There’s one at every camp, Marissa Meerians knows: some painfully withdrawn kid tongue-tied by grief.

If the camp and its counselors and the unique mix of participants work their usual magic, the kid will leave a little less burdoned, a little less sad, a little less alone in his or her pain.

Maybe a lot less.

Meerians knows all of this because she was once that kid. Now, as a volunteer with Hospice Hawaii’s annual Ka Pilina Pulama Family Camp, she draws from her experiences to help children and teens deal with the grief of losing a loved one.

"It’s really powerful to see a child who is really unsure and who really doesn’t want to be there get to the point where they know it’s all right to feel the way they do and to know that they’re going to be OK," Meerians says.

Meerians was 8 years old when her father died of skin cancer. Three months later, her maternal grandmother, with whom she had been especially close, succumbed to lung cancer.

The back-to-back losses rocked Meerians to the core, leaving her depressed, confused and frustrated by her inability to express what she was feeling.

"It got to a point where I became very withdrawn," she says. "I knew I had family I could talk to, but I didn’t want to make them sad. I had friends at school, but I couldn’t tell them what I was going through and they didn’t know how to act around me."

Meerians’ mother read about Ka Pilina Pulama and thought it might help reclaim Meerians from her inward spiral.

At the three-day camp, Meerians learned coping strategies, worked on art projects that gave voice to her inarticulate grief and spent hours upon hours talking with other campers who knew exactly what she was going through.

"The experience changed my life," says Meerians, now 23. "I learned how to express what I was feeling and I understood for the first time that I wasn’t alone in what I was going through. And when camp was over, I stayed in touch with the other campers. I had a support network."

Meerians returned to the camp each year after, gradually coming to understand how sharing her story could help her fellow campers. In high school, she started volunteering as a mentor, work that will continue this week as the camp welcomes a new set of kids in need.

Meerians graduated Last month from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a bachelor’s degree in social work. She’ll return in the fall to start work on a master’s degree.

"The camp helped me to figure out what I want to do with my life," she says.

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Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.