Everyone who lives long enough will grieve at some point in life, something Tanya Bryant knows all too well.
“We had coffee together one Sunday morning,” Bryant says. “I left to go to Walgreen’s to get some stuff, and, when I came home, my husband had passed. It was very unexpected. He wasn’t sick or anything. It was just his time.”
Jack Bryant was just sixty years old when he was called home, leaving a seemingly bottomless well of grief for his wife of twenty-seven years, Tanya, and their three children to cope with. She was just fifty-three years old when he passed. Their children, Jared, Alexa, and Jesse, were in their twenties when he died.
“I struggled a lot my first year,” Bryant says. “Through that time, I missed holding hands. We held hands all the time. We were that weird, old couple who were always connected, held hands in the grocery store, wherever we were. I missed holding his hand. I was searching for something to hold. I went to Etsy. I went to all these places, and I couldn’t find anything.”
She wasn’t the only one grieving – not by a long shot. The Bryants’ middle child, Jared, took it especially hard.
“My middle son, Jared, who’s twenty-five now, was twenty-two when his dad passed away,” Bryant says. “He was in school for physical therapy in Austin. Of course, all my kids had a tough time, but he was the one who struggled the most; and I moved in with him for a little bit.”
“He came home one night when I was staying with him, and they had made hands that day, because he’s studying how to be a hand therapist,” Bryant recalls. “He said, ‘Look what I made, Mom.’ I had never told him I was looking for a hand to hold, that I was missing holding his daddy’s hand.”
Something finally to hold – and run with, in what Bryant calls a “Divine Connection.”
“We took the hand that he [Jared] made and put it into my husband’s old golf glove, and I still carry it with me today, everywhere I go, so I am always connected to him,” Bryant says.
But it didn’t stop there. Tanya says right after, “God said to me, ‘That is not just Jay’s [her husband’s] hand. That is My hand. I’m holding you in my hand, and I’ve got you.’”
Then she came across Isaiah 41:10 – a Bible scripture that says, “Do not fear. I am holding you in my right hand.”
“So, I started making hands for people,” Bryant says. “’Comfort Hands,’ I call them. There’s a prayer card that comes with it. When people come across my path and tell me about their loss or tell me they’re struggling, I just give them a comfort hand. That’s how we started.”
Now, just over three years after the death of her beloved husband, Bryant has not only offered helping, comfort(ing) hands to others, she has turned her misery into a ministry, expanding her Comfort Hands outreach to a new non-profit grief support and counseling service in Long Beach, The Jaybird Project, named for her husband, whose nickname was “Jaybird.”
The Jaybird Project’s Grief Support Center strives to create a safe space where children and families can find help, hope and healing after loss. Although The Jaybird Project is based on Psalms 147:3, which reads, “He [God] heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” the grief services, support and Comfort Hands are offered with open arms to anyone.
“I went through Grief Share,” Bryant says. “On the second anniversary of my husband’s death (January 2023), my sister said to me I was doing worse than I was the first year, that I needed to do something; and I found Grief Share. Connie Lillo…was my Grief Share leader, and we just connected. Together, we also realized there’s just not enough stuff out there for kids when it comes to grieving. They don’t get support like adults do.”
“What I mean by that is, if you’re at a funeral or memorial and all the kids are around, the adults tell the kids to ‘go play,’ because we as adults don’t want to show kids our grief, because we think it’s going to make them grieve. In reality, they’re grieving on their own. We try to protect them, but they have their own grief, and, unfortunately, there’s nothing around that helps kids process their grief.”
Chaplain Lillo, who helped Bryant launch The Jaybird Project, has extensive experience serving as bereavement coordinator of Vital Caring Group, and she helps lead the weekly Grief Share Support meetings now held each Monday at 10 a.m. and also at 4 p.m. at The Jaybird Project’s Grief Support Center, which is located in Suite 104 inside the newly-built Columns Plaza at 6121 Beatline Road. Meetings are open to everyone and are free of charge.
Bryant says the grief support and Comfort Hands outreach services aren’t just designed to console those who have lost loved ones.
“So often, people think that grief is just the loss of a loved one,” Bryant says. “It’s not. You grieve, obviously, over the loss of a loved one. [But you also] grieve a lost friendship. Divorce is grief. The loss of a job – there are so many things we grieve in life, but we don’t recognize these losses cause us trauma in different ways.”
Those who would like more information or who are interested in participating in the support programs at the Jaybird Project Center can sign up by contacting info@TheJaybirdProject.org or by calling 504-500-1081.
Bryan says that plans are underway to expand grief support meetings to Thursdays. In addition, Bryant, a Certified Grief Coach, offers grief coaching to children.
The Jaybird Project is a non-profit and operates with donations from the community. Honorarium donations in honor of a loved one who has passed are welcomed, as well as traditional ones. More information is available on the organization’s website at TheJaybirdProject.org.
As for Bryant, she’s just grateful she has a newfound purpose in this chapter in life.
“This horrible thing that happened in my life that I was not prepared for – I had to turn it into something good, or it just wouldn’t make any sense. To take my grief, my loss and my hurt and to be able to share comfort with people and share hope with people and share God’s love with others makes me feel like it’s for a purpose.”
