When tragedy strikes a community, attention naturally flows to the adults who must manage logistics, make decisions, and keep institutions functioning. But Emilio Parga has spent his career focused on the people whose grief often goes unaddressed: children and teens who experience loss intensely but lack the language to articulate it.
The oversight isn’t intentional. Adults genuinely want to protect young people from pain. But that protective instinct often manifests as silence, euphemism, and exclusion from grief processes. The result is children who feel confused, isolated, and sometimes responsible for deaths they had nothing to do with. Their imaginations fill the silence with explanations more frightening than the truth.
As founder and CEO of The Solace Tree, Parga creates the structured conversations that children and teens desperately need but rarely receive. His work addresses a gap in how American society handles death: everyone acknowledges that children grieve, but few communities have systems to support that grief meaningfully.
The consequences of this gap appear in unexpected ways. Children whose grief goes unaddressed often struggle academically, not because they’re less capable but because their emotional bandwidth is consumed by unprocessed loss. They may act out behaviorally, translating internal chaos into external disruption. They sometimes withdraw socially, believing their sadness makes them different or damaged. Years later, unaddressed childhood grief can manifest as relationship difficulties, anxiety, or inability to cope with subsequent losses.
What makes children’s grief particularly complex is their developmental stage. Young children may not understand death’s permanence, repeatedly asking when the person is coming back. School-age kids might experience guilt, convinced that something they did or didn’t do caused the death. Adolescents face grief while already navigating identity formation, making loss feel even more destabilizing. Each stage requires different support, but all require adults willing to engage rather than deflect.
Parga has learned that children often feel grief more intensely than they can express. A seven-year-old whose father died may not have words for the terror of wondering who will take care of her now. A fifteen-year-old who lost his best friend to suicide may not know how to articulate rage at being left behind, mixed with guilt about feeling angry. Without facilitated expression, these feelings get buried, not resolved.
The work The Solace Tree does gives young people permission to name what they’re experiencing. In peer groups facilitated by trained adults, children discover they’re not alone. The classmate who seems fine is also having nightmares. The teammate who’s been distant is also afraid of forgetting what the deceased person’s voice sounded like. This realization that grief is shared rather than solitary provides profound relief.
But the support extends beyond peer groups. Parga works with families to rebuild communication that has been disrupted. Parents learn to ask open questions rather than assume what their children need. They discover that saying “I don’t know” is more honest than fabricating explanations for death’s mysteries. They gain tools to support their children while managing their own grief, a balance that feels impossible without guidance.
His career has earned recognition spanning local and national platforms. A PBS Emmy Award, multiple Communicator Awards, designation as Citizen of the Year, and scholarships to national conferences on pediatric grief support all reflect the field’s recognition of his expertise. But the validation that matters most comes from the children who learn to carry grief without being crushed by it.
The cultural resistance to addressing children’s grief runs deep. Many adults believe that talking about death will traumatize young people, that they’re better off distracted by normalcy. But research and clinical experience show the opposite. Children already know something terrible happened. Silence doesn’t protect them from that knowledge; it just ensures they process it alone, often reaching conclusions more frightening than reality.
Consider what happens when a classmate dies, and the school addresses it primarily through adult channels. An announcement, a letter to parents, perhaps a memorial organized by students who feel capable of leading it. Well-intentioned, certainly. But what about the child who was best friends with the deceased? What about the kids who witnessed the accident or heard the news first? What about the student who now fears losing other people they love? These young people need more than passive access to counselors; they need proactive, structured support.
Parga’s approach doesn’t shy away from difficult conversations. He’s learned that children can handle truth delivered with age-appropriate language and emotional safety. They can process their own feelings when given frameworks to do so. They can support peers when taught how. What they can’t handle well is being shut out, talked around, or treated as too fragile for honesty.
The methodology varies by age but always centers on relationship and dialogue. With younger children, this might involve drawing or play alongside conversation. With tweens, small group discussions help them feel less alone. With teens, creating space to express complicated feelings without judgment proves crucial. In all cases, the goal isn’t to eliminate grief but to help young people carry it in ways that allow for continued growth and connection.
Looking ahead, Parga envisions expanding access to grief support for young people nationwide. He wants to train more facilitators who understand developmental stages and can adapt dialogue accordingly. He’s strengthening partnerships with schools, recognizing that educators encounter grieving students regularly but often lack tools to support them effectively. He’s developing resources that make intentional grief dialogue accessible to more communities.
The vision extends beyond crisis response to prevention and preparation. Rather than waiting for tragedy to strike, communities could build grief literacy into youth development. Young people could learn that loss is part of life, that grief is a natural response, that talking about feelings is strength rather than weakness, and that supporting each other through hard times builds lasting bonds. These lessons would serve them every time they encounter loss, not just in childhood but throughout life.
The challenges are substantial but not insurmountable. Changing cultural norms around children and grief requires sustained effort. Training facilitators demand resources and infrastructure. Reaching underserved communities means addressing access barriers. But the alternative, continuing to leave children to navigate grief largely alone, carries costs that compound over time.
What Parga has learned over the years of this work reshapes assumptions about resilience. Children are more resilient than adults often credit, but that resilience requires support. Shielding young people from grief doesn’t build strength; it leaves them unprepared for inevitable future losses. What builds genuine resilience is learning to face difficult emotions, developing language to express them, and experiencing community support that doesn’t disappear when things get hard.
The lessons apply beyond individual families to entire communities. Schools that address student deaths through facilitated dialogue notice improved cohesion and reduced behavioral issues. Athletic teams that process loss together often grow closer rather than fragmenting. Youth groups that learn to talk about grief develop emotional intelligence that benefits all their interactions. Supporting young people through loss doesn’t just help them cope; it teaches life skills with broad application.
For organizations and institutions that work with youth, Parga’s approach offers a roadmap. Rather than treating grief as a rare crisis requiring outside intervention, they can build the capacity to support it internally. Rather than assuming young people will be fine if left alone, they can proactively create space for expression. Rather than delegating all emotional support to counselors, they can train adults throughout the system to engage supportively.
The work continues because the need persists at scale. Thousands of children lose parents each year. Countless more experience the death of siblings, friends, or community members. Some face multiple losses before reaching adulthood. Without structured support, each of these young people navigates grief through trial and error, often internalizing messages that silence or shame. With the kind of intentional dialogue Parga facilitates, they learn that grief can be survived, that community support makes all the difference, and that talking about loss honors rather than dishonors those who died.
The invitation to communities is clear: stop overlooking children’s grief. Stop assuming they’re fine because they seem to bounce back. Stop protecting them from conversations they desperately need. Instead, create structures that give young people a voice, community, and tools to carry loss without being defined by it. The impact extends far beyond individual wellbeing to shape the kind of adults these children become and the communities they’ll eventually help build.
