Grief Conference

Please join Moms Stop the Harm as we host a “Grief Conference - Healing After a Substance Use Related Passing” from October 26 - 28th, 2022.

Families, grief supporters and professionals are invited to attend this important conference as we speak to the immeasurable grief families are experiencing from the Toxic Drug Poisoning Crisis taking place across Canada.

Our keynote speaker is renowned author, Dr. Alan Wolfelt (Founder & Director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition). Participants can expect to participate in a variety of workshops led by well known authors and experts in the field of Bereavement support. The conference will include sessions on supporting youth who have experienced a loss related to substance use and a panel of individuals with lived experience who will share their healing journey of loss and discuss the stigma related to a loss from toxic drug poisoning. Our conference ends with an important session on self care and self compassion in grief.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

October 26, 2022

Welcome & Acknowledgement

9:00 am - 12:00 pm PST

Dr. Alan Wolfelt - “Companioning” the Mourner: Caring Versus Curing”

Session Description: This informative workshop will help us enhance your knowledge and skills related to supporting people experiencing grief and loss. Anchored in Dr. Alan Wolfelt’s “companioning” model of grief care, there will be a recognition of how grief and mourning are normal and necessary experiences that are fundamentally a journey of the heart and soul. A critical distinction between caring versus curing will be outlined. You will go away with a wealth of knowledge surrounding the transformative nature of grief.

October 27, 2022

Welcome & Acknowledgement

9:00 am - 10:30 am PST

Andrea Warnick - “Supporting Children Who Have Experienced A Loss from Substance Use”

Session Description: The death of a significant person represents one of the most powerful disruptions in all aspects of a child or youth’s emotional existence. In our often grief-illiterate and death phobic society there is no shortage of myths and misconceptions around how to best provide support to a grieving child. In this presentation Andrea will identify common challenges and barriers to supporting children who have experienced the death of someone they care about from substance use. She will also share both innovative and practical support strategies to help foster a healthy grief process in children. Stories and important messages from children, youth, and their families that illustrate “best practice” guidelines will be woven throughout.

10:30 am - 11:00 am PST

Carla Mitchell - "Supporting your Grieving Child"

Session Description: Carla believes that all children are capable of grieving and benefit from having supportive adults that can help them understand death and grief. The best way to do this is through providing the child with honest, concrete and real information they can understand. Carla will be speaking on how to support your grieving child.

11:15 am - 12:15 pm PST

Deborah Tacan - "The Indigenous Ways of Understanding and Healing"

Session Description: Indigenous Perspective of grief, unresolved grief, and compound grief continues to affect the people. I am honoured to share about my recovery journey and perspectives on Indigenous ways of understanding and healing.

October 28, 2022

Welcome & Acknowledgement

9:00 - 10:30 am PST

Panel Discussion including Leslie McBain, Andrew King, Susan Tilson, Heather Balfour and Doreen Peters

Session Description: Join this interactive panel discussion as presenters share their lived experience. From both a personal and community perspective, presenters will share the importance of reducing the stigma associated with loss related to a substance use passing and building compassionate communities to support families in their loss.

11:45 - 1:15 pm PST

Roy Ellis - “Self Care and Self Compassion in Grief”

Session Description: One of the great myths of the Western health model is that we must do our healing work alone. Gird yourself up and get to work, we are told--- you got this! Experience and research, however, shows us that this heroic ideal is a guaranteed pathway to compassion fatigue, burnout and physical illness. Caregiving, family illness and powerful losses can wear away at us. If we try to do it all alone, we can end up isolated, exhausted, sick and emotionally lost.

In fact, human beings are born to heal and grow together. Our nervous systems are hardwired to feel more safe, secure, soothed and seen when we join others in the midst of our collective struggles. Undoing the aloneness of suffering, loss and pain is the goal of this workshop.

In our time together, we will learn the essentials of co-regulation; the natural manner of calming our ragged nervous system in the presence of a caring other. To do so we will examine the brain and the autonomic nervous system and consider how emotional attachment works. Participants will be given tools to help move them from private bubbles of burden carrying, toward the shared commons of co-regulation.

We will also spend time learning about the practice of self-compassion. We may think of self-compassion as a soft, tender mindful place, but it also has a powerful protective side; it draws boundaries when we are being hurt and it turns sharply from self-diminishing internal voices. Self-compassion is the gentle giant that guards our broken hearts and nourishes us to become empowered with love. Participants will learn a few solid, basic practices that help develop a deep attentive self-care that moves us out of the shadows of shame into community.

No refunds - recordings will be available for all registrants after the event