Grief doesn’t follow a schedule. It just arrives. Before anyone has even had a chance to make sense of a diagnosis, a funeral, or the many ways a family and community can change as a result of loss. Painfully, this reality and arrival also impacts the youngest and most vulnerable of us.
And just as grief is universal, we believe support for it should be, too. While Empathy’s work towards that idea has shown up primarily on the commercial side, giving back to organizations that make support accessible to everyone facing hard moments (whether they currently have access to Empathy or not) is deeply important to us and a part of who we are. That’s why I’m proud to share that Empathy is an official partner of Experience Camps.
We believe progress in this area requires ecosystems: different organizations reaching different populations, in different ways, at different moments of need. Empathy’s role in this ecosystem is as the established partner to insurance companies providing scalable, sustainable support for families through life’s hardest moments. But we also believe in seeking out the organizations already doing exceptional complementary work in this space and standing behind and with them.
Experience Camps was an easy choice, first and foremost because of what they do for grieving children. The more we learned about how they operate, the more we admired their sophistication and staying power. Their model is built around the child, and around the profound, complicated task of reconciling childhood with loss and grief, while never losing sight of the parents, guardians, and counselors who carry that child through it.
For more than two decades, they’ve given children who have lost a parent, sibling, or primary caregiver something rare: a free summer camp designed specifically to help them grieve alongside other kids who understand, and a year-round community that doesn’t disappear when the week ends.
We first got to know the organization earlier this year, when Empathy served as the presenting sponsor of Experience: NYC, their annual benefit supporting grieving children and families. I was inspired to see the alignment of our work. We’re both helping people move through the hardest chapters of their lives, and come out the other side steadier and stronger than before.
As part of our partnership, Empathy will provide Experience Camp families, camp staff, and counselors with full access to Empathy Loss Support™, giving them practical guidance not just during that one week each summer, but throughout the year, as new challenges and hard days inevitably arise. Grief has a way of resurfacing at the moments you least expect it: a school project about family history, an empty chair at a holiday table. And Empathy will be there with them beyond the camp calendar.
I started Empathy because I’ve felt this particular kind of grief first-hand. I lost my older brother when I was young, and watched as my loved ones navigated a profound loss without sufficient support. The logistics of loss are relentless, from dealing with the paperwork and infinite decisions to the institutions that don’t care how tired or overwhelmed you are. Families deserve better than to face all of that while also trying to hold their grief, and their children’s grief, at the same time.
Experience Camps understood something similar from the emotional side of that same problem. Kids who’ve lost a parent or sibling often feel isolated in ways adults don’t always see. They go back to school and sit in classrooms where few understand what happened to their family. Camp gives them a space to seek solace, if only for a week, and builds a lasting sense of belonging for kids who’ve had their sense of safety upended.
Grief is a universal experience and is one of the hardest to endure. It’s important to name the moments when organizations built to support people through it, whether that’s a camp in the woods or a platform built into someone’s estate plan, choose to show up for families together.
To the entire Experience Camps team: thank you for the work you’ve done for grieving kids and families, and for trusting us to be part of it. We’re looking forward to continuing to support the incredible impact you are making.
