Blog Post

Grieving Through Another Pandemic Holiday Season

Post by Maureen Pollard, MSW, RSW Grieving Through Another Pandemic Holiday Season This is our second year collectively facing a crisis across the globe that has kept us living with some level of anxiety and feelings of isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic has been very hard on so many people in many ways. It can feel endless and…

When You Can’t Be There As a Loved One Dies

Post by Maureen Pollard, MSW, RSW There are times when we have some warning that a loved one is dying. We can change our agendas and make travel plans in order to be present at the death or in their last days. Other times, it simply isn’t possible. If death comes swiftly and unexpectedly, we are left…

Holding Space for The Many Faces of Grief on Father’s Day

A lot of blog posts and articles about grief and special days tend to focus on how to navigate these moments when our loved one has died. Often these articles of grief also talk about the ways we have deeply loved or cared for the person who has died. Grief is a natural response to…

Calls to Care, Calls to Action: Bearing Witness to Global Catastrophic Loss of Life and Traumatic Events

We bear witness to stories of mass loss of lives, stories of families in Gaza being forced from their land, loss of culture and traditions, and countless other ways systems of colonization and oppression can contribute to other non-death losses those who are directly affected currently and have historically faced. As we discussed in a previous article, we can also experience collective grief following natural disasters, accidents, international conflict, and acts of violence that have resulted in catastrophic loss of lives.

Quiet Hope: Healing as a Nurse, Mourning as a Mom

By: Yhaimar Barile I’m a nurse. I’m a writer. And I’m a mom who lost her son. Last year, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, my son Gabriel died unexpectedly. Everything changed after that. Life split into a clear “before” and “after.” The world around me kept moving, but mine stopped. Nothing looked or felt the…

Creating Mother’s Day Traditions as a member of the Dead Mom Club

About a week after Easter this year, I noticed I was starting to feel off. My sleep wasn’t as restful, experiencing tension in my body, at times I was getting irritated with the simplest things. Then while streaming an episode of television, 4 ads back to back all talking about Mother’s Day. Then came the…

Alongside

That is also our best, and only role, when supporting a person with a developmental disability to grieve. We must be the one that comes alongside. There is no closer place we can get to. We must be present, be with, perhaps not understanding or comprehending what the person we support is experiencing, but alongside them nonetheless. We must be there, ready to provide whatever we can discover of their unique need in grief.

The First Fathers’ Day Without Dad

When you lose a person in the generation before you, you begin to think about what they meant to you. When you lose a parent, you think about all they meant, and you hoped you either lived up to the best of yourself, or in some cases where the parenting was not as instructive or kind, you hope you’ve raised yourself beyond difficult circumstances.

Grief Literacy and Developmental Disability

Grief literacy has become a popular topic, yet it is a topic that is untapped within the disability community, specifically within the developmental sector. The sector supports and empowers people with a developmental disability and consists of families, their loved ones and service providers.

Finding Joy During the Holidays After Loss When Everything Feels Awful: A message of hope.

My mother died in the middle of the night on January 1, four days before I turned sixteen. I don’t remember much about Christmas the couple weeks before she died, just that we spent a lot of that season in the ICU of the hospital where my mother had birthed my brother and I. For…

Collective Grief

When the death of a person affects many members in a community, city, country, or across the world, people will experience collective grief.

These are some things that can help people through the experience of collective grief across a community.

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.