Podcast: Helping Kids Navigate Grief: A Story of Love, Loss, and Healing

Lindsay Bonilla (LindsayBonilla.com) is a professional storyteller and author whose previous picture books include The Storyteller, the Parents’ Choice Award winner Polar Bear Island, I Love You with All of My Hearts, and The Note Who Faced the Music. She lives with her husband, two wild and creative kids, and her dog, Blitzen, in North Canton, Ohio.

Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, “Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations,” available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. Gabe is also the host of the “Inside Bipolar” podcast with Dr. Nicole Washington.

Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can’t imagine life without. To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com.

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast where experts share experiences and the latest thinking on mental health and psychology. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.

Gabe Howard: Hey, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I’m your host, Gabe Howard. Calling into the show today, we have Lindsay Bonilla. Lindsay is a professional storyteller and author who lives with her husband, two wild and creative kids, and her dog, Blitzen, in North Canton, Ohio. Her latest book, “The Hole,” addresses the sensitive topic of loss and grief for children and is available right now. Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay Bonilla: Thank you so much for having me.

Gabe Howard: So I’m curious. Your new book, “The Hole,” is a children’s book and is about a little boy whose brother has recently died, and now there’s a hole in his life. And the hole is represented in the illustrations as a dark, tight line scribble that follows the little boy around. And it’s on the bottom bunk where his brother used to sleep, or it’s in his brother’s empty chair at the dinner table. And. And when this little boy goes to school, that that hole is scribbled over his chest. And his parents are also drawn as having the same holes scribbled on their chest. And of course, the idea being that the hole is the spot where the deceased brother used to be and is now missing from. The metaphor is absolutely perfect, and the illustrations in this book are just gorgeous. But this is a really difficult topic. You’re literally writing a book for children about death. I don’t think that is a topic a lot of children’s authors are trying to cover. May I ask you what your motivation for this was? What was your inspiration? I, I guess what I’m getting at is like, what’s the story behind this book?

Lindsay Bonilla: Sure. Well, I always say that this is the book that I wish I never had to write. So the story behind this book is my best friend from high school. She had a seven year old son. A year older than my son, and they were friends. And one night I got a text from her saying that her son had been hit by a car and he had succumbed to his injuries. And when I first got the text, I was just frozen. Like, I didn’t believe that it was real. I mean, I just thought it was like someone was playing a cruel joke. Somebody had my friend’s phone, and I had to sit there for a minute and come to realize that it was real. And so in the days that followed, you know, I was just grieving on so many different levels. Clearly, I’m grieving for the loss of this young life that’s cut short way too soon. I’m grieving for my friend and thinking, how in the world do I walk through this with her? I was grieving as a mom of two boys myself. Every time I look at my kids, I’m thinking, this could be my kid. And then I was grieving with my son, and, like, how do I walk through this with him as well? I just, as a writer, one of the things that I do to process anything that I’m going through is write. And so writing this book really became my way of processing all of that grief and you know, trying to work it out, figure it out, if you will.

Gabe Howard: I have to say, just sort of processing my, my own discomfort with the topic of death and grief, and especially shepherding children through it. There’s this part of me that’s like, okay, I would reach out to the things that I know, the things that I love. And it really spoke to me when you said, hey, I’m a writer, so this is how I’m going to process it. But I’m also still struck by your writing children’s books. I mean, this is this is atypical of your other books, which are more upbeat and happy and more quote unquote, stereotypical. Was that a hard change to make? I mean, on one hand, you’re trying to make a book that is that is engaging and entertaining and of course, marketable. But on the other hand, you’re trying to really help children get through death, which is a monumental task for everyone. What was what was that experience like for you? Did you have any takeaways? Did you learn anything? How did I you can see how uncomfortable I am with it. So I can imagine the listener is following right along. But how did you manage your own grief and discomfort with death to to really give something to children that would help them through this?

