Healing Together as a Family | Julia Dunn of Olivia's House: A Grief and Loss Center for Children

I never like to be the person to say everything happens for a reason. Not my motto, but we do believe in making meaning of things. So I love to say that I am a walking billboard for reconstruction at the end of the bereavement process. When you get to show the world that you have done grief work, you have, you know, walked through the trenches and found your coping and found that identity, and you're able to come out on the other side and do something with it. You know, my dad died 20 years ago. 20, almost 25 years ago. I am able to use his memory and his legacy every single day. I say that my dad gave me the gift of a career because I'm not just sitting here saying to these kids, oh, yeah, I read this in a textbook. This is what's normal for a 10 year old, you know, and we can really just empathize in a different way. So that legacy and that meaning making is really what drew me to Olivia's House.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community, and in your life. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, and with me today is Julia Dunn, who is the clinical director of Olivia's House. Welcome, Julia.

Thank you, Rachel. Happy to be here.

Yeah. So I had the privilege of touring one of the locations of Olivia's House. I feel like what they did was so amazing that I wanted to bring that to the podcast audience. But I'd love to start with just a little bit about what is Olivia's House. How would you explain that to people?

Absolutely. So our full title is Olivia's House, a grief and loss center for children. Our actual physical locations have been around for 22 years, but we have been running our programs, which were started by our founder, Leslie Delp, since the early 90s. Yeah. And really the concept of our programs and all of the services we do at Olivia's House centers around grief and loss, education for children and their families, and education and support. You know, and as a therapist, I do a lot of psychoeducation. I was just speaking with someone and sometimes it's hard to explain exactly what we do, but someone reached out to us and we were just talking about, you know, well, what your 12 year old does. This. Here's what you can do. And the conversation was really like, well, I wouldn't have known what to do if you hadn't told me. And I got to say that's exactly why we're here. That is the whole reason when you have these moments in your life, especially surrounding death, any loss really, but death is our specialty. We are one phone call away and you are not getting an answering machine where no one ever calls you back. You're not getting a phone tree where you have to press a bunch of numbers and hopefully get through to someone. When you call Olivia's house. We are a tiny, small, but mighty staff of three. So you are getting a director on the phone, whether it's our development director, our executive director or myself, the clinical director. And we are there to guide you through whatever is going on in your world.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing. And then you also have groups, right, for parents and for kids?

We do, yes. You were just at our center the other day, so you got to walk through all of the rooms. That is something special. We, like I said, I've been running since the early 90s. It is our Hearts Can Heal program. And then we also have our Little Ones program which is for three to five year olds. Hearts Can Heal is for school age. So like 6 to 18 year olds and their guardians. Because like I said, it's not about just one child needing one answer and then everything's done. It's about educating the family as a whole to make sure the healing is happening in the family as a whole. Our program is designed to cover all the different topics related to grief after a death. We're talking memories, we're talking coping skills, we're talking funerals, rituals, all kinds of stuff. Doing age appropriate activities with the kids, giving those adults the real education, you know, how are you going to handle this upcoming holiday? What do you do on birthdays? Here's what we've learned, here's what the evidence is showing and here's what the other members of your group, what their input is as well. It's an incredible piece of bringing the community together to support each other. Which another piece there that it's the community that keeps our doors open. So it's really just a cycle of healing at Olivia's house.

I love that. Going back to. You've mentioned a few times this started in the 90s and I think that's where some of the innovation really struck me. Can you tell the story about how Olivia's house came to be?

