Let’s Take Action: The Wisdom of Grieving Parents
This is a digital event. You should receive information in your ticket or from the host about how to join online.
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Join Dr. Joanne Cacciatore and Joyal Mulheron – nationally-recognized champions for bereaved parents and other grievers – at the final session of this series. In this dialogue, Dr. Jo and Joyal will reflect on their experiences of grief and illuminate the power and purpose that comes with being an advocate for yourself and for others. The event culminates in peer-led breakout sessions, offering a space for shared reflection through the following guided prompts:
- Your grief has a wisdom of its own. It seeks to be expressed and witnessed. What does it want to say today?
- What is one thing you’ve been avoiding since your loss and what is one small, sweet step you can take to gently approach it?
- Think of an aspect of your grief that feels particularly heavy. What’s one tiny act of self-compassion you can offer yourself around that?
- Grief often shifts our priorities. Is there something new you’ve been curious about exploring or learning? What’s one small way you can start? (prompts courtesy of Nina Rodriguez, Grief and Light)
Dr. Joanne Cacciatore is a bereaved mother and the founder of the MISS Foundation, an international NGO that serves families whose children have died, and the Selah Carefarm, a sustainable restorative community that provides aid to anyone suffering traumatic grief. She is also a Professor and Senior Scholar in the Wrigley Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, spearheading the Graduate Certificate in Trauma and Bereavement. Her best selling book, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief, is a national award winning best seller that has helped revolutionize the way our culture thinks, and feels, about grief. She works with and counsels families from all around the world who have experienced catastrophic deaths. She served on Oprah and Prince Harry’s Mental Health Advisory Board for several years and was featured in their docuseries ‘The Me You Can’t See.” Dr. Jo, believing that current practices around food production are a social, ethical, and environmental justice issue, is a vegan and hasn’t eaten meat since 1972. She also teaches meditation, mindfulness, and compassion and ahimsa practices to students and clients from around the world.
https://www.missfoundation.org/
https://www.centerforlossandtrauma.com/
Joyal Mulheron serves as Executive Director of Evermore, dedicated to making the world a more livable place for bereaved people. She spent twenty-five years advising high-ranking politicians, including governors and The White House, and translating basic science into public policy. She has enjoyed leading significant initiatives for the National Governors Association, the National Academies of Science, and the American Cancer Society. Joyal holds a master’s in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and degrees in Biochemistry and English from Virginia Tech, as well as a minor in Chemistry. After a series of high-profile death events and the death of her daughter, Joyal founded Evermore to change policy, advance research, and improve the lives of all bereaved people.
About the Series “The Wisdom of Grieving Parents: Living with Love and Loss”
Children who lose parents are “orphans”, but there’s no universal term in English for a father, mother, or guardian who outlives their child. Perhaps it’s an indication of how catastrophic this loss truly is. Often we say “there are no words” to express condolences to bereaved parents. But in fact, there ARE words you can offer and actions you can take for those in pain.
How do we as grieving parents lean into loss when our minds tell us to avoid and protect?
How can friends and family members show up for the bereaved along their never ending grief journey?
The series will explore child loss across all ages, from infancy to adolescence to adulthood. Many of the following topics include:
- The Lifelong Impact of Child Loss, particularly how one navigates grief when children of friends and family reach milestones and celebrate life-cycle events
- Complex Relationships: Addressing the added layers of grief when the relationship was complicated or estranged
- Redefining Family, Marriage, and Self: Navigating shifting family roles, particularly those of parents and other children
- Anticipated vs. Sudden Loss: Examining the differences between anticipated and sudden child loss and their respective grieving processes
- Stigmatized Loss: Addressing the unique grief experiences related to deaths by suicide, overdose, incarceration, and other circumstances associated with societal taboos.
A full discussion of perinatal loss or infertility merits a separate series in order to provide the focus that these grief experiences deserve.
Guest speakers—storytellers, authors, artists, scholars, and grief educators and activists—will provide practical tools and support. They will guide participants in maintaining connection with children through storytelling, movement, and ritual, finding strength alone and in community, and developing healthy coping mechanisms through mindfulness, creative expression, and the creation of legacy projects. We'll also explore the potential for growth and transformation in the aftermath of loss.
About Reimagine
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together to create a more compassionate world. We support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth.
