehman learned that helping others helped her and her family.
"It was hard, but I know the one thing that really brought us together as a family, the three of us, was to do some kindness for others," she says. "That really helped us get through our grief. That's what we continue to do."
Lehman's main goal for wanting to share the story of Club Hope is to inspire more groups like it at other schools because she knows there are grieving children at every school.
If you'd like to reach Lisa Tolliver Lehman about starting a club, you can email her here.
Follow this link to learn more about resources for kids in the Pittsburgh region.