Lindsay Bonilla: Yeah, I think well, first of all, when I started writing it because I write for children, I definitely wanted it to be written from the perspective of a child, even though I’m an adult. And so my friend’s son, whose name was Vinnie, he had three siblings. And also, you know, as I mentioned, I have two boys, so I was able to kind of look at their relationship and put myself in this sense of like, how would they feel if they lost their brother? And then my than my siblings. I wanted to have a place of proximity as I was writing this. And so I started out with a very generic name that didn’t really mean anything to me for the brother. And then later I changed it to a nickname for my brother, and I thought later on I would change it to something else, and I never did. I did that, you know, just to get that proximity. As I was writing, it was interesting because I made discoveries along the way. And one of the most interesting discoveries I made was how the friends were interacting with the protagonist of the book. And at one point, the friends were saying, you know, if I had a hole, what I would do is fill it in.

Lindsay Bonilla: I would get rid of it and fill it in. And I thought this was what I found in one of my earliest drafts. And the young boy who’s going through the loss of his brother says, no, stop. As soon as they start to fill in the hole. No, stop. I think I want to keep it. And I looked at that, and I think that was a really big realization for me, as I think the first thing that we think when we are dealing with this loss and death is like I, you know, I just want to fill it in. I just want to get rid of it. But that’s not what any of us really wants. We want to find a way to live with it. We want to find a way to make space for it and honor it because of all that it represents. You know that loss represents that. That hole represents what we’ve lost, the person that we love. And so it was neat to find that in my first draft and see how quickly the character just shut that down like, no, don’t fill it in. And as I’m working through this, I’m realizing that, yeah, he’s he wants to learn how to honor his brother’s memory and live with it and help his family to do the same.

Gabe Howard: It’s really interesting because my mind was going to, excellent. We’re going to learn how to fill in the hole. And then you said that the friend said, no, no, no, don’t fill in the hole. I have to ask how it isn’t. It isn’t it best to fill in a hole? I mean, somebody might fall in. You might get hurt. I just I just keep thinking isn’t filling it in what’s best? I mean, isn’t that what you do with a hole? I don’t I don’t know anybody who gets a hole in the road, a hole in the sidewalk, a hole in the driveway, a hole in their backyard, and they’re just like, no, we must leave the hole. So I’m just curious about that because it it really struck me as well, wait a minute. What do you mean? We don’t want to fill it in, do we? Put a fence around it?

Lindsay Bonilla: Well, and I think that’s what the young protagonist is trying to do. He’s trying to keep the hole at bay and not get close to it. And, you know, he looks at it from afar until one of his friends kind of also looking at it, and he’s saying it’s it’s deep and it’s dark. And his friend acknowledges that it is. And he finally, because of the help of his friend, finds the courage to go inside the hole and explore his grief. And it’s inside there that he realizes how he’s sad and he’s angry and he’s hurt and he’s, all of the different emotions that grief bring brings. He’s all of those things. Not just one of those things. But it’s not until he experiences that that he can begin to feel better. So probably one of my favorite lines in the entire book, and one that most resonated with, you know, my friend whose son was lost was I don’t feel good, but I think I feel better. So you have to go into your grief to feel better. No one’s saying that you’re going to, you know, miraculously go in there and feel like 100%, but you can start to feel better. But I think if you hold it at bay, you can’t even get to that point. And after that, his friend reaches in and helps him to come out of the hole. The first question she asks him is, would you like to tell me about your brother? And he says, yes. And so he starts to learn that he can fill the hole with the memories of his brother. So it’s not that. It’s an absence. He. By the end of the book, he says, I hate that my brother’s gone, but I don’t hate that hole because I know I can fill it with memories of him. So he does fill it to an extent, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t ever get rid of it.

Gabe Howard: That, that makes a lot of sense now, you know, our podcast is designed for adults. I’m not anticipating a lot of children listening to this show. Children don’t really listen to a lot of podcasts, but so so I got to imagine that many parents are listening to this, and the thing that keeps going through my mind is when children are grieving, adults are grieving. I can’t think of many scenarios where you have a child who is experiencing grief and the adults, the parents, the caregivers, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles are just like, oh yeah, this doesn’t affect us at all. Usually when grief impacts a child, it is impacting the adults closest to them just as much. However, you’re stuck in this position where not only do you have to manage your own grief, you also have to help a child manage theirs. What’s that like? Because you had to manage your own grief while helping a child manage theirs.

Sponsor Break

Gabe Howard: And we’re back with Lindsay Bonilla, author of “The Hole,” a children’s book designed to help kids deal with grief and loss.

