In this heartfelt episode of Retire in Texas, host Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group, sits down with Dr. Marian Sokol, former CEO of the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, to explore how grief affects children – and how healing begins through connection, creativity, and compassion.
From art therapy to peer support groups, Dr. Sokol shares how the Bereavement Center has helped thousands of children and families navigate the pain of losing a loved one. She also discusses the center’s outreach in Uvalde, its school-based counseling programs, and how volunteers and donors play a vital role in sustaining its mission offered free of charge to families.
Key Highlights:
- How the Children’s Bereavement Center supports children ages 3-23 through grief and trauma.
- Why expressive arts therapy helps kids process pain they can’t express in words.
- The Center’s work in Uvalde and response to community-wide tragedies.
- How families can volunteer, donate, or participate in programs.
- The emotional and financial importance of wills, organization, and long-term planning.
If you or someone you know is coping with loss – or wants to help others who are – learn more at http://www.cbcst.org or call (210) 736-4847.
Listen to more episodes here: https://PAXFinancialGroup.com/podcasts
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Transcript:
Darryl: Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group, and you’re listening to Retire in Texas. Remember, this information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinancialGroup.com for more information. And so lately you’ve noticed that I’ve had guests and so I’ve got Dr. Marian Sokol here with the Children’s Bereavement Center.
And I’m certainly excited that she’s here with us today to kind of help us understand, well what’s going on in the bereavement community. The center. I say community because Haley, one of our advisors here, is on, is it an advisory council or?
Marian: Haley’s on the foundation board.
Darryl: I’m going to talk about that in a second. But first of all, just welcome.
Marian: Thank you.
Darryl: Thank you for being here.
Marian: I’m delighted.
Darryl: On a Friday afternoon. So, you work with the Children’s Bereavement Center, Executive Director. Is that the appropriate title?
Marian: Well, actually, I was executive director, and then it was changed to CEO. But it’s, you know.
Darryl: Same leadership role.
Marian: But I actually retired a year ago. And so, I spent the last year initially consulting and now just volunteering. I’ve always believed in the future of the center. And its sustainability, but only if we were able to look ahead. So much of fundraising is immediate and pressing. And so, we have a very wise board that decided to establish a foundation a number of years ago.
And we never had time to really focus on that. But this last year, that’s what I’ve had the privilege of doing.
Darryl: Hyper focusing in on the foundation part. I want to come to that. And that’s kind of our relationship with working with Bereavement Center. But let’s just talk about the bereavement center. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happens there?
Marian: Sure. Our center in San Antonio is, I believe, the largest grief center, childcare center in the country, was established in 1997 with the intent of helping children get through that very difficult journey of grief. And I think for anyone who has lost a loved one, you know that it’s more than just a happening, an event. It changes your life forever.
And it has such impact economically, financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. The world changes. And for a child, that’s extremely difficult. So, we often say you don’t get over grief, you get through it and at Children’s Bereavement Center. Our mission is to help children so that no child has to walk that painful journey of grief alone.
Darryl: That makes sense. I want to make sure I point out to our listeners several items that are salient. One is, if you’re listening, I want to eventually get to a point on how people can serve the bereavement center with their time. I also want people to know that we have many people that listen that have set aside charitable dollars that are like, what do I do with those dollars?
They may feel a calling. So, I want people to think about that as they listen. And then finally, I just want people to know that we were inclined to work with the bereavement center because Haley was working with widows. And so, she has such a heart for people that have lost loved ones that, her playing a role at the bereavement center made sense so she could continue to enhance her skills on how to navigate through, we at PAX Financial Group have worked with a lot of people.
I’ve been to funerals for clients. I’ve been at a funeral for my client’s children. And so, unfortunately, I’ve had to walk through a lot of pain, and it’s hard to navigate through that without having some skills and training. And so, tell us a little bit more about maybe the process that you go through and some of the resources and systems that exist at the bereavement center.
Marian: Happy to, Darryl. First, I wanted to define that children at the Bereavement Center ranges from ages 3 through 23. Our board realized many years ago that a young adult who’s going to college, or just out on their own, suddenly when someone they love dies and most often a parent, they are faced with life-changing decisions, too.
So, there are different kinds of therapy, but we emphasize expressive arts therapy. So, when a child comes to our center after there’s a phone call, an initial intake and a tour of our center, which is absolutely beautiful, people are astounded. Most of the time, it’s 16,000 square feet of art rooms and playrooms and just really a very calming, wonderful place to be.
Children are assessed and the family is included, of course, because children may differ in terms of how they’re grieving. So not all siblings are the same. So, after that, the decisions made whether this child would be most appropriate for a group where they can interact with other peers. And the groups that we have also are specialized in terms of whether the impact is chronic illness, sudden death, suicide or death by homicide and violence, so that when they’re in groups, they’re with other children.
For some little ones especially, the trauma is so great that they’re not ready for group. So those children, we have individual counseling. There again is both trauma and grief. In many cases the trauma is very physical. It’s a child who can’t sleep, can’t eat, keeps precepting on what has happened. Grief is something that affects all of us, and it’s a process and takes a long time.
