Collective/Community Grief

Grief & Drug Poisoning Toolkit [Free Downloadable PDF]

  Navigating life, death, and loss can be overwhelming. This toolkit is designed by mental health professionals and contains information about grief, different types of grief we may experience, gentle reminders on how to move through grief, as well as tips for those who may be supporting someone in their life who is grieving. This…

Kim – Facebook and connecting

Kim – discussses our need to connect and how Facebook was useful after her Mum’s death

Kristal – Professional Experience and Work

Kristal discusses being a peer support woker, working on a one on one level with community members to help them with their goals related to substance abuse. She supports those in the community dealing with loss and grief. She speaks to everyone’s experience with loss and grief being very individual.

Nicole – Pandemic Leads to Increase in Drug Poisoning

Nicole discusses the increase in drug poisonings during the pandemic due to a number of factors.

Michele – Normalizing conversations around death dying grief and loss

Michele discusses grief literacy, the importance of talking and that dying is a part of life

Thoughts on International Overdose Awareness Day 2023

We lead multifaceted lives, and the deaths of those we love who have died by drug poisoning contain multitudes. The death of a loved one can bring intense grief, shock, anger, shame, or guilt. People who use drugs, and those who love them that they leave behind, face stigma in North America’s dominant, settler culture.

Antoinetta – Grieving in community with others

Antoinetta discusses how grief camp made her feel so much more happy and how she found support and that she did not feel so alone

Christian – “Remembering together in a meaningful way”

Christian discusses the power of memories.

Christian – Language around those pushed to the margins

Christian talks about how people who are pushed to the margins are not discussed as part of our community and how we need to include them. As a community how do we care for our neighbours and how do we mourn the loss of our neighbours

Sarah K – Supporting someone in grief

Sarah gives her thoughts on how many things there are you can domto support someone in grief and how to be proactive

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…

Nicole – Advice for Other Professionals Managing Grief

Nicole discusses dealing with repeated loss while working in community outreach, not being afraid to be human.