ABODE Academy 6 is all about grief – how we can plan and prepare for it and how we move through it – whether it be our sadness for the loss of our loved ones or our loved ones’ sadness for, well, the loss of us!

Join us for five complimentary sessions (via Zoom) on this basic human emotion and ways we can make the most of our grief.

Please RSVP for any or all of these five sweet (and free) programs, in partnership with Willow EOL Education & Planning. If you’d like to make a tax-deductible gift to ABODE, please use our DONATE button.

Have you ever started to talk about some aspect of end-of-life planning with someone and got shut down? Or maybe you’ve been wanting to talk about it, but you’re lost on how to even broach the topic? Perhaps you have ideas in your mind about how your family and friends are going to react, and it’s just too uncomfortable to go there.

Many of us understand the importance of preparing for our someday, one-day, inevitable death while you’re still healthy enough to do that. But talking about death in a death-phobic and death-denying culture can be a challenge. The thought of grieving our losses can be far too overwhelming. Yet, the more we talk about it, the more smoothly our grief process will go.

Whether you’re thinking about your own end-of-life planning or you want to facilitate plans for someone else, let’s get the conversation started!

In this workshop you will:

• Articulate your core values and how they impact your living and dying.
• Get present to your hopes and fears around your inevitable death.
• Gain some clarity about who and what matter most.

Either consciously or unconsciously, our past informs our present. Our previous experiences with illness, dying, death, grief and how someone was cared for after they died – including any planning that was or wasn’t in place – have undoubtedly shaped our personal desires and informed our sense of what’s possible and what’s not.

We all have hopes and fears about what might happen (to us and/or the people we leave behind) in the time leading up to our death, at the moment of our death – and the grief that comes after we die.

Based on three tools from Willow’s holistic and pragmatic workbook, 7 Tools for Making Sense of Life & Death, Conscious Health, Personal Care and Final Wishes will ensure that our choices around end-of-life planning reflect our values and priorities. Whether we have days or decades to live, thinking about and preparing for our death will change how we die and inspire us to live our best life now.

In this workshop you will:

• Learn how past experiences with death and dying can shape your own end-of-life plans.
• Discover what is most important to us regarding our health and personal care wishes.

Grief is the problem. Grieving is the solution. In this fireside chat, Peg Armstrong takes a very real and honest look at the grieving process and how some cultures are far more comfortable understanding and working through their grief than others. Shock, anger, tears, depression – these are normal responses to pain and loss. Until we explore, talk about and really feel our pain, healing will be out of reach.

Peg Armstrong, ME, LPC, Psychotherapist, has a 40-year practice specializing in grief and bereavement counseling, propelled by an early personal tragedy. Coping with loss also is a major theme in her academic research, training and teaching, her work with psychotherapy clients and in her spiritual practices.

Peg studied psychology and philosophy with Viktor Frankl in Vienna. Other highlights in her training include a workshop by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and working with Mother Teresa in India. Her book “I-Openers” is now in its third printing, and she regularly participates in videos and Zoom sessions on dealing with grief and loss. An original board member of ABODE, Peg also offers workshops and seminars nationally.

Dr. Jeffrey M. Benzick, Adult and Sport Psychiatry, will discuss grief and the challenges of processing losses of different kinds. He’ll explain the biological mechanisms of grief, including how neural circuits for emotional and factual memory combine with those for love and attachment to create feelings of absence and yearning. And he’ll discuss how grief is distinct from depression, yet why they can feel so similar.

Jeffrey M. Benzick MD has been a psychiatrist in private practice since 2004 and is currently a consultant psychiatrist to the San Antonio Spurs. He is a former United States Air Force Flight Surgeon/Psychiatrist, and a graduate of the Baylor College of Medicine and of Texas A&M University, 1992, summa cum laude. Jeff is also a regular ABODE volunteer, inspired by the loss of his dear friend Tom, whom we were honored to care for in 2022.