About: Chou Hallegra discusses ways that grief and loss impact caregivers of young children with intellectual and developmental disabilities and how we can nurture ourselves as we navigate such challenging emotions. Recorded November 2024.
Presented by: Chou Hallegra, Project Manager at Vision for Equality
STACY PHILLIPS: So welcome, everyone, in person and online. Thank you so much for being here for our Families First session today. Families First is a Philadelphia inter-agency coordinating council activity funded by the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services, or DBHIDS , and Elwyn Early Learning Services.
My name is Stacy Phillips. I should have said that. I am a project coordinator at the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. I manage our family leadership programs, which include today's session, Families First, as well as our C2P2 session. Our program discussion, as I mentioned, is being recorded. You can use the Raise Hand feature on Zoom if you would like. People in the room, if you would like to ask a question, feel free to raise a hand. The microphone is on and has a camera. And it will follow you. So people online can see who's sharing.
Today, I have the great pleasure of introducing my friend, Chou Hallegra. She is a program manager for Vision for Equality. She specializes in trauma work and is a well-being and belonging consultant, providing mental health and diversity consultations to families. Additionally, she is an author, a mom, and a person with lived experience. So I appreciate you being here today. And also, want to let you know at the end of the session, there will be a lot of time for Q&A. And we will turn the recording off prior to that as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Chou. Thank you for being here.
CHOU HALLEGRA: Hello, everyone. Cut my sound off here so I can hear myself. Thank you all for being here. I'm excited about this. So we'll be talking about grief and loss. And I know the title says "young families." I don't know about you. My oldest is 18 and I still want to be a young family. So although I might share some specific examples of how grief hits us when we first hear that diagnosis, when maybe a loved one is just being born, or just coming into a family. But I also acknowledge that grief happens throughout the caregiving journey. So here, we all consider young families. And I want to stay young, right? So-- should get this.
So Stacy already shared about who I am. And I just wanted to share that this work, for me, is not just work. I'll put it that way. But because I identify as a person with disability myself and I have family members, children, who are also impacted with developmental disabilities and long myriad of list of diagnoses. So this is our lives. This is-- as [INAUDIBLE] I bring education and training and all of that. But when I'm doing this work, for me, it's connecting with people like myself, for families like my own. And it's having conversation, if you want, among friends who gets it. Right? And we probably all have experienced times where we might feel the weight of caregiving. And we might have people around us who care about us, who support it. But because they're not living that shared experience, they can't relate.
But here in the room, and whether you're online or physically there, I just want to say that I get it. I walk this life, this journey, just like everyone else. So sometimes it gets emotional. We're going to be talking about some things that are personal. And, like Stacy said, when we're going to be discussing questions or when you'll be asking questions or having group discussions, we're going to stop the recording. But please, please only share what you're comfortable sharing.
This space is safe. We want to make it a safe and also create a brave space where we can be vulnerable and support one another. But this is not meant to, quote unquote, "replace" professional support that we might all need. Right? So know that you're among peers who understand, and you're not alone as we go through this.
So briefly, before I get into our topic of grief and loss, I want to just introduce who I am, introduce now what we do through the program that I oversee at Vision for Equality. So the Philly Family Support Project is the department, if you want, that I am part of at Vision. Vision does a lot of great work, been in existence for three decades now, supporting families in Philly, in PA, and beyond.
And so this program that the department, if you want, going to have three projects underneath it. And the first project is System Navigation, where we connect with families and help them do just that, navigate systems of care, whether it's education, whether it's health care. It's getting support in the home. Sometimes it's equipment. How to get a ramp, for example. How to even find community resources, play dates, or events in the community that are accessible, that are welcoming for families like ours.
So with this program, we want to make sure that families aren't, one, that isolated, where we feel connected and supported. And the beauty of all the projects I'm going to mention here quickly are all led by peers. So all of us on staff are family members. All of us are caregivers. All of us live this life. The next project is what we call the Trauma-Informed Care project. Under this, we have trainings that we do, so a lot of workshops that we do also virtually. And I'll share, at the end, some of those that we have scheduled for November.
But we call the Caregiver Stress series. So we talk about different topics that can be stressors for families and then how we can take care of ourselves during those times. Also, we share resources related to those stressors that can help us address those stressors. And here are just some topics. We did sibling dynamics, finding yourself again, time management, and so forth.
But through that program, we also help families when there is a need for professional, clinical support for mental health. We also connect families to providers. And through the grant, we have some funding. It's first come, first serve. But there's some funding there that we can cover up to three sessions for families. And we know that that's not enough for all of us as caregivers, right? We need more than three sessions.
