She Lost Her Husband. She Found Her Mission: Helping Children Deal With Grief
After her husband, Adam, died in 2012, Allison Wysota founded Adam's House in Connecticut to help young people deal with the death of a loved one.
As blind date stories go, this is a good one.
Younger guy goes to a birthday party on Long Island, N.Y.. He gets to talking to an older guy. They’re having a great time, just conversing and drinking. At the end of the evening, the older guy tells the younger guy he has to meet his daughter and tells him to call her.
The next day he tells his daughter about it. She’s embarrassed, but agrees to go along with it. The younger guy calls the daughter. They go out. They end up talking until 4:30 in the morning. A year later they are engaged. Two years after that, they marry.
The younger guy's name is Adam Wysota. He’s a successful IT guy who works for some of the major investment and commercial banks in New York City. The daughter of the older guy is Allison O’Reilly -- Allison Wysota after they wed. She’s a teacher but becomes a stay-at-mom once their first boy is born. Connecticut in 2001. They’re happy. Pretty cool story, huh?
Allison and Adam
It’s 2012. Allison and Adam go to their country club to take tennis lessons, separately. Afterward, Adam tells Allison he doesn’t feel well, he thinks maybe it was something he ate? They go home. Adam goes upstairs to shower.
"It was a Sunday,” Allison recalls. “My (youngest) son (11, at the time) had a baseball game. He was like, 'Oh dad, are we going to throw the ball?' Adam said, 'Yeah, we'll throw the ball around before your game. Let me just go, quick, take a shower.' He went up to take a shower.”
A few minutes pass.
Allison says, “I went in right behind him figuring he was done (showering) and I found him, and my little guy was right behind me. I called the ambulance. The doctor in the hospital said he died before he hit the ground.” He was 47.
A few weeks later, Allison goes to lunch with a good family friend. He tells her that he and some of their other friends want to hold a fundraising golf tournament in Adam's name to raise money.
"I said, 'What are we raising money for?'" Allison tells me. "He said, 'We want to raise money for you and your kids.' I said, no. I won't. No.' He said, 'Ok, ok, ok. Where do you want the money to go?' As God is my witness, I said I want to open a center for kids who have lost a loved one."
To this day, she has no idea where that came from, but once she uttered those words, it became her mission.
The tournament raised $100,000. It would be the seed money for what would become a facility in Shelton, Connecticut where bereaved children could learn to cope with the loss of a loved one. Allison would call it Adam's House.
Almost all of us have or will have our own experiences with grief. In the past four years, my brother died, my mother died and two of my oldest friends died. Grief is a terrible wound. It is quicksand that can swallow us. Each of us will experience it differently, but a common denominator is pain and emptiness and emotional upset. For an adult, it is difficult. For a child, it is often all the more bewildering, dizzying, confusing and wrenching.
Adam's House (www.adamshousect.org) provides an invaluable service, helping young people navigate the emotional minefield of the loss of a parent, a sibling, a friend. I have met some of the children who have gone through Adam's House's eight-week program -- at no cost. I have talked to parents and grandparents of children who've been there. And I have met the amazing Allison Wysota. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with her to talk about her personal experience, what led her to start Adam's House, what they do and why it's important.
RC: Just so we have a common understanding of the word because I guess it has many implications and meanings, how do you define grief?
AW: It is mourning out loud. It's almost like throwing up your guts. You've got this love that's got somewhere to go. It has to go somewhere. So all those grieving practices become super important. That's why I feel the work we are doing is super important too because these kids want to grieve out loud too and if no one is talking to them, and no one is giving them the outlet, they can't. But you have to I try to explain to the parents -- grief has an energy all of its own, so you have to kind of tap that energy for you. You might grieve differently than I grieve and that's okay. I think we have, society has, a very general view of how you should grieve. You should cry. Some people don't cry and they're feeling monstrous for not crying. That's just not their grief style, so we get to unpack that a little bit. So grief to me is finding a place for that love to go somewhere, that energy.
RC: It's interesting how many people don't like the word died.
AW: They don't like dead or died.
