Dustin’s Place offers support to grievers
Marshall County has no shortage of nonprofit organizations lining downtown and sprawled across the county. Unique nonprofits find their niche among the community, and a new kind of grief center has made its home in Plymouth and aims to connect with kids who are grieving. Dustin’s Place is a nonprofit child’s grief center focusing on peer support.
Dustin’s Place is named after the father of Viki Brown’s three young children who died in a tragic car accident in 2016. The grief center is owned by Brown and five other co founders, all of which were Dustin Cullen’s friends and family.
Brown explains, “Dustin’s Place is a non profit children’s grief center. We’re focusing on peer support for them. We will offer support groups for children from the ages of five to eighteen and we will also be offering support groups for the adults in their lives as well.”
Dustin’s Place will help children and their families walk through their grief in a healthy way. Brown has known her own share of grief, as she and her children struggled after the death of Cullen. Brown recalls, “Dustin was my husband. He was coming home on August 2nd of 2016 and he was coming home in a Jeep and got into a single car accident. He died on his way home from work that day. It kind of rocked my world. Dustin was an amazing husband. He was my best friend. The baby wasn’t even born yet. His death kind of left me kind of lost and clueless. I was a widow at 34 years old left with three very young children.”
After the tragedy, Brown looked to therapy for her young children. Brown states, “I immediately looked into therapy for my children because it’s such a traumatic event in their life for childhood trauma. Research shows just as much of the effects that childhood trauma can leave on a kid even into their adulthood. My oldest was only six and he wouldn’t speak in therapy; he was not interested at all. It just wasn’t this thing. I found a children’s peer support group up in Goshen for them and it changed everything. It no longer felt like he was the only one going through this, it took away the stigma of death for him.
He got to have a place to talk with others that really understood what he was going through but also to be a normal kid. In school, when you’ve had a parent die, you’re that kid. Everyone kind of knows and you don’t get to be normal. People always walk on eggshells around you and it was just a place for him to go to get to be normal.”
After Brown had been bringing her children to the peer support group for a while, she realized the service was not a widespread available resource for people. This new grief center will be one of only four in the state. Brown states, “Before us, there were only three of these grief centers in the whole state while one in every twelve kids will experience the death of a parent or sibling before they’re eighteen. The need was huge. We started talking about it and what we needed to do. We filed the paperwork and finally became official for Dustin’s Place.”
As for the actual function of the grief center, Brown states, “We will let the kids be normal. There will be crafts and games and food and they just get to be a child. We have five families registered and 10 children coming. We ask them to preregister so we know the children’s ages so we can have age appropriate activities and facilitators for them. We train our facilitators completely. They lead the discussions for the groups. Every week we come together, we’ll meet from 6:30 to 7 for dinner. We will provide dinner for them. One of the first things to go after someone dies is dinner. You don’t want to sit at the table and for there to be an empty chair. Fast food and TV dinners are easier. So dinner is one of the most important things to bring back. After dinner we will break into our groups for our talks and our activities. The kids run it. They’re the ones doing the real work and just getting support from the other kids so know what they’re going through.”
Dustin’s Place is a completely free service for the community. Dinner, activities, and all aspects of the program are free to the community.
Brown concludes, “What people sometimes fail to realize is that kids need to get through their grief in a healthy way. People say that these kids will get through it but they can’t. It comes when they’re sixteen driving a car for the first time without their parent there or they’re getting ready for prom without their mom there or they’re getting married without their dad walking them down the aisle. Kids need to process the death as well. That’s what Dustin’s place is for.”
Currently the corona virus is prohibiting the meeting of the small groups, and Dustin’s Place released the following statement; “The safety, health, and well being of our community members is our highest priority. After much deliberation as a Board of Directors, with local children’s grief centers, and our community health officials, we are saddened to cancel Monday’s peer grief support group. Please know that we are taking steps to minimize the risk of transmission between the grieving families we serve, our volunteers and their families, our meal providers and our host church families. We know this cancelation may cause inconvenience and anxiety for the families we serve, but we also want to respect the health and safety of the children, parents and volunteers that attend groups as well as our volunteers and their families back at home. If you need anything, please reach out to us. We will be available by phone at 574-529-0528 or through messenger as always. We are so thankful for the continued support of our community and are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to open our doors and provide support for the grieving children, teens, and families at our next meeting date of Monday, March 30, 2020. Thank you for your patience.”
To register for Dustin’s Place, find them on Facebook or see them 11802 Lincoln Highway in Plymouth.