Olivias House is a local loss and grief center for children and teens. They have an eight week program that teaches kids who have lost a loved one how to deal with that loss in a way that is not self destructive. During the fifth week, they get a journal that prompts the children different questions dealing with that loss, so they can write about it to further the healing process. The class was instructed to design one of these journals each, and we donated them to Olivias House at the end of the year.
My title was Surviving the Storm. It was a scene of a big field during a violent rainstorm with only one tree in it getting hit by lightning. The branch is broken off, about to hit the ground. The tree represents the one who lost the loved one, the lightning represents when the news fully set in, the rain represents the pain that seems like it will never go away, but always does, and the storm represents the struggle that gets intense in the middle, then slowly, but surely goes away. Rain is the consistent background throughout the book. At the beginning it is raining hard, but it eases up at the end, until the last page where the tree is back without the branch, there are clear skies, and the last prompt is "Olivias House has taught me..."
I asked two of my friends to submit poems to this book, and most of the pictures I took myself.