Lindsay Bonilla: A counselor who reviewed the book mentioned that a lot of times the children’s loss can be brushed away easily. You know, or kind of put on the back burner, if you will. And the adult’s grief is the one that sort of takes center stage. I think part of that is maybe children, they don’t know how to communicate what they need and ask for what they need. And I think sometimes we can be dismissive of children in their grief. Or just, you know, fail to understand it properly or give them the space to explore it in a way that’s healthy to them. So my son was friends with Vinnie. They didn’t see each other a lot. We don’t live very close together, but whenever we would get together, they were just like, you know, they just were made for each other. It was that kind of a friendship. And so my son wouldn’t talk about it a lot. I mean, he was clearly he was clearly hurting, but he wouldn’t talk about it a lot because it wasn’t like a daily thing, like somebody he saw every day. But what I’ve noticed is that every once in a while, it’ll just come up, you know, it’ll just he’ll he’ll say something like, oh, I miss my friend or something, you know, just the way that grief does, it surprises you. And it’s almost surprising to me when it comes up out of the blue. And I didn’t know he was even thinking about it. And that conversation happened with my son not long ago. We were talking about something in the news where a lot of children, I said, had experienced a lot of loss.

Lindsay Bonilla: And my son said, well, I’ve experienced a lot of loss. And I was kind of taken aback because he’s lost his great grandmother, who he’d seen a couple of times in his life. He said, I lost my uncle again. Somebody he would see like at maybe Christmas and Thanksgiving occasionally. And he said, and I lost my friend, Vinnie. And in my at first when he said it, I had a lot of loss in my life. My first response, which I’m glad I didn’t say, was, really, you haven’t had that much loss. You haven’t lost a grandparent or a parent or, you know, whatever the case may be. But I thought, well, to him, as a ten year old, that’s a lot of loss. And it would have been easy for me to minimize it and not put myself in his shoes and try to think about how it makes him feel.

Gabe Howard: You know, some people are of the thought that grief is just way too big of a topic for a child, and that books like this are actually detrimental, that teaching them about grief is somehow going to make them sad, or is is going to prevent them from growing, or is it going to remind them of pain and that the best thing to do is to gloss over it and help them move on? And they believe that helping them move on is to forget that it ever happened. I, I know it’s a weird question, but can you defend why this book needs to exist? Do you believe that it’s helpful for children to read a book like this, to manage their own grief, or to learn about grief?

Lindsay Bonilla: Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, I think picture books are a safe place to learn. I mean, the wonderful thing about picture books is, let’s say you read this book with your child and you just read it and they have no questions about it. You can just set it aside and you’ve given them that experience to learn about it. Or maybe you read it with them and it does open up a lot of questions. Or maybe they want to, you know, they realize like, hey, I have a hole like this child. It’s for my aunt, or it’s for my dad or whoever it is then now you’re giving you’re letting them know that other people are talking about it. You can talk about it to also, maybe your child is not the one who’s grieving. Maybe they’re going to know somebody in their class that’s grieving. Maybe they’re going to be the friend in the book that helps the little boy to feel safe enough to explore his grief, that they’re going to listen to him. So maybe they just they need some tools to walk alongside of someone that’s grieving and not minimize their friend’s grief. So I think there’s so many levels that approaching these topics are important on. And I think that we do a disservice to our kids when we kind of shield them from these topics because, I mean, sadly, everyone is going to experience loss. None of us are getting out unscathed without experiencing loss of some kind.

Lindsay Bonilla: I would venture to say almost every child has already experienced some kind of loss already or will experience loss in the future. You know, these are just tools that we have. And, I just want my kids to be able to feel that they can express themselves. And I mean, I hope that everybody would want that for their child, that they don’t need to hide and cover up their feelings, but they can talk about it and they can look for things that help them. So that’s another another thing that’s good to know is like, okay, if you are in this situation, everybody might need something different, right? Like, maybe not all of us heal in the same way. For me, writing was therapeutic. That’s not going to be therapeutic for everybody. But some people don’t want to talk about it and that’s okay. And we can have that conversation. But I think that giving them tools like what would you do if you felt like this boy? Asking questions around it can be helpful and help you to have those conversations with your kids to know what they need from you. If they do go through a situation like this to.

Gabe Howard: There’s this part of me that’s just wondering. I mean, you’ve got something as big as death, as big as grief, and it’s impacting your children, and you’ve got a picture book that helps to resolve that. And there’s this little piece of me that’s just like, really like, is a picture book sufficient enough help for children? Is this all they need?

