When West Windsor resident Patty Ryan was invited to join Good Grief as a program coordinator and parent advocate, she didn’t think about it, she just said, “Yes!”
“I was thrilled to become a part of the organization,” said Ryan, pictured at right, who now works at Good Grief’s new office in Princeton. “I’m excited to work with kids. I wish something like this was available for my kids when they lost their dad.” The family lost John Ryan in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Within a few years, they also lost Ryan’s parents, who died from illnesses.
Good Grief has been offering peer group programs to families who have lost loved ones to illness, acts of violence, or accidents since 2007 in Summit and since 2011 in Morristown. Now Ryan is helping the organization launch activities at its Princeton-based office, including peer support groups that begin Wednesday, February 20, and a “meet and greet” open house Friday, March 22, at the Nassau Club.
A Night of Support is one of the most important services Good Grief offers to grieving families. On a typical evening, participants arrive around 6 p.m. and are offered a light meal.
After refreshments, families and facilitators form a sharing circle. The first person to speak holds a “talking stick,” shares his or her name and his relationship to the person who died — Dad, Mom, Sister, Brother, Daughter, Son — and passes the talking stick to the person beside him.
After the sharing circle, participants join individual groups according to age. Children and teens share stories and take part in creative activities. Children can also choose to spend time in the “volcano room” where they can actively express their emotions. They learn healthy coping skills such as hitting a pillow instead of hitting one’s kid sister when he is upset.
Ryan said that activities like the talking stick ritual and creative projects make it possible for people, especially children and teens, to name their grief out loud in a safe space. Good Grief has found that children are often silenced by well meaning adults and told not to speak of their loss in public.
One mother wrote a post on Good Grief’s blog: “Teachers were telling me they weren’t allowed to talk about their losses in school. One teacher handed me the counselor’s phone number highly suggesting I contact him because ‘it isn’t appropriate or normal for kids to talk about death with their friends’.”
“I like coming to Good Grief because there are other kids there I can talk to without them acting weird around me, and that makes me feel a lot better,” says a young boy in a video featured on Good Grief’s website.
“When I heard about Good Grief I thought this is very needed,” said Ryan, who has had experience with peer support. Shortly after 9/11, Ryan had joined a support group that was an outgrowth of a group formed by people who had lost family members in the Pan Am Flight 103 crash at Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Ryan said her family, church, and friends expressed tremendous love and provided much needed help in getting day-to-day things done. But Ryan found that her support group offered something that no one else could.
“We were all going through the same thing. You see how other people cope, and you know you can do it. When I left a support meeting, I felt restored,” Ryan said. One-on-one therapy is good, she said, but peer support is very important.
Immediately after 9/11, Ryan said, it was hard, if not impossible, to find peer support for kids. When John lost his life, their daughter Laura was 16, and their twins, Kristen and Colin, were 14. “My kids were very close to their Dad, and they felt pain just like I did,” Ryan said.
When Ryan recently heard about Good Grief, she visited the Morristown center with a friend she had met at her support group, Kathy Maher from Princeton Junction, who had also lost her husband in the 9/11 attack. At the time, Maher’s two sons were in their 20s and attending college.
“When I visited Morristown this past October, I knew they got it,” Maher said. “They understand what grief is about. It wasn’t morbid, and I wish they could bottle it. The kids seemed happy to be there. It was a place where kids felt they weren’t different anymore. They were reaching out to each other, from the youngest to the oldest.”
Ryan recalled that she was inspired by the casual but compassionate atmosphere of Good Grief.
A few weeks later Good Grief announced the opening of its Princeton center, and Ryan and Maher were invited to join the Good Grief team, Maher as a member of the Princeton advisory board, and Ryan as a program coordinator. They have since received training to work with families as program facilitators during Nights of Sharing.
“Patty is a dynamic and compassionate person. She embodies what we are looking for: caring community members who believe that love and a support system can change the life of a child,” said associate executive director Joe Primo, who holds a Master of Divinity degree from Yale.
“It takes a village,” said Ryan, with a nod to Hillary Clinton. Support from immediate family members can’t be understated, but in a family situation people often feel guarded about expressing their pain for fear that they will make things worse for another member. “It’s not always a safe place to express your feelings at the moment you are feeling them,” Ryan said. But having a safe place to express yourself is what Good Grief is all about.
Many of the people who work at Good Grief are volunteers. Ryan has already received volunteer commitments from Rider University and local high school students. Good Grief welcomes people to help in the office, prepare for special events and Nights of Support, or to be a group facilitator.
All volunteers must take an orientation tour, and potential group facilitators must take a 36-hour training session and make a one-year commitment. The most important quality for a group facilitator is a capacity for empathetic listening.
Ryan joins Good Grief with a history of working with people in many capacities. She has worked as a trading assistant at the World Trade Center, a real estate agent serving Mercer County, a substitute teacher and teaching assistant at the Dutch Neck Elementary School, and as a co-owner of a children’s clothing store in Cranbury.
Ryan grew up in Long Island in a family that was active in the community and the business world; her father owned and managed a restaurant, and her mother worked in retail sales and management. She has lived in West Windsor since the late 1980s. She and her late husband moved here because the town valued open space, was a good place to raise a family, and was accessible to New York and Philadelphia. John was active in West Windsor, coaching softball and basketball teams. The John J. Ryan softball field at Community Park was named in his honor.
As a Princeton advisory board member, Maher draws on years of volunteering experience. When her sons were young and attending St. Gregory’s school in Hamilton, she helped with everything from “from lunch to walkathons to bingo.”
After 9/11, she trained to be a hospice worker at Princeton Hospice, and cared for the dying and their families from 2004 to 2006. Recently, she and Ryan organized Good Grief’s first Princeton fundraiser: An Evening of Good Will, Good Friends, and Good Grief which she hosted at the Elements adult community club house in Princeton Junction.
Maher grew up in Bayside, New York, and was living in New Jersey with her family in Hamilton Township when her husband lost his life. She moved to Princeton Junction two years ago. Her sons have married and she is the proud grandmother of four grandchildren.
Maher said she and Dan had a wonderful marriage. “My husband would be happy that I’m doing this,” she said.
Ryan said her kids, now in their 20, will always miss their father, but they have each learned to move on with their lives, pursuing their interests with the same enthusiasm their father pursued his. Kristen and Laura work in New York. Laura is an executive assistant for a prominent chef, and Kristen works in the financial industry. Colin is a screen writer and website editor in Los Angeles.
And their mom? She has just become a key member of the Good Grief center in Princeton. “I want to share with others from my experience,” Ryan said. “I want to make a difference.”
For information visit Good Grief at www.good-grief.org or E-mail Ryan: Patty@good-grief.org. Phone: 609-498-6674.
