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Speakers: Christina Frangou, Cherie Kok, Christopher MacKinnon, Paul Adams 

Workshop Summary:

The global pandemic has imposed numerous adjustments on the lives of grieving Canadians, revealing completely unexpected challenges to the shattering ordeal of bereavement. This panel presentation will feature a professionally facilitated discussion among three recently bereft adults, seeking answers to some of the more complex questions surrounding grief in the era of COVID-19. 

Speaker: Andrea Courey

Workshop Summary:

We are vibratory beings. By participating in a guided sound healing experience with crystal bowls, chimes, drums and other instruments, you can raise your personal vibration, deepen your meditation practice and achieve a level of inner peace.

In this presentation, you will be introduced to the healing power of sound that will help you cultivate inner peace and help you raise your own personal vibration.

Speaker:   

Andrea Warnick

Workshop Summary:  

Supporting grieving children and youth in the school environment can be challenging for both educators and parents.  It’s not uncommon for children and youth to worry about their grief surfacing at school, and to struggle with concentrating in class.   This presentation, designed for parents and educators, will explore a number of practical strategies for supporting a healthy grief process for children of all ages within a school environment. 

Speakers: Laurie Rail & Jane Davey

Workshop Summary:

Many grieving workshops focus on people’s acute grief period: what grievers are experiencing their first days, weeks and months following the death. This workshop focuses on the period after the first year, and well beyond. It provides more insight into what that timeline will give those people who are further into their grieving journey.

This workshop will illustrate how the years following the first year of grieving will differ significantly.

Host: Barb Juett, Bereavement Social Worker

Panel Members: Julia St-Jean, Roland Tiamuh, Meagan Massad, Matt Keogh  

Workshop Summary:

The relationship that people share with their siblings is potentially the longest one they will ever have. When a sibling dies, the grief experienced is very unique. When a parent dies, you lose the past. When a child dies, you lose the future. When a sibling dies, you lose both the past and the future. In many ways, siblings often experience 2 loss.

Speaker:  Angie Arendt  

Workshop Summary:

In this presentation, designed for those feeling the weight of grief and those who walk with those carrying that weight, we will work with the Enneagram as a framework to do grief another way: a way that plants seeds for understanding, truth telling, compassion, connection and validation to take root and grow—foundational components in the good work of naming, normalizing, and knitting those broken places inside back together. 

Speaker:  Jane Milman 

Workshop Summary:

People try to live lives that make sense and matter to them. A loss can make grievers question who they are and what their lives are about, so that whatever came before the loss no longer matters. Instead, grievers feel stuck, struggling to find ways of living meaningfully. This workshop will discuss the meaning making approach, describing how grievers attempt to make meaning of their grief and identifying exercises to support such meaning making. 

Speaker:  Alessandra (Alé) Friesen, Shelley Hermer

Workshop Summary:

Even though Western society has improved regarding recognizing the effects of pregnancy and infant loss, the grief journey for parents can still be lonely and misunderstood.  Join family therapist and hospital social worker Shelley Hermer, and parent Alessandra Friesen as they explore ways of carrying the love you have for babies lost in pregnancy or who died after birth. 

Speakers: Patricia Barrett-Robillard, RN; Mélina Ladouceur, Social Worker

Workshop Summary:

The grieving process may be more complex after death from a chronic illness such as cancer.  Not only are caregivers mourning a loss, but they may also have been putting their own grief aside.  We will demonstrate the person-centered, strengths-based coaching approach that we use with bereaved caregivers as they navigate the path of recovery from caregiver burnout/compassion fatigue. 

Speakers:   Katherine Cullihall, Tara Skibo, Nancy Heisey, Marilyn Boyd 

Workshop Summary:

Never in our lifetimes has Canada experienced the volume and complexity of grief as has resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. When your rituals and ceremonies and support networks are disrupted, what takes their place? How can we continue to connect, support and grieve together, but apart?  Victoria Hospice will help us understand what an online group looks like and how it works. 

Host:  Chris MacKinnon 

Panel Members:  Jennifer Howard, Andrew Robertson 

Workshop Summary:

The nature of grieving a death from opioid overdose remains largely invisible and the bereft are faced with a lonely and stigmatized journey. This professionally facilitated panel will include three adults bereft following a death from opioid overdose searching for some of the ways we can re-create our lives after loss, as well as respond constructively to the unforeseen and bewildering grief-hardships.