New office will allow Willow Center programs to expand
May 14—Helping more young adults is one of the ways the Willow Center in Lewiston wants to expand after a recent move.
The not-for-profit group is now at 1714 G St., roughly 1 1/2 miles from its former basement offices in downtown Lewiston.
A one-hour open house for the new space, with light refreshments, will be held at 4:30 p.m. today.
Relocating provided a number of advantages, said Gabe Iacoboni, executive director of the Willow Center, which provides free grief support groups for children and their caregivers who have lost relatives.
The Willow Center hopes to use a conference room for a free support group for young adults, possibly between the ages of 18 and 29.
The support group would be similar to those it runs for children between the ages of 3 and 18 who have lost a parent, sibling, grandparent or other significant family member. But it would be focused on young adults, who are in an important stage of their lives, learning how to hold jobs, pay their own bills and live away from their parents, a transition that can be tougher if they are dealing with unresolved grief, Iacoboni said.
"It's not something that's very visible, that they outwardly express," he said. "It's more of a hidden problem among young adults."
A limited number of individuals in that age category already participate in existing support groups, but the Willow Center would like to serve more of them and better tailor what is offered to those in their late teens and 20s, Iacoboni said.
The G Street location also has a better layout for the work the Willow Center does, he said.
Each family that uses the Willow Center goes through an intake process. Staff members or volunteers share information about its programs with the family as a group before speaking with family members individually, to help assess what each person needs.
The new office allows the individual conversations to happen in separate rooms, which makes people more likely to share challenges they might be facing, Iacoboni said.
The Willow Center will continue to use space at the former Lewiston High School for all of its existing support groups, he said.
Those sessions have been convening since the group's founding in 2000 after mental health counselors and educators made an important observation, Iacoboni said.
"They were seeing some unhealthy behaviors in kids and teens," he said. "The thing all the kids had in common was that they had experienced a death."
Since then, additional research has verified that unresolved grief can cause depression, anxiety and, in the most severe cases, suicide, Iacoboni said.
Children frequently don't feel as if they can talk to their peers about something as unhappy as death, and that isolation can fuel those kinds of emotions, he said.
The support groups as well as a summer camp provide settings for children to process those feelings, Iacoboni said. Camp Erin is a free annual overnight camp that was canceled last summer because of COVID-19 but will resume this year as a day camp at the Nez Perce County Fairgrounds before returning for its regular format in years to come.
"By being in a supportive environment where you can talk about your experiences, you don't get to the point where those worst issues start to manifest," he said.
Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.