But what we know, what we notice is that, often when we call for therapy in the community, there's often long waits, right? So this kind of bridges that gap. While we might connect the family with a long-term provider, we don't want them to be waiting with no support. So we have a partnership with a provider in the community that prioritizes our families. So when we reach out to them, like we have family needs who need support, usually within a week or two at the most, families have the first session. And so we cover, again, up to three sessions to allow farmers to get support while they're waiting for long-term care.
And we also have a support group that creates that safe place for us to all come and share about our joys and challenges as caregivers. But we leave there with more actionable tools, not just what we're going through. Then, how can I deal with this? Well, how can I take care of myself when there's so much that's out of my control? So we do learn things, like journaling, meditation, and so much more that-- again, I'll share some dates of our future support groups.
And then we also have the peer-to-peer support, where if a family member is a caregiver is having a hard time, they can just call. They can email and know that someone at the other end of the message or the call gets it, and can provide a listening ear. And then the last project is targeting families with young children. So this project combines a System Navigation project and the Trauma-Informed Care project. But it's tailored to families who have children between the ages of 0 and 5.
So it's all the same things that we provide. But we also realize that, at those young ages, the needs are often greater in the sense where many families are just starting, quote unquote, "caregiving journey." And so we meet them right there in the beginning, and help them to start connecting with resources, and stop presuming competence, start having hope for the loved one, and provide a safe place to process some of the things that we'll be actually talking about here today.
Our programs. So the three projects I mentioned are funded by kids as well. So with that, I'll share that so that if you need support there. So all our services are free for families. And we work around your schedule. It's not just a 9:00 to 5:00. We meet with families in the evening evenings and weekends and we also even provide support groups and support groups and workshops evenings and weekends as well.
So for today, we're going to be talking about grief. And then we'll start what is grief, and look at stages of grief, then those different types of grief, and then healthy ways to cope. I'm very intentional about giving all of us tools. So as we share here, I'm going to pause for a second. If anything we say-- because we all experience life differently. And some of us might be OK for the presentation. Some of us might be like, oh, that hits home for me.
If you need a moment, please allow yourself, give yourself that moment. We totally understand. If you need to get up and go outside, take a deep breath, take a glass of water, stuff, tune me out for five minutes, that is A-OK. We want you to take care of yourself.
All right, so when you hear grief-- I'm just curious-- how do you define it? What comes to mind? If you're online, you can put in the chat. If you're in the room, feel free to-- I guess we can erase it, so we know who's speaking next. And let's start with a conversation here.
Got emotional response to loss. Yeah. Sadness. Loss. Yeah. All very accurate. Thank you, friends. Numbness, disbelief, disconnecting, yeah. Yeah. Depression, yep. That can be part of it. Thank you. Anyone in the room wants to chime in, add anything that was not said yet?
It's all about the love you have for someone, but they are gone. Yeah. Sometimes we forget that grief is love. Thanks for sharing that, Jen.
STACY PHILLIPS: Love with nowhere to go. Love with nowhere to go.
CHOU HALLEGRA: Wow. Wow. That's powerful. Thank you.
STACY PHILLIPS: I'd also like to add-- this is Stacy-- that sometimes grief is a loss of an idea or an ideal. So it's not necessarily mourning someone who's not here with us anymore. But there's definitely times where I feel like I have grieved because I thought something would be different. And I'm grieving the idea of, not just a person, but a situation.
CHOU HALLEGRA: Yes. Yeah, so true. And we're going to touch on that. And I think Lisa had even said that it's missing someone important in your life. It can be someone, something, an experience, even. Yeah. Ooh, I like this word "unpredictable" pain to loss. Yeah, complex and hard to explain. Exactly. Sometimes we don't have words to explain it. But we feel it's so hard, and it's so heavy. So something where just my heart is heavy. I can't tell you how much or even find the words to explain it.
Thank you, friends. Yeah, anyone else before we move to the next slide here? Got to make sure I'm not missing anyone. And, just disclaimer, I love conversation. So you're going to find out I'm going to stop multiple times during our time together to give you permission to engage. But again, it's not required. So feel free to chime in and join when you're invited as you're comfortable doing so.
All right, so I pulled out just a few definitions from a dictionary to medical, to general health, and then to mental health, per se, and different ways that we can explain grief. And everything that was said there, before we get to this slide, are all accurate. I totally agree with that. So Oxford Dictionary calls grief "deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death."
So that's kind of what we're talking about earlier. Many of us talked about that, someone no longer being here. And I like when Mayo Clinic said it's this "strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion." I think the keyword there is "overwhelming." Right? Grief hits you sometimes out of nowhere. Regardless, whether it's "sadness stems from the loss of a loved one or from a terminal diagnosis they are someone they love having have received." So back to what Stacy was saying about grieving an idea, an ideal, even. [INAUDIBLE] right?
