(upbeat music) - We're now joined by Lindsay Schambach, who is executive director of an organization called Imagine.

Lindsay, great to have you with us.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- We'll put up the website for Imagine.

Tell everyone what the organization is and who you serve.

- Yeah, thank you, Steve.

Imagine is a free year-round grief support center that supports children as young as three years old, all the way up to 18 and young adults as well as their caregivers, and our families have suffered a loss due to death.

Often it's the loss of a sibling or the death of a parent that bring children and families to us, but sometimes it's a grandparent, another important figure, even a best friend.

- For you this is highly personal.

2018, you lost your husband, Michael.

Talk about that experience and your connection then to Imagine.

- Yeah, I started my career as a teacher in the city of Newark and it was the absolute love of my life.

My family and I threw everything we had into building schools and working with children, and in 2017, my husband, Mike Schambach, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, and although, as a principal in Newark, I had supported many families through losses, it wasn't until I had experienced the devastation of a diagnosis like that, and then eventually the death of my husband...

It helped me understand what grieving children really need.

I had a four-week-old daughter and a four-year-old son at the time, and had to figure out how to put my life back together.

And what grieving families really need is community, and I found that at Imagine.

So in 2018, my four-year-old son and I drove down to Mountainside and started attending group at Mountainside, and it's truly what helped me put my life back together.

- What happens in group?

- Our groups start with opening circle where our young children, where they learn to express the loss that they've experienced, and so in that, they share their name and the name of the person who died.

And we have a very important rule at Imagine, which means that you can always pass, because we know that our children's story is their own.

They never have to talk about their loss, they never have to say it, but often our children find such community and such power in knowing that they're not alone at Imagine and that everyone who is here has experienced the death of someone that means so much to them.

So we start with opening circle and then our kids break into peer support groups.

So our three-to-five-year-olds go with their age groups, our teens go with each other, and then the parents and caregivers go into their own adult support groups.

During that time, they just provide community.

They talk about their losses, they go through activities each week, and it's a space for families to truly grieve, with no judgment, no worries, no concerns, with people who understand what they're going through.

- You know, there's a phrase here, I'm trying to make sense of it, and you'll help us, one of the goals is to, quote, "normalize grieving."

What does that mean?

- In our society, grief is really seen as something that people run away from.

We feel like grief is something that needs to be fixed, that it will happen in stages, but that's just totally not true.

It's not the experience of people who are grieving.

Grief is a lifelong experience and it's not something you get over.

It's something that families have to learn to live with.

And so by normalizing grief, we help people understand that it's okay to grieve.

It's natural and it's normal to experience this, and that what we learn together is that we carry on with our grief.

It's something that we live with every day, and that we don't actually have to forget the person who died or put our grief aside.

Going through the grieving process is natural and normal after someone you love dies.

- Tell us about your children today.

- My son is now nine years old, Cameron, and he is loving life as a karate yellow belt, actually, orange belt, and my daughter, Chloe, is now five years old.

And the amazing thing about watching Chloe is, I've watched the developmental stages of grief really come to life.

She obviously got to spend four weeks with her father, and as a young three-year-old, she often would make up stories about how he died, even though we would regularly tell her the truth.

We at Imagine really believe kids deserve to know the truth, that years later, adults, we have to live by what we told our children.

And so we shared with Chloe the truth about how her father died.

He died of cancer.

But our three-year-olds, they really see death as not permanent.

It's temporary in their minds.

And so they need to be reminded regularly of the truth of what happened.

And my son, who's nine, tells the story beautifully.

I remember he was switching schools as a first-grader and said, "Mom, how am I ever gonna explain cancer to a bunch of seven-year-olds?"

And he really understood it himself.

He knew that some people survive and some people don't, and it doesn't mean we did anything wrong.

And so my son's ability to articulate his feelings, express what's going on in his head, are really a product of the time he spent at Imagine.

- It's interesting how you describe that many people run away from grief, and, hand up, I'm part of that, so, and not proud of it.

Like millions of others, don't handle it well.

That being said, one of the things that strikes me about you, just meeting you here and reading about your background and the work you're doing, is your extraordinarily positive attitude.

Where does that come from?

- I experienced the death of my father when I was 21.

He died of stage IV brain cancer, and I lived through that, and that pain was extraordinary.

But I also, when I was 34 years old and my own husband had the diagnosis, I realized that I had choices I could make throughout that process.

I knew my husband was going to die and I knew that I was gonna have to survive him, I was gonna have to live on after, and that meant that the decisions I made every day needed to be ones that I'd be able to stand by and be proud of.

So I think one of the things in realizing that we've all experienced loss, it's not always due to death, but there's many losses that we go through in our lives, when we look back at those losses and realize the strength that it took to overcome each of those, we carry the lessons from those losses into the newest ones, and I've got kids I've got to carry on for.

- Being the executive director of Imagine is extraordinarily important to you, and also, I wanna thank our friends at the Healthcare Foundation who introduced us to you and to Imagine.

What does that work, not just the title, that's ridiculous, the role of being, the responsibility of being the executive director of Imagine, what does that mean to you?

- I'm now the mom of four bereaved children, so two, Cameron and Chloe, who I gave birth to, and two who I have been lucky enough to bring into my life, Colin and Ryan.

So I have children who are 15, 11, 9, and five, so I see our kids at all stages.

Having been a principal in Newark, I also understand the immense pressure that our principals, our teachers, are under every single day.

And what I saw was just actually how hard it is to make a difference in our kids' lives and how if we work together and we just work as a community, we're more likely to be able to make a larger impact, and so through our- - And that includes, I'm sorry for interrupting, that includes grief education in schools.

- That includes grief education in schools.

And so Imagine, as part of our services, especially in Newark, we work to create grief-informed schools, which means that we work with the administrators to understand the impact of grief on children, and decisions and policies that are within their control, like what we do on Mother's Day and Father's Day, and how we pass information on from a child, or when we reach out to a family after a loss occurred and we say, "How can we support you?

What do you want it to feel like when you come back to school that next day?"

Many of our educators, they have so much on their plates, but once they become aware of what's considered best practice in supporting kids, we know that our educators will do whatever is within their power.

So that work, I find, is, like, bought out of my own personal experience as a mom of grieving children, but then also as an educator.

- Lindsay, thank you.

And I've said this before, but I don't think I've ever been more confident of it, right now, you just helped an awful lot of folks that you'll never get to meet, but they got to meet you.

To you and your colleagues at Imagine, thank you for the work you do every day.

All the best.

- Thank you, Steve.

We appreciate it.

- We appreciate you.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

PSE&G, NJM Insurance Group.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Rowan University.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

The New Jersey Education Association.

And by PSC.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by NJBIZ.

- At the Turrell Fund, We know childcare creates transformative early learning experiences for young children, and helps families succeed.

Childcare is essential for the economy, driving financial growth and sustainability across all sectors.

The Turrell Fund envisions a New Jersey in which every infant and toddler has access to high quality, affordable childcare In order to grow, develop and thrive.

Our children are our future.

For more information, visit TurrellFund.org.