Sasha Bella Stein Blumberg Forever 2143124

Celebrating Sasha and supporting SickKids patient and family centred interprofessional care, staff and family partnership, patient safety, palliative care and Alagille Syndrome. Thanks to family for love and visits, laid back Dr Michael Peer, Dr Jennifer Russell's tireless coordination of LFHC, GI, CCCU, Gen Surg and IGT, all the staff at Hospital for Sick Children and Max and Beatrice Wolfe Centre and final homebound team Stephen Jenkinson, Dr Russell Goldman and TCCAC.

National Meeting on Grief and Loss funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

The second Grief and Loss Meeting will be held at the The York University Psychology Clinic on Friday February 10th, 2012.

With funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research this meeting continues a cross-national and interdisciplinary conversation on grief and loss including theory, research and practice at York University in Toronto, The Graduate Center and City University of New York.

The intention is to bring together a diverse group of people across professions who normally do not talk to each other to share resources, hear and converse on community and cultural responses to grief and loss and continue a budding cross-national exchange program launched in 2011.

Preliminary Agenda:

Screening of GriefWalker and discussion with Stephen Jenkinson. Griefwalker is a National Film Board of Canada documentary featuring Stephen Jenkinson’s work with dying people. Griefwalker shows Jenkinson in teaching sessions with doctors and nurses, in counselling sessions with dying people and their families. Questions to be explored include: Where does our culture’s death phobia come from? Is there such a thing as good dying? How is it that grief could be a skill instead of an affliction? How can seeing your life’s end be the beginning of your deep love of being alive? See http://www.orphanwisdom.com

Panel on cultural and community responses to grief and loss will include talks by:

Kate Kenny from South Riverdale Community Health Centre speaking about the Grief and Loss Education and Action Project focusing on women’s experiences of grief and loss following custody loss.

Lynn Lavallee from Ryerson University speaking on the Normalization of Death and Dying: A Story of the Generational Impacts of a Métis Family.

Mary Ellen Macdonald from McGill University speaking on Grief Online: How virtual memorialization may be changing concepts of childhood death and parental bereavement.

Registration costs $30. Spaces are limited and people will be enrolled on a first come first serve basis. You must register in advance in order to attend the meeting. RSVP to griefandlossproject AT gmail.com