EOLPodcast

Ep. 553 Compassionate Schools: Education on Illness, Dying, and Grief for Children with Dr. Sally Paul and Bert Quintiens

Learn how the Compassionate Schools model can foster better support for children and young people experiencing grief, illness and loss..

About the guests:

My guests Dr. Sally Paul and Bert Quintiens have developed a how-to guide for Compassionate Schools that we discuss in today’s conversation. Sally is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland where she teaches and researches in the areas of bereavement, death education, and public health approaches to palliative care. Bert is a researcher at the End-of-Life Care Research Group at Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Belgium. He focuses on Compassionate Communities and Compassionate Cities and how initiatives like Compassionate Schools can help normalize conversations about death and caregiving. Get the Compassionate Schools How to Guide at the link below:

Compassionate Schools How-To Guide

Watch on YouTube

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In this episode:

  • What is a Compassionate School
  • Why is it important for schools to address the existence of death and grief for students and staff
  • Children can cope with difficult situations when given age-appropriate information
  • Why culture change can happen faster with a “bottom up” approach
  • How each compassionate school is unique and meets the particular needs of a community
  • Tips for introducing Compassionate Schools to your community
  • Obstacles and resistance to this work
  • Why it’s important to start with small goals like placing books on death and grief in the school library
  • How to support teachers in having conversations with grieving children

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Transcript:

EOLPodcast

Ep. 375 Touching Two Worlds: Finding Hope After Loss with Sherry Walling PhD

Learn how our grief touches the two worlds of sorrow and joy and how we can navigate these turbulent times.

My guest Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, author and mental health advocate. She helps entrepreneurs and leaders navigate transition, loss, and complex human experience. Sherry is the author of Touching Two Worlds: A Guide for Finding Hope in the Landscape of Loss, a poetic exploration of grief informed by two very personal losses in her own life. She discusses the presence of both sorrow and joy within grief and how her own life has been reshaped by the grief she has experienced. Learn more at her websites:

www.sherrywalling.com

www.touchingtwoworlds.com

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This episode includes:

  • What inspired Sherry to write this book
  • The experience of compound grief and “death by heartbreak”
  • The “two worlds” of grief
  • How grief changes us and why it’s important
  • How Sherry’s two grief experiences differed – after cancer and after suicide
  • The guilt experienced by medical professionals when a loved one dies
  • Coping with a suicide death
  • Parenting children while going through grief and teaching them about loss
  • How various forms of movement can help us with grief
  • The art of crying on airplanes
  • Grief requires us to rewrite our assumptions about the world

Links mentioned in this episode:

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If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, and to Marsha for buying me a coffee! Your contributions make all the difference.