RC: They say passed or transitioned or all kinds of, I consider them euphemisms. My dad died. My brother died. My mom died.
AW: People say a plant died but we can't say a person died.
RC: Why do you think that's so difficult?
AW: I think we're a death-averse culture. I talk to parents all the time. We try to shield our kids from it but it's kind of an injustice. They're going to have to cope and deal with death. It is part of our life. It was interesting watching the boys' friends, the 11-year-olds, they were so gracious and awesome and open and they loved my husband. I just looked at them and they have not learned this is uncomfortable. They were so poignant and they had great messages. They were so supportive. As they got older, it was like, 'Can we stop talking about it now?' They're talking about their dad, where's the door? Even adults in my world. I had a great support system. My friends were great. I also lost a lot of friends. Those friends who never wavered are like family to me. They never stepped away.
RC: How did Adam's House come about? What led from Adam's death to Adam's House?
AW: When Adam died, the principal of the boys' school called. They (her sons) said to come to the phone. I said, 'I don't want to talk to her right now.' (They said), ' She said you would say that. She just wants me to hold the phone to your ear and said you don't have to say a word.' So they held the phone to my ear. Lisa says, 'Allison, you know my husband died a year ago. So this is my advice. People are going to ask you do things. I want you to promise me, here and now, that you will say yes to everything you're asked, because you're gonna want to say no. You're not going to want to go to the coffee.. You're not going to want to go to lunch. You're just going to want to sit in your house. But promise me right now that whatever you get asked to do, you'll say yes.' So I say yes and I do take my promises really seriously.
Two or three weeks after Adam died, a really good friend who's a headhunter in the city wanted to have lunch. I really didn't want to go, but keeping to my promise I said yes and I'd meet him for lunch.
At lunch, he said, 'Look, you know all the guys, they want to do something. They want to do a golf tournament.'
'I'm like who's running that tournament?'
'You are.'
'And then what? What are we raising money for?'
(He said), 'We want to raise money for you and your kids.'
I said, 'No. I won't -- no.'
He said, 'Ok, ok, ok. Where do you want the money to go?' As God is my witness, I said I want to open a center for kids who have lost a loved one. And I (thought), What? Where did these words come from?
RC: You didn't even know that!
AW: (laughing) No. No lie. He said, 'What does that look like?' I said, 'I really couldn't tell you other than that I think there should be a center where kids go, process through art and music, through movement their experience.'
RC: How did you know -- if you did know -- what the counseling would look like if this was unknown territory?
AW: I started to poke around and stumbled on this organization called Olivia's House in Pennsylvania because the visual is what I saw when I pictured Adam's House. I and two friends went to visit them and they were just fantastic and (they said), 'We'll mentor you.' Leslie Delp -- she's the founder of Olivia's House -- said, 'Allison, you're going to help kids I could never help and I love that.' True to their word, they mentored me. I went there for their training. They came to Adam's House for our first training. Our curriculum is their curriculum with a few tweaks.
RC: When did Adam's House open?
AW: First program families went through in 2017. I just thought that they were the bravest of the bunch. You have to be brave to come to Adam's House. You have to be brave because you have to be vulnerable. You have to share the worst thing that has happened to you with strangers. Literally, sometimes on the first night when everybody shares their stories, you feel less alone. And by the second week, you're feeling like you're among friends. So there's some beautiful things that happen.
RC: When you do the intake at Adam's House (with parents), what are you trying to learn?
AW: The loss. And you hope they're honest. Sometimes they're not honest. Typically if there's been a drug overdose, sometimes they won't tell me. And that's fine but then I will circle back. If they're going to come here, I want them to process because we as parents think we are good liars but those kids are laser locked on you. So if your loved one died of a drug overdose and you are trying to sell that as a heart attack, more than likely they know the truth. If you're going to do the work, let's not waste my time or yours. So why are you going to perpetuate this lie 'cause there's a burden in carrying a lie. There's a burden in not owning what actually happened.
RC: When are the sessions?
