51. How to Manage Grief and Loss with our Children

Tess Connolly LCSW talks with Michele Benyo, a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®, a parent coach, and the founder of Good Grief Parenting. Tess and Michele talk about different ways that our tween and teens experience loss and how we can cope with these moments in our parenthood journey. They discuss different kinds of grief not just when we lose someone close to us but when we are faced with other experiences such as when we move as a family and children may experience the loss of friendships and the home that they are leaving behind. 

• Tess gives an introduction to today's episode. Talking about the importance of knowing how to deal with loss and grief as a family. 
• Michele shares with us the background story about her journey and talks about what led her to creating the business she now runs helping families deal with grief and loss. 
• Tess and Michele talk about different losses that tweens and teens can go through and how we can cope with these. Michele points out that grief comes in all shapes and sizes not just when we lose someone we know close to us dies but also losses such as when we move or when things change in our life. 
• Michele talks about her own experiences and the importance of being the parent that has the conversations with our children and teaches them how to deal with grief. 
• Michelle and Tess discuss ways we can talk to our children about their losses and give us some strategies of how we have these conversations.
• Michele talks about ways that we may have been taught how to deal with grief and compares them to ways that might be more helpful in assisting our children to deal with their loss. She talks about studies that have been done more recently and how keeping conversations going about people they have lost can really benefit the grieving process. 
• Michelle talks about in the case of a parent losing a child who has siblings that we have to remember the importance of whilst we are dealing with our grief to also remember to let our children that are still with us know how much they are valued. 
• Tess and Michelle talk about the grief that we might experience as parents and how we convey and recognize these moments. Losing someone does end a life but it doesn't end a relationship. They talk about ways that we can still keep these people in our lives through conversations and still recognise their life within our lives. 
• Michelle shares with us the analogy of making lemonade and how she uses this analogy to help explain the feelings we go through when dealing with grief and loss. 
• Michelle talks about how although facing grief is an incredible loss we are at a time where we have lots of places where we can go to for help, so make sure that as parents we take the opportunity to use these resources that are available to us and learn strategies for when we are faced with these moments in our parenting journey.
• Michele is grateful for her faith that helped her through her loss. 

Follow this link to the PDF that Michele spoke about in the episode and to find out about different ways the Michelle can help you - Good Grief Parenting | Home

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