Don’t hold anything back

By Rae Kruger
At times, only another kid who has lost someone they love can really understand you.

Whitney Buesgens, of Slayton, a junior at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., has found that to be true the past five years.

Buesgens has organized Camp Love’s Embrace for five years on the campus of Shetek Lutheran Ministries on Lake Shetek near Currie. The camp is for kids ages 7 to 14 who have had a loved one die. This year’s camp will be May 17 and 18.

The camp lets “kids be around other kids like them,” Buesgens said. “Kids will tend to shelter (adults) from their feelings. They don’t want to worry parents and they will hold everything in.”

Kids don’t have to hold back at Camp Love’s Embrace, Buesgens said.

They can lean on each other and share their grief, she said.

But they can also have fun and know it’s OK to laugh and have fun, Buesgens said.

“They are having fun and healing at the same time,” Buesgens said.

The camp operates with one adult leader to each camper, Buesgens said. The camp usually is limited to about 20 campers which provides the best interaction between counselors and campers, Buesgens said.

“Some kids are just amazing,” Buesgens said of what she’s witnessed in the past five years.

“There is a little boy who I will never forget,” Buesgens said. “I asked him to draw me a picture of grief. He drew a heart with a crack in it and the devil on top.”

The boy ran to play after he finished his picture, Buesgens said.

The kids who attend camp have had parents die of terminal illness, or suicide, or have had friends or other relatives die, Buesgens said.

Each year there seems to be a cause of death that is more prominent, Buesgens said.

“One year, everybody had lost someone who was male,” Buesgens said. “The year before it was fatal accidents...”

Buesgens said the Feb. 19 Lakeview school bus crash that killed four students has had a big impact on students in that district.

“We are thinking of doing something in the fall for just those students,” Buesgens said.

When kids have the opportunity to be with each other, they learn that other kids share their feelings and experiences, Buesgens said.

She created the camp at age 14 and was met with some skepticism when she approached donors and other adults. But now, the camp has thrived with the support of corporations, businesses and other donors, she said.

When the camp opened, it was only grief support camp for kids in Minnesota, Buesgens said.

Buesgens said she was motivated to start the camp after volunteering in hospice and seeing that kids didn’t get much counseling, but the adults did in that setting.

And after she learned about a camp on the East Coast that was working with children and grief after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Buesgens was motivated to start her own camp.