Being with Grief is a full-day gathering designed for anyone who accompanies others through grief: hospice volunteers and staff, family caregivers, chaplains, Interfaith ministers, medical care providers, and more...
Keynote speaker Koshin Paley Ellison Sensei draws on Zen principles to share a contemplative approach that invites participants to the practice of staying present, showing up fully wherever we are – at the bedside in a hospital or with a loved one at dinner.
A panel discussion and interactive breakout sessions provide opportunities for creative exploration of grief, small group discussions tailored to specific experiences of loss, and practices for personal reflection and professional care. Through writing, movement, ritual, or conversation, these sessions provide space to process and honor grief in its many forms.
With support from the Maine Community Foundation’s Hospice Fund and St. Joseph’s College, the event ensures accessibility with a sliding-scale registration fee, inclusive of meals.
This workshop is an invitation to sit with grief, learn from it, and find connection in shared experience.
Schedule of Events
Comfort in the Midst of Discomfort: Grounded, Soft, Upright, Open
Koshin Paley Ellison Sensei
Breakout Sessions
Bones and Seeds, Susannah Crolius
Writing to Heal, Catharine H. Murray
Braiding the Past and Present: Navigating Unfinished Business in Grief
Steven Karaiskos
Yoga for Your Grieving Heart, Susannah SanFillippo
Circle Conversations, Rev. Angie Arndt and Rev Craig Werth
Lunch Conversation Tables
Maine Death with Dignity provides services, fact-based education, and end-of-life advocacy to people who wish to actively explore the meaning of life through embracing the certainty of death. A primary program of Maine Death with Dignity is connecting people to the information they need to make fully-informed decisions regarding all their end-of-life care options, and to support patients and providers through the entire process as needed. Table Host: Rev. Val Beebe-Lovelace
Voluntary Stopping Eating & Drinking (VSED) is when a mentally capable individual decides to control their own dying by making a conscious decision to refuse foods and fluids of any kind, including artificial nutrition and/or hydration, in order to advance the time of their death. Table Host:. Priscilla Platt
At Hospice of Southern Maine, we believe in doing everything we can to provide the highest quality of care for our patients. Hospice care focuses on the individual at the end of life, and their family. Hospice provides individualized care and support for people with a life expectancy of 6 months or less (if the illness runs its natural course). Table Host: Rev. Larry Greer
The Center for Grieving Children is a nonprofit organization that provides a safe space, loving peer support, outreach, and education to grieving children, teens, young adults, families, and the community. Services are offered at no cost in Portland, Sanford, and virtually, and are led by our dedicated and highly trained staff and volunteers thanks to the generous support of our wider community. Table Hosts: Kristin Lash, MSW – Grief Services & Volunteer Coordinator Jamie Schwellenbach, LCPC, DMT – Grief Services Manager & TLC Coordinator
Visit the Relic-Query Installation (Susannah Crolius)
Historically, reliquaries were highly ornate containers for all manner of dead, holy things, often the actual bones, body parts or sacred objects of holy or martyred persons. While most prominent in medieval Catholicism, every religious expression has some form of containing and revering sacred objects.
This portable installation is a different take on the traditional reliquary. It is a contemporary, contemplative, personal interactive refuge for reflecting on and unbinding your dry bones, the places that feel diminished, dusty, tired, frightened, dead in your heart, your body, your spiritual or faith life.