Lindsay Bonilla: Well, I definitely don’t think it’s all they need. No. But I think it’s a great starting point. Again, I think that one of the lovely things about picture books is that they open the conversation and they are accessible. So you pick up this book, you could read it by yourself. You know, a child could read this by theirself and not have to talk to anybody, but they can relate to this experience and also see themselves mirrored back. Recognize that there are other people that are grieving. In this book, while it deals with sibling loss, the main character also sees that there’s other people that have holes in his school. So, you know, one person, it’s their uncle, another person, it’s their dad. And then there are the people that don’t see the holes at all or ignore them altogether. And so he recognizes that there’s all these experiences going on. So again, it’s a nice, I think, starting point, but definitely I think it’s not, it’s not the end point for sure. But it sets up the conversation.

Gabe Howard: Lindsay, thank you so much for writing this book, and thank you so much for helping parents have just a very tough conversation with their children. I wanted to ask, during the writing process, did you learn anything that you would like to pass on to parents about helping a child through grief that surprised you and anything unexpected come up. It’s just sort of an open ended question to give you an opportunity to pass along anything that you would like to the parents who are listening.

Lindsay Bonilla: Oh, that’s a great question. I think one of the things I learned from my friends through this process was that a lot of times when people are grieving, they don’t know what to ask for. They don’t know how to ask for help. That when you’re in that state of grief, that shock is so great that whatever we the helpers, the people, the friends, the community can do without being asked is the biggest gift at that moment. And also another thing I learned is that most people that I’ve talked to, they don’t want you to avoid speaking about their loved one. They know their loved one is gone. They have that hole. But it hurts worse when we talk around them or act like they weren’t. They weren’t there. They aren’t there. And so acknowledging that person and telling their stories, hey, I remember when we did this together, or I remember that one time our kids got together and dressed up in the pirate costumes and, you know, we were just laughing because they pulled all these ridiculous things together. Those are the things that keep their memory alive and keep them close. Sometimes people try to keep them at a distance or, just I’m not going to talk about them, but it’s very few people that don’t want their loved one brought up or remembered. So remembering them and honoring them in a way that honors the family and honors their memory, you know, saying something that you remember about them, that makes you smile. It can mean a lot.

Gabe Howard: Oh, I love that. Lindsay, as we near the end of the show, I understand that you dedicated the book to your friend’s son’s memory and that now there’s a nonprofit in his name. Can you share the story behind that dedication?

Lindsay Bonilla: Yeah, sure. So this book is dedicated in memory of Vinnie and his family, who are the ones that are filling the hole that he left behind. And one of the ways that they do that is through a day of service that they started. It’s called the Vincent William Baran Day of Service, and it’s been growing every year. It started out as one day, and now it’s a whole week. And they have partnered with many nonprofits in our local area. So they’re in the Cleveland area, but they also have had people that participate in their own ways, like all around the country and even around the world, finding their own outlets to serve on that day. And so you can find more information about it at MightyVincent.org.

Gabe Howard: And, Lindsay, thank you so much. Now, your book, “The Hole,” is available now wherever they sell books. But I know that you have a website as well. Can you go ahead and let the listeners know where to find you personally?

Lindsay Bonilla: Yes. You can find me at LindsayBonilla.com.

Gabe Howard: Lindsay, thank you again. I also want to give a great big thank you to all of you, our listeners. My name is Gabe Howard and I’m an award winning public speaker and I could be available for your next event. I also wrote the book “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which is available on Amazon. However, if you go to my website, you can get a signed copy with some free podcast swag. You can also learn more about me there. Just head over to gabehoward.com. Wherever you downloaded this episode, please follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free and you don’t want to miss a thing. And listen up. I need a favor. Recommend the show. Share it on social media, share it in an email. Share in a text message. Tell your mom. Tell your dad. Tell your support group. Just tell everyone because sharing the show is how we grow. I will see everybody next time on Inside Mental Health.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Inside Mental Health: A Psych Central Podcast from Healthline Media. Have a topic or guest suggestion? E-mail us at show@psychcentral.com. Previous episodes can be found at psychcentral.com/show or on your favorite podcast player. Thank you for listening.