Absolutely the 90s. I know to us it feels like that was just about 10 years ago. No, it was decades ago. Pre 9 11, that is a big deal because before the towers fell, nobody was talking about children's grief. It was hush hush, keep it under the rug, don't bring them to funerals, don't talk to them about it. They won't understand. They don't need to know. You know, and for generations we have been raised on the idea of death is not for kids. Too scary, they can't handle it. That's the adults thing. And when 911 happened and all of those TVs were wheeled into the classrooms, you know, and we watched it with our very own eyes, everything changed because our country was bereaved. And we saw this again still currently during still the COVID pandemic. We are bereaved as a nation. The fact that we are using the phrase finding our new normal. Yeah. And so imagine that just your whole world when you lose someone. So Leslie Delp is our founder. When you talk about innovation, she is the visionary. And she was even honored in PBS's series visionaries back in the day. And she was a mental health therapist working in bereavement, seeing families individually, seeing children individually. And Rachel, they were all saying the same thing to her. And sure, it's great if they're expressing it to her. They needed to be talking to each other. And so in 1993, Leslie put together her first Hearts Can Heal group. She wrote the curriculum, she had done graduate work, and her thesis was creating a grief camp. So she had a lot to pull from a lot of good mentors and used rented spaces. So she would, you know, find a church basement to host the group in. And at the end of the night, they pack up all their stuff and head home. And she did that for many years. She funded that program out of her own pocket. One of the rituals that we did for many years, we don't do any more because of environmental concerns, but we would do a balloon release. A very common ritual when someone you love has died. And we have some alternatives that are more eco friendly. So I'm happy always to share those too. But her very first program in 1993, coming out of her own pocket, Leslie was able to afford one balloon that she tied seven strings to, one for each child in the program. And they all wrote a message to their loved one and they all released their string at the same time. You know, fast forward 20 years later, we have, you know, a donor who maybe we've served their family in the past and now they want to make sure we have a celebration space for our children's graduation. So they fund that night to make it happen. And all ties back into that cycle of healing at Olivia's house. But over the years, you know, it began. And raising a few dollars on street corners for the mission of Olivia's house. Knowing that we needed a facility to be able to house the healing. And it was in 2002 when Leslie found our location on South George street in York. Was able to connect with the right people in the community that could make it happen. We had volunteers coming in all hours of the night, knocking walls down, painting things. You didn't get to see this. You were in our Hanover center, but in our York center, on the back of each door, there is a photo of what the room looked like originally when we bought the property in 2002 too. Since you were in our center, though, you know, we have murals everywhere on every wall. And so it is almost shocking to see a mural. And then you look at the before picture and it was just somebody's wallpapered living room and there was an old dentist chair in the front lobby and things like that. Yeah, so that is kind of the inception. So it started running the Hearts Can Heal groups out of those rented spaces. Finding our home there on South George street in 2002, building up the mission until we opened our hanover center in 2013, which was a huge but very worthwhile undertaking. We were welcomed into the Hanover community and we've been in both locations ever since. So 2024.

And yeah, it sounds like because Leslie was a therapist, it kind of started maybe as a therapy group. I'm wondering how it sort of shifted to be more educational. I mean, you make it clear that this is not therapy.

Absolutely. And our groups now, because, you know, back in the day when it was seven children in one group, Leslie was able to manage that. But over time, the groups, you know, our first group, I think was seven participants. By her next year, I think she had 31 participants. So very quickly it started becoming big. And that's when she brought in the idea of our companion volunteers. And so even though we are a small staff of three, we have a great network of volunteers that help us everything from keeping our center clean to actually helping facilitate the children's programs. And because of that, because they are facilitated by volunteers, it's not a counseling group. You know, we give our volunteers a 12 hour training and clearances, references, all kinds of things to become a companion. But you're not a therapist. And we do a tremendous amount of, you know, support and work with families before we're even Talking about coming into our group just to make sure that the group is going to be the best place for you. If we're talking about any sort of trauma, you know, or if there's other comorbid diagnoses that maybe have gone untreated, I'm identifying that right away with a family and saying, let's work on this pressing issue first, and then we can come in later with that education that can be that soft bed to land on once you've made sure your brain is as healthy as possible. And that's kind of that full service that we provide. It's not just call Olivia's house, sign up, we'll put you in a group. No, you're calling us because you need support. Let us drive the ship. I will help figure out what's going on, what needs to be done, what those next steps look like, and then by the time we get to our program, you're at a place where you're ready to create a picture frame for your loved one or do that balloon release, and it is going to be healing and comforting.

I love that. Yeah. Making sure people are in the right space in the group is the right thing for them.

Yeah. We use the triage metaphor and mentality Sometimes I'll say, you know, if I get into an accident and I have a gushing head wound and a broken ankle, got to attend to that head wound immediately, right away, before we can even think about the angle. So our peer support education program, that's setting the angle, getting any sort of trauma work, or if there's individual therapy that's taking care of that head wound, that needs immediate attention. And so we, working with other professionals in the community, you know, teachers, school counselors, nurses, will say, you are the ambulance drivers. Get them to us, let us figure out where they need to go, what type of support is needed, help put it in place, and then we'll set that angle. We've got it taken care of in house. And I mentioned earlier, too, but I don't want to discredit our library. Leslie has her original degree in early childhood education and then went on to get her master's and license and counseling. Because of that, books have always been a huge part of her life. And same for me. You can see my bookshelf a little bit in the corner. It's one of six or seven in this room. But our library at Olivia's house is one of the largest grief and loss lending libraries in the entire nation. It is the largest on the east coast, which, again, is so cool, because we're just here. We're in York and Hanover, Pennsylvania, and we're kind of breaking records in a lot of ways. But we are always adding new and unique resources so that when we get a call from someone that says, my child is going through X, Y and Z, I can tell them right away, oh, I have the perfect book for you. Stop by later today, let me put it together for you in a package, and that's going to be a good start to your journey.

