Presented by: Faith Halverson-Ramos, LPC-S, ADDC, MT-BC

A substantial number of youth in the US have experienced the death of a family member or friend. Studies suggest that music plays a significant role in supporting the grieving process of those who are bereaved. Music is also known to play a significant role in the lives of adolescents, where it can serve as a means for self-expression, mood regulation, and the development of a sense of identity that brings with it a sense of belonging. Music can evoke, invoke, and provoke, and because of this, it is important to be able to understand how music can help youth who are grieving, while also recognizing ways that it can harm, depending on their individual background and experiences. This presentation will provide you with interactive musical experiences that you can modify within your scope of practice to incorporate into your work with youth who are grieving.

Presented by: Karen Anderson Fignon, ATR-BC, LCAT 

Artful Minds: Navigating Grief through Creativity is a program where participants learn about using art as a therapeutic tool to support physical and mental health with their clients. The creation of art allows one to gently peel back the layers of one’s grief, providing respite, support, meaning, and hope.

In this workshop, you will choose a stick and adorn it using textiles, beads, and other materials to reflect meaningful symbols using color, texture, and objects. A journey stick is a symbolic object to help process events and emotions in one’s life with the opportunity to express hope in the future.

During the workshop, we will discuss how to weave the journey stick and other art projects into the grief work you are providing your clients. What benefits and cautions to be aware of when using art are, what type of mediums to use, and questions to ask when making the artwork.

Presented by: Adam D-F. Stevens, MA, RDT & Opher Shamir, MA, LCAT, RDT

Loss is hard to talk about, especially for children and adolescents. Puppets are a fun, creative, and engaging tool that can help connect youth with their narratives of grief and loss. The aesthetic distance puppets offer makes it more approachable and accessible to process and interpret our bereavement stories. In this workshop, drama therapists will facilitate a short group process of puppet enactments building on the topic of collective grief, present research background, and share examples from past projects. This workshop is experiential in nature and will offer the participants the opportunity to practice with puppets. An intersectional identity lens will be used to provide space for diverse grief narratives, especially those from marginalized communities.