Finding healing

‘Understanding Grief’ offers students counseling

Mary Harris was a 19-year-old student at Liberty University when her brother Danny died in a car accident.

Returning to school as a sophomore and having to jump back into coursework, hall leadership and general day-to-day life while learning how to grieve proved to be more than Harris knew how to deal with.

She didn’t know who to run to. Her world was shaken.

“Most 19 or 20-year-olds haven’t experienced that kind of grief,” Harris said.

“They don’t know what to say or do. A lot of people around them say really well-meaning things, trying to be helpful and kind. But they just aren’t.”

However, Harris did find help and healing through a support group dedicated to grief, where every person in the room was going through something similar and understood where each of the other members came from in his or her own grieving.

“I had a leader that brought such healing and insight to my journey then that I wanted to be able to offer that back,” Harris said.

Harris is still at Liberty, but now as a counselor with Student Counseling Services.

Starting with the first official meeting on Feb. 22, she has tried to offer others the support she herself received by leading her own grief support group called Understanding Grief.

The group will meet Wednesdays at 3:15 p.m. in the group meeting space provided by Student Counseling Services in Green Hall.

Central questions like “What is grief?” “What does grief mean?” “What does grief look like” and “What are misconceptions of grief?” will be the focus of the group sessions.

The group will be jointly led by Harris, fellow counselor Andy Ashcroft and intern Ellen Geraghty.

They are trying to keep membership of the group to no more than 10 students.

There are currently six members in the group.

Harris is open to taking in more students while slots are still open.

“We have a really diverse group so far, with different stages and types of grief they’re dealing with,” Harris said.

Whether old grief or new, whether from recent trauma or anniversaries with memories attached, Harris has watched the trend of student grief come through her office.

This has steadily compelled her to act by supplementing the one-on-one counseling offered by Student Counseling with a group setting.

“I think one-on-one counseling is great,” Harris said.

“But for me, it was helpful to be surrounded by people who were my age, people who just got it and could relate with similar experiences. Then I didn’t feel like something was wrong with me or that I was losing my mind. I knew that this was really normal and other people were experiencing it. It felt like we were in it together.”

Harris hopes to provide grieving students with a place where they can feel safe, understood and heard.

She hopes to help students learn how to not only deal with grief, but learn to integrate it into each student’s faith as she learned to do after Danny’s death.

“Grief isn’t something you just get over,” Harris said.

“It doesn’t go in a nice, easy pattern. We’re called to mourn with those who mourn, and that looks like getting down in the dirt with them and experiencing it and loving them as a companion instead of trying to fix it and make it all better, or thinking that it’s just going to go away with time. You really don’t go back to normal. You have a new normal. Learning to navigate that is important.”

If students are interested in joining a group, they can contact Mary Harris at mjcrumpler@liberty.edu, or visit Student Counseling Services at Green Hall, room 1830.

Jarrett is a feature reporter.