And many times, those layers of trauma and grief are layered, particularly if the child was there at the time of the death or having witnessed the accident, or found the parent by suicide or overdose. So, we deal with a lot of difficult cases. We also, in addition to the peer support groups and individual counseling, we have camps for children because there’s some parents that just can’t bring a child in the evenings once a week or on a Sunday.
So, we have four different camps a year that are specialized according to the age range of the child. And one of them is a camp for widows and widowers with younger children. And then we also do school-based counseling. So, we have 20 counselors. And out of that, approximately eight of them are out at schools.
We’re located in Uvalde as well as San Antonio. There’s a process, obviously, but it’s really very simple. You just call the phone number 210-736-4847. And that’s how the process starts. The counselors are all masters level professionals. And the, I guess the biggest asset and what makes us unique across the country, Darryl, is that all of our services are at no cost to families.
Darryl: I was going to ask that.
Marian: That’s been very hard to sustain in terms of fundraising. Fortunately, many people have been extremely generous. But there are a lot of good causes. I’m above all else, a child advocate. And children need a lot of things, but one in every eight children under the age of 25 will lose a parent or sibling.
And in every classroom, there’s an average of two grieving children. So, the world changes after dad dies or mom dies. It’s hard. Whether you’re an elementary student or a high school student, to make any sense of why you should study multiplication tables or geometry. Yeah, when you’re worried about does Mom or Dad have enough food, to put it on the table, am I going to have to move?
What is the future and why should I even worry about college? Because it was my dad who’s no longer here that really inspired that for me.
Darryl: I could totally see that. As a father of four. Yeah, it breaks my heart. And I know, the CEO of World Vision said, Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours. And so, I would imagine that the people that have volunteered and made a commitment to work there, their heart was broken sometime in their life journey, and they really are passionate about what they do. Do you see the, you all have been around for a while now. Tell me how long.
Marian: 27 years.
Darryl: So, over the years you’ve seen, you know, children become adults. Do you ever see them come back and volunteer or work.
Marian: Absolutely. That is one of my greatest joys. I have been to the wedding of a young woman now who’s an attorney, and I can remember when her mother died, I thought I’d never see her smile again. She always came to the center with just such a straight face. A single dad that adopted three children. And he was the dedicated, single guy when his sister died and he took in the three children and just watching those success stories.
And I’ve stayed fairly close with some of those families and hope to do so. It’s really a privilege to have them back. We also encourage them, if they want to, to come and volunteer to show other children that they can smile.
Darryl: That there’s a pathway, and I’m sure that helps with any grieving that still exists.
Marian: It does. It does.
Darryl: You mentioned and I wanted to ask you about that, but the expressive arts, that’s a little bit on the secret sauce. Tell us a little bit more about that.
Marian: Yeah. Well, many times it’s difficult to express painful experiences in words. And often we turn to things might, as an adult, turn to writing or art and think of other ways that we can express our grief. Maybe it’s by working in giving to others, but for children, they often don’t know what to do and they retreat. So, when they come to the Children’s Bereavement Center, they have opportunity to do drama, to do art, to take pieces of stained glass which are broken and sharp and colored, and to meld them together.
And we help them try to see the analogy that they can make a beautiful piece of melded glass art from that. But it’s very much like their family after a death. It’s sharp, it’s painful, it’s colored with emotions, and it’s broken, and you feel broken even if that death was anticipated.
Darryl: You know, even if it was a cancer and you got to say goodbye. But there’s a lot of families and I think about, we’ve had so much trauma in our country that we often forget about the Uvalde shooting. What was y’all’s response like there?
Marian: Oh, Uvalde was hard. And I will say, Uvalde is hard, right? Difficult. There were, you know, there’s a lot of confusion and anger and that’s exasperated when something happens that you can see there was a problem. There was a problem in the response. And you always have that feeling that maybe my child could have been saved if something happened differently.
So, you had both the grief of the loss of the children and the anger and question of whether the perpetrator or the shooter could have been helped earlier. But you also have families that were divided because you had law enforcement officers who were put in a terrible position. But then you also had families that said, you know, why didn’t someone act sooner? So, it’s very complex. But we have been there now for three years and it’s very rewarding.
Darryl: Good people, good people in that community.
Marian: They’re amazing, we were able to build a center with donations and, shout out to Randy Smith and the people at Western Urban here who came together and donated their time and energy to build us a beautiful building. On the grounds of St Philip’s Episcopal Church there. So, our center in Uvalde is something of which I’m very proud. But it wasn’t me.
I really feel like, you know, God had a hand in all of this. In fact, in the beginning, it was very confusing to know even what to do, where to go. People didn’t want to be counseled. They had, they were very
Darryl: Yeah. Hopelessness, anger, confusion. Tell me how y’all responded to the Hill Country floods, if anything. But you can give us insight, right?