AW: At 6 o'clock (evening, once a week). We start with dinner. They have dinner together (parents and children). We're a closed group so the families that start together end together. No surprises. No new entries midway. It's always six to eight families. After dinner, when group starts, the parents stay downstairs and the kids go upstairs. There's a littles group, which is about 5 to 8, a middles group 9 to12, and teens, 13 to18.
The first week is getting to know you. They're sharing as much of their story as they're comfortable sharing. Second week is feelings week. It's a tricky one, all the feelings that come with grief and loss.
RC: What's the theory behind peer support? Is it that you can hear (learn) there are people like you going through what you're going through and you're not so alone, it's not unique to you?
AW: Look, kids don't want to hear what the adults in their space have to say about their worst day and often feel like they don't understand. When you get to peer support and they're all talking about the same thing, it's a very powerful tool. Some things they don't say out loud and then if Sarah across the way says it, "Oh, Sarah said it. I thought I was so bizarre and weird to think that." That's where the power of peer support comes in.
RC: I imagine one of the emotions that the children are experiencing right after the loss of someone they were close to is anger.
AW: Anger is right up there. And the interesting thing is sometimes anger is overused.
RC: What do you mean?
AW: I think it's socially acceptable to say you're angry. I think that underneath it there are other nuggets that need to be addressed. Loneliness. People don't feel comfortable telling other humans that they're lonely. But for widows and widowers, loneliness might fuel their anger. They might be angry because they're lonely, they miss their spouse. The kids, sometimes anger is jealousy. Jealous that my friends have a dad and I lost mine. So I kind of always say look under the anger and see if there's anything else there. Sometimes there's guilt.
RC: People do get over grief. They move on. But for a kid, not having this assistance, this process, this curriculum, when you don't have it, what's the risk?
AW: You may have this, adults who never got to process the loss of their parents and still struggle and have behaviors. I think that's the risk that for a middle schooler, a teenager there's a bigger risk there that they'll engage in these numbing agents to quell their grief. Addiction can start. Alcoholism. truancy, promiscuity. Negative coping skills that numb the loss might become too great. If that's their coping, they're not going to break that cycle.
RC: What Adam's House offers young people, does it always -- and maybe this is being simplistic to use this word -- does it "work"?
AW: I like to say, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make him drink it. But the majority -- am I going to say 100%? No, it's not 100% -- I'm going to say it's pretty high though. I think on some level, we always help. I think it's high.
RC: Tell me a story about someone that sticks with you, one that was especially gratifying.
AW: It was a teen. She came with her sister. She came in. Her dad (had died). She came in all pissed off and sassy. "How are you going to make me come here?" I looked at her and said, "Oh, honey, I don't care if you come. Mom cares. I don't care."
RC: You were going right back at her, eh?
AW: Right back at her. And I said, 'But I'll do you one better. I'm going to make you a bet.' She said, 'What's that?' She's all attitude. I'm all attitude back. 'I'm going to make you a bet. Week 4, maybe week 5, you're going to ask for me to make this longer.'
She said, 'What?' I said, 'Yeah, you're going to come and say to me, Oh, Allison, can I have weeks added to this 8 week curriculum?' She says, 'That's not going to happen.' I said, 'Bet accepted.' She's like, ok, whatever. They start the first week. She's doing her thing. She's going. She's doing the work. She's giving me a half smirk. Week 4, I'm walking with mom and mom goes to me, 'What's going on? My daughter can't wait to come every week. ' Week 5. A little tug on my sleeve. I said, 'What do you want to ask me?' She says, 'Can we make it longer?' I said, 'No, but I knew you were going to ask.' She says, 'Why? What can't we?' Because we're designed so that you're not going to need us. If you do the work, you don't need us. She graduates. About a month later, she calls the office. She wants to go through again. I loved it here. And I want to go through it again. She says, 'I thought if I really begged you, you would let me.' She did the program again. She went through a second time. She did fantastic. So, mad as hell coming in. Then, full circle, all in. They drop the burdens of grief. For her -- you'd have to ask her yourself -- but I'd guess just being able to process her grief out loud with other kids who understand so much and then get that validation back, get that support, is healing, is reinforcing, is powerful.
Allison and her sons, 2020