The Art of Grief Barb McIntyre colors the lives of children with hope

April 20, 2005

“Works of art are indeed always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further.”

--Poet Rainer Maria Rilke


Jeremy was only six years old when he found that his mother had left this world, the victim of a brain aneurysm. Her death left him completely alone, without any immediate family members.
“Until he moved to another state to live with his uncle, he had no other family -- it was just him and his mom,” recalls Barb McIntyre, Ph.D., who spent two-and-a-half years helping Jeremy through his loss.
“He actually found his mother and
went to a store to say, I’m hungry, my mom’s dead.”
The story is one of many Barb can recall over the course of 20 years with her Art Therapy Program at Munson Medical Center’s Hospice which has helped more than 2,000 children to overcome the loss of a loved-one in the wake of death or illness.
While McIntyre has a great love for all children, it’s clear from the glow on her face that Jeremy touched her deeply. “He got a new foster mom, Sherry McAdams, who’s fabulous, and we both feel he’s really something. In our program, he made a book about his life with his mom -- it gave him a history of where he started and ended. Then he and his foster mom made a book about his life with her.”
Recently, Jeremy sent McIntyre a poem about love and loss by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. It was an unexpected gift from a child who’s only nine years old.
“That poem is something I’ll always carry with me,” she says. “It was so amazing because he’s such a thoughtful, compassionate child. It makes me affirm that we can’t take anything for granted in this life. I try to be in the present as much as possible and to live in the now.”

GETTING STARTED
Twenty years ago, McIntyre arrived at Munson Medical Center with a new way of helping children through the stages of grief.
“We actually started the first group for children in the country, although now it’s pretty common in big cities to find art therapy in hospice programs,” she says.
“Art therapy has been a profession since the 1940s, but the focus used to
be on helping people with mental illness,”
she adds. “In the early ’40s Margaret Naumberg worked in mental health institutions with people who had schizophrenia or borderline personalities. She found that through art, people were
able to work with expressing their past traumas. Art also gave them a sense of relief and relaxation, so it had a lot of benefits.”
The American Art Therapy Association was formed in the 1960s, bringing an academic discipline to the field with the requirement of a Master’s degree for certification. The use of art has been expanded to provide therapy in prisons, schools and hospice groups as well as mental health programs.
As coordinator of Munson’s program, McIntyre has trained approximately 20
art therapists through the years in addition to many volunteers. She has also served as president of the Michigan Art Therapy Association; and having launched the
first program for children in the country,
she enjoys a considerable amount of professional prestige.
On Sunday, May 1, the hundreds of families touched by the Munson Hospice Art Therapy program are invited to a 20th anniversary celebration at the Hagerty Center in Traverse City from 2-4 p.m. Many are parents now themselves, looking back
on a time when a parent or friend vanished from their lives.

WHY ART?
A child’s life is egocentric, self-directed. With few experiences to draw from, a child assumes that the world and the workings of fate are deeply connected to his or her own life. This is why children often feel that they are somehow to blame for their parents’ divorce. The same is true when a parent or loved-one dies. McIntyre says that children can suffer the pain of grief for years without comprehending that the loss is not their fault. “So many times they think that they’re the cause of the problem.”
At the same time, children haven’t achieved the mental and emotional skills needed to express their grief through words, and it’s difficult for them to work through their feelings. “Research shows that developmentally, a child is not able to complete the grief process until adolescence,” McIntyre syas.
“When something sudden and unexpected happens in a child’s life, the whole sense that the world is safe disappears. And sometimes it takes a long time to get that feeling back.”
Art therapy can be helpful by allowing children to express their feelings. For children who are unable to put their feelings into words, drawing visions of lost family members, rainbows and monsters becomes an artistic quest for healing.

EXPRESSING MEMORIES
“In drawing a picture, a lot of issues come up, including past traumas,” McIntyre says. “Many times, sexual abuse issues come up. Art is really powerful stuff. Sometimes people think we’re just playing with these kids, but that’s not really the way it is -- it’s very serious.”
She recalls one case where an older teenager drew a memory picture of a loved-one who had died, with the picture revealing a family member who had sexually abused her as a child. The case was reported to Child Protective Services.
Different artistic media can produce a range of reactions.
“Playing in clay can be real regressive, producing a lot of anger,” McIntyre notes. “You have to be ready to deal with what comes out of that.”
She recalls one situation where a child was having trouble dealing with his brother’s serious illness. “He thought his mom cared more about his brother than him and through art he was able to verbalize things. He drew monsters and pounded clay a lot because of feeling rejected.”

HELPING PARENTS
McIntyre’s group works with approximately 150 children per year through Munson’s Hospice program. Members include Jan Tharp, MSW, group facilitator Sherry Peterson and music therapist Gene Rhodes, among others.
Children entering the program meet with an art therapist. “I ask them if they know why they’re coming here and then ask them to draw a picture of why they’re here,” McIntyre says. “The picture gives us an idea of where to go.”
McIntyre also talks to children about what kind of art they want to make and whether they prefer to paint or draw. “Some kids are making dolls about the person who died. I really try to make it individual, so there’s not one set thing they have to do.”
Kids then participate with others in
an eight-week group, expressing their feelings through art. Their ages can range from 3-21.
“It can be a death or an illness that brings them to us,” McIntyre says. “I’ve worked with several kids over the years whose friends have gone off to college
or whose roomates have committed
suicide. They’re normal people dealing with critical situations.
“I’ve also worked with kids as young as two years old who’ve been in a car crash. In those cases you’re also working with the parent, helping the parent to redirect the child’s emotions in a different way.”
Children have to work through the frightening aspects of a traumatic incident such as a car accident before they can
move on.
“Trauma and grief are very different,” McIntyre says. “Children have to come to grips with trauma -- their worries and nightmares -- before addressing their grief.”
She notes that often, young children become very angry when someone dies or there has been a disturbing upheaval. “They can end up hitting or biting as a way of showing their anger. Art is a way to help the parents to show that it’s okay to be angry.”

YEARS LATER
“A lot of them touch my heart in so many places,” McIntyre says of the children she has known.
Having a 12-year-old son, Ian, and a husband, John, she has an appreciation of what a family means. And a visit to one of McIntyre’s groups is not unlike a family gathering, with kids brought together in a common purpose. Their tiny faces beam over their artwork not with a sense of loss, but of hope.
Sometimes her work takes years to find its resolution.
“In one case, a girl’s mother had died of cancer and I ran into their family 10 years after they’d been through the program,” she recalls. “The dad said that his daughter had told him that she finally knew what Barb said -- ‘It wasn’t my fault that Mom died’ -- even though she knew that intellectually, it took her 10 years to recognize it.”
The miracle of art creates healing for the entire family, not just the child.
“There’s a family focus -- once there was a situation where several family members had died and those who survived said that coming to the group was like taking bricks off their shoulders, they felt so weighed down. What we’re trying to find is a safe place here -- if I had to sum it up, it would be to find a place of safety.”


Pass the word: Munson Art Therapy will celebrate its 20th Anniversary on Sunday, May 1 from 2-4 p.m. at the Hagerty Center campus of Northwestern Michigan College. Past members of the group are invited for an afternoon of crafts, prizes and fun for the family.
For information, call Barb McIntyre at 935-6520.

sidebar:
When something
sudden and
unexpected happens in a
child’s life, the whole sense that
the world is safe
disappears. And
sometimes it takes a long time to get that feeling back.