Yeah, I was really, really impacted by the library because there were so many grief books for so many different types of situations and people and family constellations that may look different because we have all kinds of people. Right. And it was amazing to me to see both children's books and adults. Books, books. And the fact that you all were able to point out so many of them and have a clear handle on what's in there and helping people access exactly what they might need. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah. It's funny. My executive director and I, we do a clinical grand rounds meeting together every week. I just was in that meeting earlier today. And one of the stats, the statistics that I keep track of every week is how many books from our library did I give out this week? And every single week, it at least in the double digits every single week, I am giving out tons of resources from our library. You know, I'll have families call that. Say we have a loved one who is dying. What do we say to the kids? Yeah, I'm happy to give you a list of things to say. I'm happy to role play with you how to have these conversations. But after we're done, let me give you four or five books that are going to say everything I just said, but illustrated, you know, or Elmo is going to say it for your child to understand. And we try to have a really good idea of what all those little details are so that you can whip them out at a moment's notice.

Yeah, it's really brilliant. That was one of my favorite parts. That and maybe all of the murals that you have on the walls that have so much meaning and are clearly thought out as far as what that space is going to be used for, whether it's kids or adults or both.

Yes. And funny you should say that because we currently, right this very second, have an artist in our Hanover center painting a new mural. So there is a new addition since you've been there, even in the last few weeks. I don't want to spoil too much, but it is Indicative of our butterfly symbol. That is our mascot. She's been working on it all week. Annalise Buono is the artist. She is a wonderful muralist, and we're really excited to see how that turns out. So we're. We're always looking to do new things, too, even though we've been here for 10 plus years.

Yeah. Your passion for this work is so clear, and I'm wondering, what's the story? How did you get connected with this kind of work? Maybe first, and then Olivia's house as well.

I am a very type A personality, so I like to decide things and then never revisit that. You know, I'd like to just check the decision off my list, and that was very much how I approached my career. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a counselor, a therapist since I was a little kid. It just always felt like that was the path, and I never questioned it. I'm open to change, but for whatever reason, it felt like a heart's calling now. When I was 12, my father died totally unexpectedly. A heart attack. I, you know, didn't know. I knew he drank a gallon of iced tea a day, but I didn't necessarily know that his health wasn't as top notch as it should have been. It really, really affected me. And stats show that. I think it's like 86% of teens say that the worst thing that ever happened to them was a death. You know, what's really interesting is how alone kids feel when they have a loss, because from my perspective, everyone has a story of a loss, and most people have a story of a loss in childhood or in their teen years. So when I hear people say, no one else has experienced this, I love to say, you have no idea. Just wait, because you are going to meet the coolest people who you don't have to feel awkward because your loss is what actually brought you together instead of being the thing that's setting you apart from your peers. Yeah. So I lost my dad very suddenly, and. And I actually went to a grief group. I didn't grow up in New York, so it was a different situation. It was different from Olivia's house in many ways. All grief centers are. But this one in particular, my mom didn't participate in the group with me. She just dropped me off and picked me up, which was lovely of her. But at the same time, it very much sent a message that this was a me issue. You know, this is my dad that died. They weren't in a relationship, so it Wasn't a her thing at all and it was fine. And I love my mom and I'm very close with her, but I remember feeling that at the time. This is something I am going to have to figure out, I guess. And no one else is dealing with this. When I have a parent say, so why do I have to attend this group? Or what's the deal with that? I get to say, let me tell you why, not to make it about me, but let me share with you what the alternative looks like and how special it can be. When you say, we're doing this as a family, we're all getting in the car, we are all going to Olivia's house, we are going to figure this out together, whatever that is.

Yeah.

