Meet the CNN Hero who's helping kids through their grief
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3 min readMary Robinson's Imagine provides grief support for children whose loved ones have died.
When Mary Robinson was 14, her dad died — and no one in her life knew quite what to do with the grief she and her brother experienced. Left to handle their own grief, the teens acted out and fell into depression.
Decades later, Robinson created the one thing she needed most when she was struggling with grief. Imagine, founded in 2011, is a grief support center for children in Mountainside, New Jersey. And Robinson, as Imagine's founder and executive director, is one of CNN's 2019 Heroes.
The CNN Heroes program features everyday Americans doing extraordinary things. Others chosen as Heroes so far in 2019 include a young woman providing culinary training for refugees, a superior court judge encouraging the homeless via his running club, and a diner owner feeding the homebound chronically ill. They're all helping others — but only Robinson is doing so by insisting on talking about the elephant in the room.
That's a theme at Imagine. There's an elephant somewhere in every room there — painted into a mural, pictured on a throw pillow — because, as Robinson told Legacy, "In our society, we don't really do a good job of talking about death and dying and grief. Often, grieving people say that they're being avoided. Someone will see them coming in the grocery store and go the other way because people are uncomfortable about talking with someone who's just had a loss. We always say that's the elephant in the room. Here at Imagine, we talk about the elephant."
One way they talk about the elephant in the room at Imagine is by bringing together families who have lost someone and giving them all a chance to speak about their loved one who died. Each evening at Imagine begins with a pizza dinner and moves into an opening circle. Here, each person introduces themselves and names the person who died. Putting a loss into words is important, Robinson says.
"Telling your story is a really essential and important part of mourning," says Robinson. "Telling someone what your dad was like. Telling someone what it was like when he was ill. How did you feel when he died? How did you find out he died? What was it like to go to the funeral? Telling your story. That's what people and kids get to do here."
Although everyone experiences bereavement and grief differently, that doesn't mean you have to do it alone. Join one of our Grief Support Groups.
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