Bereavement Professionals’ Insights

Caileigh – Advice to my younger self about grief

Caileigh talks about things that you can do to balance out feelings that it’s okay to experience all of the big feelings that you have, to find joy in little moments, and to find ways that you can cope with those big feelings.

Michele – Creative expression and processing grief

Michele tells what advice she would give to her younger grieving selfMichele talks about coping that since being a child how creativity helped

Cara – Grief and intellectual disabilities is a topic that needs to “get out there”

Cara shares some information from a participant in her research on intellectual disabilities and the bereaved. A person with an intellectual disability said… “Grief: It’s a topic that needs to get out there” Grief is something that so many people are hesitant to talk about, to display, to show, because there’s so many social rules around how we grieve. This is particularily challenging for the intellectually disabled.

Cara – Intellectual disabilities, sharing and expressing about grief

Cara discusses how it’s very important that people living with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to not only know about the information about the person being ill and dying and having the choice and opportunity to go to after death rituals. It’s also really important that they get the opportunity to share their story in whatever way they communicate. This can be verbally through sign language, through communication books, art, music, going for walks, being in nature

Shannon – Growing through Grief

Shannon discusses post traumatic growth and how it can be an expectation

Cara – Defining Intellectual disabilities and grief

Cara discusses how grief literacy needs to be improved across the board for people with intellectual disabilities to learn more about grief, death and dying. There is a great need to include them in this natural, normal part of life that we’ll all experience.

Carrie – Thanatology

Carrie explains how thanatolgy is the study of death dying grief and loss.

Maureen – “They are still your child”

Maureen explains how you find different ways of parenting.

Jeff K – “What is grief”

Jeff discusses the many aspects of grief and how we are all connected. Jeff continues to grieve the death of his mother.

Ripples of Grief: Supporting Ourselves, Others, and our Communities After a Death

By Jessica Milette, MSW, RSW When death knocks on the door of a community, each of us are impacted. Sometimes a death will touch many lives across a community, whether people knew the deceased personally or not. We may grieve the death of a family member, friend, or acquaintance, a well-known community member, or someone…

Janice – “It’s hard work”

Janice explains that hard work is necessary to reach the calm and peace.

Jessica M – Grief is unique for each person

Jessica discusses our uniquenesses during grief, giving yourself permission to grieve and that there are many ways of self care during grief.