Alicia Duff was visiting family in the Dallas-Fort Worth area over the weekend when reports of widespread flooding across the state surfaced.
Her daughters, Amelia, 6, and Elliana, 8, saw the coverage and noticed Kerr County was mentioned. But they weren’t paying close attention, and there was no mention of Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls about six miles southwest of Hunt, Texas.
It wasn’t until Saturday morning, while staying at her aunt’s house, that Alicia noticed a Facebook post with the names and photos of the girls reported missing from the camp. One of them happened to be her daughter’s friend.
“It was like a stomach punch,” Alicia, who lives with her mother and daughters in Houston, Texas, tells PEOPLE via Zoom. “I mean, it’s heartbreaking enough, but then it hits even harder. All of these thoughts rush in at once, as if we know her. “My children play with her…”
While her daughters were not best friends with the missing camper, they had spent quality time together.
“They went to gymnastics day camp together, and this year my eldest daughter and her were on the same softball team,” Alicia says. “They were not particularly close, but they talked and played together. It’s still very effective. “It is heavy.”
After learning the news, Alicia, 40, struggled with what to tell her children.
Her eldest daughter was leaving on Monday for her first sleepaway camp, in a different part of the state, so she decided to wait until she returned. However, Alicia chose to inform her younger daughter, Amelia, later in the day, after picking her up from gymnastics camp.
Alicia had no idea how Amelia would react when they started talking. Her children had previously experienced grief following the death of Alicia’s father, their grandfather, but this felt different.
“She just lost it,” Alicia explains. “Full-on red face, puffy eyes, sobbing.”
She took Amelia out of the back seat and held her in her lap, gently rubbing her hair and back to comfort her. “I told her, ‘It’s fine, babe. Whatever you’re feeling is fine. “You can let it out,” Alicia recalls.
“No one should ever have to talk to their kids about stuff like this,” according to the mother. “It’s another level of heartbreak, and kids don’t have the same understanding that adults do about things.”
“For me, it was simply about ensuring that she felt safe and that she could express herself freely.
“I wanted to make sure she felt comfortable talking about it,” she continues. Amelia is also receiving therapy to help her deal with what happened.
Later, Alicia posted a TikTok video in which she explained her decision to tell her daughters what was going on. She believes that processing loss, going to therapy, and being able to talk openly about feelings are all necessary steps toward healing. She also hoped that the video would reach out to other mothers who were facing a similar dilemma.
Since then, the video has gone viral, with over 6 million views. While Alicia has been grateful for the support of other parents dealing with grief, she has also received criticism for how she handled the situation.
“There’s no perfect way to parent — just no rulebook,” according to her. “There is no guide, and each kid is unique. So I have to appreciate the fact that I know my child best. And as a parent, you get to do just that.
You get to make decisions for your children based on what you think is best for them. People do not have to agree with that. That’s the whole point: we get to parent the way we think we should.
“It breaks my heart to hear that there are adults on TikTok who are saying, ‘I wish my parents had been kind and understanding and let me talk about my feelings when I was a kid,'” she states. “I can’t imagine going through something like this and being told to stop crying. It is going to be fine. We’re good. “We just need to move on.”
“There’s a time and a place for talking to kids like that because you don’t want ’em to dwell on stuff, but something like this, I mean, this can affect them for the rest of their lives,” she tells me.
While Alicia’s younger daughter is now aware of what occurred, she is dreading the conversation she will have with her older daughter, who returns from camp tomorrow. She intends to provide Elliana with the same level of support and space to grieve as Amelia.
“I’ve been watching people heartbroken all over the world because of this and it makes us want to hold our kids tighter and appreciate the days — appreciate the fights, the arguments between the kids, the stuff that makes you want to pull your hair out,” according to Alicia.
“It’s hard to remember sometimes that there are parents out there who would give their last breath to have that experience one more time,” she reflects.