I never like to be the person to say everything happens for a reason. Not my motto, but we do believe in making meaning of things. We teach that to our families all the time at Olivia's house. So I love to say that I am a walking billboard for reconstruction at the end of the bereavement process. When you get to show the world that you have done grief work, you have, you know, walked through the trenches and found your coping and found that identity and you're able to come out on the other side and do something with it. You know, my dad died 20 years ago. 20, almost 25 years ago. I am able to use his memory and his legacy every single day. I say that my dad gave me the gift of a career because I'm not just sitting here saying to these kids, oh, yeah, I read this in a textbook. This is what's normal for a 10 year old. No, I'm able to say, oh, yeah. Oh, I remember when the teachers did that. Oh, isn't that annoying? You know, and we can really just empathize in a different way. So that legacy and that meaning making is really what drew me to Olivia's house when I was still in grad school as a volunteer. I just found their website. I became a companion volunteer and worked with the kids groups for a few years. And then as the universe will do, when I graduated, they were hiring. And that was nine years ago. And I've been on staff ever since.

That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. That's really a beautiful connection to your work. I'm wondering what's next? What are some of the big dreams for Olivia's house?

Yeah, so I've shared, as you've seen, innovation is. It's important to our team, I would say, especially to our executive director, Casey. He's a really great executive director because he balances managing the workload and looking toward the future and looking at what else. Whereas I tend to be a little bit more keep my head down, you know, like, ignore change that could potentially happen. It's a fault of mine. I'm not bragging, but it's an important quality in an executive director to be able to sort of tease out the future in a way that doesn't feel intimidating. We have a couple cool things on the books. Not to take over the podcast idea, but we are starting our. I love that.

No, I think it's fantastic.

And we're just about to start recording, so I don't have too. Too much to share yet out of fear that it could be a total disaster. I won't tease too much, but that should be coming out soon and trying to make death talk a little bit more casual, because, like I said, it is something that most of us have a story about. So not to be flippant, not to be, you know, make a mockery of it, but to just be able to get on the podcast and say, who's died? You know, tell us about who's died. Tell us about that. Look at the celebrities that have died lately. What did they mean to you? We born these people. Yeah. But we don't give ourselves room always to do so. So that's kind of what's coming to the table at Olivia's house. But always we are running programming. We have different types. Since COVID we. We have turned Hearts Can Heal into hybrid Hearts Can Heal. We also have a virtual Hearts Can Heal. So we are pretty much running programs back to back to back, which is exciting for me because I like the variety and it hits different populations differently. So our hybrid program starts. The first four weeks are virtual. The second four weeks are in person. That has been so beautifully successful for our introverts. You know, the ones who are like, I'm happy to do a grief group, but I really just don't want to be in a room with people for an hour and a half, which I get loud and clear. So why don't you just study in your bed or get on your couch, pet your cat while we're doing this. And then, you know, once we've gotten you on the hook, then we'll see you in the house and we'll. We'll do our last four weeks there. But, yeah, little things like that where we're able to adjust. I mean, kids are on their phone constantly. And not that I'm saying we need to encourage that entirely, but we also can't ignore it entirely. So how can we get some grief education in there and some support in there into your. Your natural behavior?

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I'd love it if you would just leave our listeners with something important for them to know about you, about grief, about Olivia's house, about starting new things, about what's needed out there. Anything that's sort of top of mind for you.

Piece of advice that I learned from Leslie, our founder. I have passed this advice along to many people because, as you can imagine, when you lose someone, you want to take action. You want to do something in their honor, in their memory. And like I said, it's been 25 years since my dad died. That's why I'm able to do this work so well. If he had died a week ago, I would not be a healthy person. If I thought I was, you know, helping people, I would need to heal before I'd be able to then give back. So when it comes to, you know, starting a nonprofit or starting a foundation or something, it's so important to be mindful that you are following the need and not your need to do something if there is a need present. And that's what Leslie found. She was seeing clients. She was hearing them say the same thing. She saw that the need for this existed, so she created something that could fill that need. She had lost a child, and that is why she initially went into the field. But again, it had been a few decades. She lost a child. She then raised her other children. She went back to school, did all of that before she started her private practice. She made sure to do the healing work before she used what she learned to give back. And it would have been disastrous if she had done it the other way around, because our healing needs to be for us, so that whatever we do for others is just out of the extra that we have overflowing our bucket.

That is profound. Yes. So heal yourself first as much as you can before reaching out and helping others. It's that oxygen mask metaphor that we hear, right? Put your own oxygen mask on first, and then you'll be able to help others with theirs.

You got it.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Julia. It is such a pleasure to chat with you. I love what Olivia's house is about, and all of that information will be in the show. Notes for people to be able to connect and reach out to you all with any questions or needs and all of that good stuff. But thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.