Grief is a natural reaction to loss and not limited to death, says Amy Caspersen Wyman, founder and music therapist at Good Grief Cape Cod: "We have some groups for children who are impacted by incarceration. when their parents are incarcerated. We have children who are impacted by divorce or addiction. We have a program for grandchildren who are being raised by grandparents. A little bit of everything, trying to grasp the multitude of what grief actually is.”

Amy — who’s also been recognized with a National Childcare Teacher Award — spoke with Amplify’s Tamora Israel.

Amy Wyman is the founder of Falmouth-based Good Grief Cape Cod, where she also serves as a music therapist and certified grief support specialist. In addition to a dual Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education and Child Life from Wheelock College, she holds a Master of Arts in Expressive Art Therapies with a specialization in Music Therapy from Lesley University.

In other words, Sis gets busy!

"I fused what I had learned in college and got my certification so that I could have these conversations with families on where to really start the process of helping these kids cope."

Before building the non-profit, Wyman was a kindergarten teacher for fifteen years. Her time in the classroom helped shape the approach she takes when discussing grief with struggling children and families in the Cape Cod community.

Amplify: What does Good Grief offer?

Amy Wyman: We improve the lives of children and families who are grieving by providing community engagement opportunities, workshops, and expressive art therapy sessions for children ages five to 21.

Amplify: How do you explain grief to a child?

Wyman: Grief is a natural reaction to a loss. It's all of the emotions that you're feeling, sad and happy. Maybe you might feel that when somebody passed away or like Grandma has been suffering from cancer for a long time, but you are happy because now she's not suffering anymore. You might feel sad, or might feel angry, just going over those emotions and that all these emotions are okay. This is the way things are supposed to be when we have something that has been taken away from you.

Amplify: What inspired you to get into this business?

Wyman: Realizing as a professional educator that I did not have the skills to help my kids in my classrooms that were grieving with loss, with grief. I couldn't even figure out my own grieving process, let alone trying to help some of my kids in my classroom.

I went and did some more studies on the side and got a certification as a grief support specialist so I could bring those resources back into the classroom to help my kids that were grieving. Now, we're able to provide expressive art therapy sessions, either one-on-one or group sessions for kids. We have some groups for children who are impacted by incarceration when their parents are incarcerated. We have children who are impacted by divorce or addiction. We have a program for grandchildren who are being raised by grandparents. A little bit of everything, trying to grasp the multitude of what grief actually is.

Amplify: When did you start Good Grief?

Wyman: My husband and I were just trying to figure that out. It was 2013 when the Boston Marathon bombings happened, that's when I realized that I wasn't equipped with the resources and materials to have these conversations with my kindergartners. I need more education on this. So I fused what I had learned in college and got my grief support specialist certification so that I could have these conversations with families on where to really start the process of helping these kids cope. It started off as a project in 2018, then by 2020 it became an organization. We are a nonprofit. The idea kind of rocked around in my head and I just kind of put them together. We just fused these together.

Amplify: How did you go about starting your business? What steps did you take?

Wyman: I became a mother and that just changed my whole entire world around. I thought I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and shortly after realizing that this kid doesn't talk or know how to carry a conversation, I realized that maybe being a stay-at-home mom wasn’t right for me. What am I going to do? I started going to my local senior centers, which were at the time up in Boston. My son was three months old when we started it and we would go and see the interactions happening, how much the seniors needed us to be in their lives and we needed them to be in ours. Something clicked and we communicated through music.

We started doing that and then we moved back to the Cape. I realized there's a huge need for grief resources. I figured, hey, I have an expressive art therapy degree for my master's with a specialization in music therapy. I decided to fuse everything together, I started using everything and that became Good Grief Cape Cod.

Amplify: Did you encounter any obstacles along the way?

Wyman: Yes, because it is a topic that nobody wants to discuss. When we wake up, we are lucky to be alive. We go through living each day not knowing when our clock is gonna end, you know? There's so much going on and so much that [children] are aware of whether we try to shelter them or not. Just having the conversation about the big D word, Death. Having a conversation about tragedy. Yes, it happens to us and we need to be talking about it. Our children are under a tremendous amount of stress specifically, right now, living with COVID, turmoil, the political state our country is in. There's so much going on and so much they're aware of. We need to be there to support them better than we currently are. There are not enough resources specifically on the Cape.

Amplify: Have the recent events and the county’s current financial climate affected your business?

Wyman: Absolutely, predominantly we did in-school programming. With the schools going on lockdown, it's been very difficult because they're not letting specialists come into that community, which I don't blame them. So it's been very difficult. Doing one-on-one, we did zoom for a year, and as you can imagine it just doesn't work as well as in-person for something as intimate as talking about grief. We are finally going back into school this fall, we are very excited about it, so that's a good thing. And hopefully, it'll keep on going from there.

Amplify: Where do you see your business in five years?

Wyman: Just coping with the world around us is very stressful right now. I hope that [Good Grief] will become a mental and emotional support system for public schools. That's really what we're trying to do, to create a curriculum and provide this curriculum for kids so that they can cope with the stresses of the world.

Amplify: What are the dangers of “Just push through it”?

Wyman: Oh man, how do I answer that without swearing? I think that's BS. Just push through it? Anyone who tells you “just push through it” is not someone that you need on your grieving team. That's for sure. This isn't something that you just push through. It's a lifelong process of understanding yourself, understanding what you are capable of, and moving forward with it.

That's really how we see it. Not getting over it. It's moving forward with it. How can we make this into something productive, something positive, something beautiful? How can we learn from this experience? So I would never tell anybody to push on through it.

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On the Web: https://goodgriefcapecod.org/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Good-Grief-Cape-Cod-484072942113008