Blog
Welcome to the Grief Matters blog. We intend for this space to provide an opportunity for the Grief Matters community to write, read, share, and reflect about ‘all things grief.’ At Grief Matters, we understand grief as the experience of loss. This loss could be a death (a human, an animal). It could also be the loss of something else: your health, a job, an opportunity, a future goal, or dream.
While grief can look and feel different to every individual, we live our grief within our social networks and in our communities. We feel that community matters deeply to the experience of grief. So, we invite you to share with us in order to help create more grief-attuned communities.
How does grief matter to you?
What grief matters are important to you?
Email us your ideas about how you could contribute to the Grief Matters blog. Please see our guest bloggers guidelines.
Read about the foundations of grief literacy here
Blog Post Filters
Finding Grief in Queer Places
Drawing (through) the grief of an adult sibling
How grief found Susan
Rob. Doyle. Jean Pierre. Bill. Greg.
Rob was a first for me. I had been doing volunteer work in the area of HIV/AIDS for some time but had never met someone living with HIV. Not only was he the first person whom I met who was HIV positive, he was the first person I knew to die of it.
Photo by Susan Cadell of a framed Picasso poster gifted back to Susan by Bill upon his death.
What now? The two directions of grief (and a story of a developing a podcast!)
What now?
When I was a Grief and Supportive Care Counselor for Hospice Peterborough, I heard this question hundreds of times. I heard it asked - with all the accompanying emotions – by people who were shattered by the death of someone they love. I also heard it asked by beleaguered individuals and family members after receiving a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.
Frank is missing! Thinking about grief through the experience of pet loss
Frank is missing! These bold letters screamed out at me from every third telephone pole in my neighbourhood. Frank the cat is lost! He is missing! Help find Frank! My heart broke for the worried family every time I left my house. I physically cringed each time I saw one of these signs. I cringed partly because I know how losing a pet can be devastating.
*Photo by Tuba Karabulut
Visiting the exhibit, “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery”
We wrote this blog post to share our thoughts about visiting the recent exhibit, “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery,” at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. The exhibit is originally from the Chicago Field Museum. We both found it especially impressive to have the word ‘death’ figure so prominently: the name of the exhibit was on a giant poster on the side of the museum and was widely advertised on social media.
Photo by Stephanie Levac.
We are the ‘public’ in the public health approach to grief. So, why does this matter?
Grief is having a moment. In Canada, at least.
We can thank Canadian Grief Alliance (CGA) for being an early adopter and pushing conversations about grief. CGA was formed by concerned Canadians who anticipated an avalanche of grief due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CGA lobbied successfully to get grief onto the 2023 federal budget for the first time in Canadian history. Amazing.
Photo by Timon Studler
Why I love Dan Levy’s Good Grief movie
Recently, a family member commented that there was a movie coming out that had three of my favorite things. My social media tends to be an echo chamber of my interests and so I already knew about the upcoming movie, written by and starring Dan Levy, called Good Grief. So, I said that two were grief and queerness, but I could not figure out the third.