Blog Post

Preparing For and Coping with Special Days

Special Days can be days we have honoured with our loved ones that many others celebrate or more personal dates and milestones with your loved one. As these days approach, it can be difficult to figure out how to move through a Special Day. Do you do what you’ve always done? What do you do…

Practical Possibilities for Mourning in a Pandemic

Post by Maureen Pollard, MSW, RSW Practical Possibilities for Mourning in a Pandemic When someone we care about dies, we have a natural reaction of grief. During a pandemic, many restrictions and precautions we are living with to help prevent the spread of virus can interfere with the ways we are used to coping with the experience…

Gratitude and Grief

Mary E. Schulz is a Social Worker and writer who loves dogs, opera and stories that take her breath away. I call them “ambushes”. I am going about my day – tidying up the living room, doing some cooking or driving the car, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I am brought to…

Grief & Ice Cream

When my wife of 18 years died in 2016, I became a single father missing the love of my life, and also had to learn how to raise two girls (13-17 at the time) on my own. I remember a conversation I had with my mother-in-law and oldest daughter that began as reminiscing over a person who became a lost love to all of us. We all talked about different aspects of my wife but shortly, it transformed into a “who meant more to her” fest.

The Reflection Room® project: How storytelling supports processing grief

The Reflection Room project is an evidence-based participatory art installation that was developed by researchers at the SE Research Centre and Memorial University in 2016. The project included a research component that evaluated the impact of Reflection Rooms as the project adapted over time to address changing needs.

Left Out: Enfranchising Children’s Grief and Loss

By: Jessica Milette, MSW, RSW All human beings have the capacity to grieve: people with intellectual disabilities, those living with a traumatic brain injury, and children of all ages. However, many people can experience disenfranchised grief when someone dies. Disenfranchised grief is generally grief that is not usually openly acknowledged, socially accepted or publicly mourned.…

Creativity Helped Me Cope as a Child

Michele King is an End-of-Life Doula and Expressive Arts Grief Support facilitator. She companions people through serious illness and at end of life with a passion for normalizing conversations around death and dying. I can still vaguely remember the day like a fuzzy picture in my mind. I was playing on our front lawn with…

Who are we to Decide? The Many Paths through Grief

A lot of my work with clients involves hearing their stories, but also answering many questions about if their grief is “normal”. Their grief is overwhelming, and our dominant culture’s strong message is – that grief should be kept at its edges, I often find this pervasive intention creeps into griever’s experiences – and my…

Things That Helped When My Dog Was Dying

I lived with a dog named Althea, who belonged to my roommate, during my undergrad. Every year, my partner, our roommate, and I would go to a summer solstice festival. The year Althea was pregnant, my roommate brought her to the festival. The first night there, he retired to his tent to nap in preparation…

Grief and Secondary Loss

Post by Maureen Pollard, MSW, RSW Grief and Secondary Loss Secondary losses are those that often accompany the death of a loved one and may go unacknowledged beside the more recognized experience of that primary loss. Secondary loss includes such things as role, family structure, support systems, identity, faith, purpose and security. These connections are related to…

Tending to My Garden of Grief

So long as I remember the lives of those I have lost, honour their presence and impact on me and celebrate their spirit, they will continue to live with me and the pain will feel bearable. It will no longer stop me in my tracks. Instead, it will encourage me and propel me forward through the transmutation of that grief into something different, something more nuanced and fluid. I’d like to share a practice for processing grief which I have found to be especially helpful.

When Death is a Natural Part of Your Workplace

Post by Maureen Pollard, MSW, RSW When Death is a Natural Part of Your Workplace Staff and volunteers in hospice, long-term care facilities and hospitals know that death is a part of life. You typically witness death on a regular basis as part of your job. As a result, there are some important steps you can take…