Marian: Right. You know, again, yes. Obviously, we were out there meeting with all the providers or the groups of providers saying, how can we help? Here is our niche. So, we are holding support groups out there one evening a week. We also have had groups at the center and continue to have groups at the center related to the floods.
Because many of the children that were there, they didn’t die, but they experienced something that no child should in the middle of the night, cold water and then watching friends and cabins float away. And so.
Darryl: Survivor’s guilt.
Marian: There’s a lot of trauma. So, we’re really pleased to have been there because majority of those children were from all over the state. I’m sure that makes any sense to establish a center there. We have to look carefully at how the resources are used, because in our San Antonio center alone, Darryl, we have almost 3000 parents and children a year.
Darryl: Is that right? I was going to get to that. I forgot, but 3000 right. And that, I mean, they’re not coming and going there. I mean, some of them are, but they, you know, they could be there for an average of 2 or 3 months or a year.
Marian: Well, a year is probably average.
Darryl: In a good year. That’s average. Okay.
Marian: And then I wanted to have the opportunity too, to convey to your listeners that several years ago, we were able to help a group come into town to do what we were calling anticipatory grief. And that’s when, you know a family member is dying because we try to bring those children into the center. A lot of them are afraid to go to school.
They’re very stressed and anxious. If mom has breast cancer or dad’s dying of Parkinson’s, whatever. But it was hard to bring them into the center, which is filled most days with children whose parents have died. We never want them to give up hope. But there was a group out of Austin called Wonders and Worries, and we were able to work with them, co-funded the first year, and they’re out at the start cancer center in the medical center here again at no cost.
They’re child life specialist. And so, if you call children bereavement and you say, you know, my family is not expected to live, can I come get help? We’ll probably refer you to the Start Center Wonders and Worries program.
Darryl: This is heavy, and it is beautiful at the same time.
Marian: Oh thank you.
Darryl: Yeah, so I really appreciate all that you do. I know that when you’re on the money side, I know serving on nonprofits sometimes, you spend all this effort raising money and you get glimpses of the work that’s being done. But sometimes, at least for me, I get caught up in the economics and the logistics and all the fundraising, and.
But what you do is beautiful. I hope some of the listeners, will be encouraged to maybe get off the sidelines and play a role in serving, and maybe their lives have been impacted by a death that wasn’t anticipated or was anticipated for that matter. But they may feel their hearts may be broken. And so, could you tell them, one more time, the phone number that they can call?
Well, you mentioned the phone number. If you need help, but where do they go if they want to just play a role? The website, it may be a phone number.
Marian: Website is great. And we have a wish list on the website. And also, the same phone number. And just ask for Christina, the new director, the new CEO, and she’ll be able to take your call and refer you. We have lots of volunteers. We need volunteers that will go through a training and work with the children as well.
And they’re always looking for strong board members who have time to commit. Grief is very difficult, but we try to make the process of getting involved with the center not difficult. So (210) 736-4847 in San Antonio, we’re located on Olmos drive down near McCullough Avenue, near the traffic circle there. So fairly easy to access.
And they have what they call tour of the heart. Also, every first Friday at [11:00], so people can come and just take a tour.
Darryl: Wonderful.
Marian: But I do encourage anyone, whether or not you have children, that if you’ve experienced grief, to be willing to ask for help, to know that you’re not alone. I mean, people jokingly call me the grief Guru because prior to that, I was, executive director of Any Baby Can, working with Babies in Crisis and then president of the National Sudden Infant Death Organization.
But I tell groups sometimes when I’m speaking that when my own husband died and it was anticipated from cancer. I was, you know, what can I say? I’m prepared as anyone else. There are things you don’t know. I can remember being in the parking lot, going to the bank at the quarry in San Antonio, coming out and thinking, where in the world I parked my car.
Yeah, I have no idea. But financially, the kind of work that you’re doing to just remind people that having a will is a gift to your family, that thinking ahead, knowing where the paperwork is, just being able to manage the logistics of bank accounts and bills and all. If you can do any of that ahead, it saves you so much stress after and then having the, I guess, the ability to say, I need some help too. It’s okay.
Darryl: That’s so good. And thank you for encouraging us to be politely aggressive with our community to get these things like wills and life insurance and all that across the finish line because it’s. I was texting a friend the other day and I just thought of him, I was driving very randomly. I said, I wasn’t texting while I was driving, but, I did text him.
I was thinking while I was driving. Then I texted him later and I said, hey, just thinking of you. Make sure you get your wills done. And he’s like, yeah, I need to. It’s that all the time. But I thank you for the encouragement because we need to stay on top of that. And you provided some wonderful direction for those that are grieving.
This has gone by too fast. I had, you know, we could do another hour but thank you for coming on. Thank you for all that you do, and you continue to do for our community.
Marian: I’m blessed. I’ve loved every moment at the Bereavement Center. There have been some difficult ones, but you just surround yourself with the right people and somehow it happens.
Darryl: It’s amazing. Well, thank you and thank you for all the listeners for staying to the very end. And as always, remember, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
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