Column: Too many KY children suffer from grief. A mother, daughter duo is trying to help

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Katarina Salisbury knows what it is to grieve.

At 5, she lost her father to sudden death. Two years later, she found out he died by suicide. A few years after that, she lost her grandmother, who had become another parent to her.

She was anxious, depressed and bullied by other students.

Now at 17, she helps other Kentucky teenagers in an online grief group. She’s headed to college, and eventually hopes to become a psychiatrist helping kids just like her.

“It’s about making connections with people who understand what you’ve been through and won’t judge you,” she said. “It’s therapeutic to be in a space where we can understand each other and talk about what grief really looks like.”

In Kentucky, grief looks staggering: One in nine children in this state will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 18, the seventh worst in the country, according to the CDC. By age 25, 258,000 Kentuckians will be bereaved.

Kentucky’s high numbers are due in part to the opioid overdose epidemic, to crime, to our high rates of diseases like cancer, and increased rates of suicide. Grief affects every part of a child’s future; nearly 20% of them are suspended, expelled or repeat a grade in school.

Grief ratchets through our lives, our society and our economy. And yet we hardly ever talk about it.

That’s exactly why Katarina’s mother, Leila Salisbury, decided to start the Kentucky Center for Grieving Children and Families.

“Parenting a grieving child was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.

Grief journeys

A Lexington native, Salisbury was well on her way in her publishing career, having taken over the director’s job of the University Press of...