Bereavement Professionals’ Insights

Cara – Intellectual disabilities and advance planning

Cara explains that people living with intellectual disabilities are growing to older ages, much like the rest of the population. And as folks are aging what we’re seeing is the need for families more so than ever, to do some advanced planning for who will take over any caregiving decision making or where that person may live, what sort of support they may need and what that’s going to look like after the parents or the guardians die so that this doesn’t become a crisis situation.

Claudia – Art in community versus art therapy

Claudia explains how art therapists are trained and how what they do is different that doing art in community

Keith – “How can you help”

Keith explains that by imagining being in someone’s position can show you practical ways of helping them.

Kristal – Attending Memorials as a Support Worker

Kristal discusses the importance of finding ways to honour people that have been lost and how they have impacted you. She speaks to how she often chooses not to attend public memorials for those she has lost as a support worker as they are often very overwhelming. Instead, she has her own personal rituals or ways of honouring those she has lost personally including opening a window. She discusses how this practice was used when she worked in palliative care.

Sara – Listening to music

Sara discusses how listening to music can help navigate loss

Janice- “Stay with feelings”

Janice talks about how feelings can be buried and how working through them can help.

Adrianna – Metabolizing grief

Adrianna explains metabolizing grief and grief literacy training

Michele – Covid and virtual support

MIchele discuss support and how COVID has affected our grief in so many waysort

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.

Chantal – My Story

Chantal discusses finding a release in doing a graphic novel to explore her grief as a thesis in art therapy school

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.

Marija – Acknowledging feelings

Marija talks about our tools for coping