This 75-minute webinar focuses on grief.
We have been through such grief: fires, isolation, sickness, death, murder, protests, job losses, loss of our normalcy. Grief affects our mental health, physical health, coping skills and those we are trying to help in our field. We are still grieving losses from Covid, from our childhood. We grieve losses we anticipate will be forthcoming. The norm of our culture is to push our grief away, to push through, to "get over it." We isolate, and in the past, self-medicate.
While we tuck these griefs further and further away, they aren't gone from us. As mental & behavioral health professionals, our grief requires our tending. We need to walk with our grief from time to time just as we walk with our joy. Grief tending allows us release and relief. It allows those of us working to care for the grief of others to be stronger and better able to offer our skill and attention.
Offered in collaboration with Mental Health & Addiction Association of Oregon (MHAAO).
Grief Resources and Self-Care:
If you are interested in more grief resources, the MHTTC Network has released a series of five fact sheets that cover various topics, such as defining grief, responses to grief across the lifespan, preventive strategies and protective resources for grief, cultural responsiveness, and evidence-based treatments for grief.
We recognize that for some people, attending sessions on grief can activate our own feelings and grief responses. Be sensitive to your own reactions throughout the Learning Institute. Take breaks, stretch, drink lots of water, etc. If you need more support, please contact:
Jennifer Springsteen is a writer and a teacher in Portland, Oregon. She is in her final year of seminary seeking her Masters of Divinity and is currently serving as the intern minister at Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver, Washington. She has been offering grief workshops for the past five years to writers, folx identifying as dually diagnosed, seminarians, and congregants.
