LANCASTER, N.Y. — Our region's first ever grief center is being built right now to offer a beacon of hope and healing.
The facility located at 3966 Walden Avenue in Lancaster will offer peer support to children and families at no cost and ensure no one is alone in the darkest of times.
Those behind the project are some of the 'Selfless Among Us'.
Western New York Compassion Connection is a service of P.U.N.T. Pediatric Cancer Collaborative.
P.U.N.T. offers six programs to families dealing with childhood cancer, one of them being bereavement services.
"I say like our pediatric cancer support programs are the heart of our organization, but bereavement was really the soul of our organization," said P.U.N.T. executive director Gwen Mysiak.
WNY Compassion Connection will be a place of hope and peer support for children and parents who lost a loved one not just to cancer, but any origin, including trauma, suicide and overdose deaths.
"Our community has been through so much: the 5/14 mass shooting and COVID and the blizzard. So we really did feel almost like a mandate to broaden the scope to make sure that our program could reach as many people as possible," said Mysiak.
Statistics show one in 11 children in Western New York will suffer the death of a parent or sibling, and that loss puts them at risk.
"Risks include everything from academic difficulties to substance use to suicide," said Mysiak. "And we know that this is much more than just paying attention to hurt feelings in the wake of a loss. This is really hopefully going to be a service that's going to give people a lifeline for continuing on in the wake of a soul crushing loss in their life."
Mysiak knows about that soul crushing loss firsthand, because two years ago she lost her husband Tom to a heart attack. She was suddenly a grieving widow with three grieving children.
"My kids are teenagers now, and I wish something like this existed two years ago," she said.
Mysiak puts her pain to purpose at WNY Compassion Connection, as does Assistant Director Jonathan McGrath, who lost his two-year-old son Cooper to a brain tumor in 2021.
"It's his birthday on December 3, so that's going to be hard. Another Christmas without him. At Thanksgiving it's always a seat at the table that's missing," said McGrath.
As he continues to grieve the loss of his little boy, and Mysiak grieves the loss of her husband, they're both helping to create a place that will support other grieving families.
"We need each other in these situations. We need empathy and love, and I think that a center and bringing everybody together in those situations, unfortunate ones though, is so valuable to our community, and it's going to be such a valuable community asset," said McGrath.
Not only will they be running weekly groups for parents and children, but they're also going to be very focused on outreach and grief literacy in schools and workplaces.
"We've come to know that largely we are a death denying culture. People don't often have the skills or the words or the tools," said Mysiak. "I think it's fair to say maybe everybody's a little grief phobic because of the discomfort and the fear of saying something wrong or making somebody more sad."
The grief center is a place you hope you never need, but it will be powerful lifeline if you do.
"There's just a whole lot of love and devotion that's being poured into what this is becoming," said Mysiak.
They hope to have WNY Compassion Connection open in January 2025.
It will be funded through grants and fundraising, so community support is critical to keep the grief center open for many years to come.
For more information about WNY Compassion Connection, contact Program Manager, Child Life Specialist Maureen McOwen at Maureen@wnycompassionconnection.org .
Grief at the holidays is especially difficult for families.
P.U.N.T. is partnering with Eluna to bring one of the nation's top camp programs "CAMP ERIN" to WNY for a one day bereavement camp to take place at Buffalo Bills Fieldhouse on Sunday, December 15th.
For more information on this FREE event, contact maureen@wnycompassionconnection.org or complete this form.