Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
A conversation with Myra Sack about her new memoir – Fifty Seven Fridays – about her experience following her daughter havi’s diagnosis with infantile tay-sachs and the fifty-seven Shabirthdays that followed until her death. It is filled with so much learning and reflection about grief – how to lean into it, hold it, invite others to share it with us, grieve in community, grieve in motion. Myra’s journey from grieving mother to grief educator has been a marvel to observe personally and is a gift to the rest of the world.
Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
Grief whether anticipatory or in bereavement is a shared experience for the family and yet each member will likely experience and process grief in different ways, over different periods of time and with varied physical and emotional manifestations. Parents often wonder or worry will I have the capacity to support my other children in their grief as I navigate my own? Or will my marriage or partner relationship change or suffer if we grieve in different ways? Others may struggle with extended family members whose response to the loss differs from their own. Friends and co-workers initially understanding and supportive in the early days often seem to lose patience as time passes. Keeping relationships healthy and strong is hard work, especially in bereavement.
This session was led by Taryn Schuelke, CT, CCLS, and included a panel of bereaved parents sharing their experience with grief. It covered:
- The experience of grief in relation to how others receive it
- Grieving in partnership with a spouse or partner and extended family members
- Ways to understand and support the surviving siblings
- Grief and work life
- Inviting others to hold space with you
Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
A bereaved father shares how his daughter’s death from Gaucher Type 2 has led him to hear other people’s struggles and burdens and to open up about his own. “I feel I owe it to my daughter to tell people about her, to let people know she was here. And to then help people move past it.”
Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
A bereaved parent and parent advocate and a pediatric hospital chaplain talk about how much providers care about the children and how hard it can be for them when their efforts cannot keep the children free from suffering or from death.
Theme: Bereavement: Grieving with Others: Work
A couple whose daughter has died talk about their family’s experience has shown others that they can do it do and that it can be beautiful: the peace that we have, the strength, life continuing.