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FORT LEWIS -- Kaylee Sharp-Henderson had been silent much of the morning, and now she was avoiding, with all her 8-year-old might, directions to write down what made her feel sad. Or angry. Or scared.Around the table, the other children in her group bent their heads over their construction paper and made furtive lists with colored markers.
When they were finished, Tina Saari, the group leader, handed each child a small tin of Play-Doh.
Kaylee wadded the clay into a ball.
"This is the Iraqi that killed my dad," she said, her voice rising as her fists pummeled the clay into a flat pancake. "I hate you, I hate you. I hate you."
The other children hammered at their own piles of clay, and in a flurry of pounding, they smashed out feelings of grief only the smallest casualties of war could know.
Each of them had lost a parent or a sibling in Iraq or Afghanistan. For some, like Kaylee, the loss was only a few months ago. And for many of them, this was the first time they had been able to share that experience with others who knew what it felt like. On Saturday, 62 families, most of whom had lost soldier sons based at Fort Lewis, gathered to share their emotions and look to one another for ways to survive the knock on the door.
The grief camp was organized by the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that offers resources and peer counseling to grieving military families.