I often say many of us didn't expect a loved one to have the diagnosis that they do or ourselves, even. And so sometimes hearing that diagnosis for the first time, it's like, whew, we have that shock. And like, this can be happen. Everything was fine during the pregnancy, right? And we're kind of surprised. And that also is a legit loss, right? The things we had hoped and think for a loved one maybe are not the ones that now we're thinking about.
And that's why it's good to be talking about this and still be connecting with others who gets it, but also who are here to remind you that you can still presume competence. You can still dream big. And there's still opportunities and time and resources to help your loved one have a full life. And then Psychology Today explains grief as this "acute pain that accompanies loss." And we'll talk about loss and grief in a little bit. Because sometime I've done it too, where we use both words to mean the same thing.
But usually loss happens, and then grief is a reaction to the loss. We lose something, someone, some idea, some experience, some goal. And then now we're grieving it. So the bottom there is how, combining all the things you've shared, all the things that I've shared here on this slide, I see grief as this natural response to loss. It's natural.
And I think we live in a society-- and this is general, not just Philly or PA or in US, even. I think it's a more of a global thing where, as human, we're so often critical of ourselves. And we don't always allow ourselves-- and this is in general for everyone or society in general-- to feel all the feelings. And sometimes we start naming the feelings as good or bad. And, to be honest, there's no bad feelings, per se, because, if you think about it, emotions are just a response to what's happening internally.
If it's 2 degrees outside, I put my hand outside. My fingers are going to be cold, right? That's a natural response to the temperature. So those things that we're feeling inside are just natural response to what we're dealing with. And if we see it that way, then maybe we won't be so hard on ourselves. Like, I shouldn't feel this way. It's been 5, 10 years. I need to move on now. Life will go on. Well, yes, but also, no, right? It's OK to feel that. And someone said earlier, it's love that has nowhere to go. And that grief actually is an expression of love.
So when we lose something, the natural response is grief. And sometime it's not always one way for all of us. And sometimes, in one person, it will look different in different ways. So we'll look at some physical symptoms. Sometimes you get emotional. People think, well, you're grieving. You're going to cry. I've had times where I'm grieving, and there's no tears coming. And I've have friends, and I've met people where they're grieving. They're just hard to focus, right?
We had a friend on our team who, after losing a family member-- and she didn't expect this. She's like, I'm fine to come back to work. And she physically felt OK. Emotionally, she was managing well, but it seemed like I had this brain fog out of nowhere. That was her body's response to [INAUDIBLE] as well. And sometimes it's spiritual, sometimes it's more. So we'll look more at those.
And here is just a list of a few ways that grief can impact us. And as I'm sharing this, feel free, if you're online in the chat, I'll encourage you maybe if any of these resonate with you when you experience any type of grief, feel free to put it in the chat. But we're also going to open it in a little bit of time here for discussion in a couple slides or so. But sometimes grief will impact our appetite.
Sometimes we'll feel like, oh, I'm eating more than usual, I'm eating a little less. So again, it depends on the person. Same thing with sleep, some of us might be sleeping more because just life just feels too much. And some of us are like, I can't sleep. Because every time I shut my eye, my brain continues to go on and on and on and on thinking about what happened, what I lost, and it's hard to rest my mind.
And then our mood can also fluctuate. Energy level is another one where for some, it's like they have fatigue where I'm just so tired I need to rest. But I've also seen friends who, when they're grieving, they're like the Energizer bunny. It's like they're cooking. They might have baked 10 pies in one week, it looks like. They're offering meals and rice to everyone because they just have this energy that needs to get out.
But sometimes it's also the way of keeping busy so that they don't have "downtime" quote/unquote, to think too much about what's happening. All of those ways are legit. It's OK to feel all of those things. It's OK to also have the mood going from, sometimes we're teary, sometimes it's anger. Sometime maybe I'm just a little sad, sometimes I'm lonely. It's OK. All of us will experience grief differently.
And you can experience all the different swings, if you want, up and down and all around in the same day. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, again, your body responding to the loss. And that is totally healthy. And sometimes, I mentioned about not being able to focus, struggling with attention there. But there's also times where it's still impacting the social interactions. Like, well, when I'm around people, maybe it was the place that I used to work at.
Or maybe those are friends that I worked with and then I lost that job. So although I like those friends, by being around them, it reminds me that I lost the job and that I'm going to pull away per se. Or I'll go and I'll connect with them and meet with them, but I'm not able to connect because there's that reminder, that frequent, constant reminder of what has happened to me. Although I'm not mad at them, but emotionally, I'm impacted when I'm in their presence.
And some of us might struggle with things of personal care, things that we used to do. Maybe you were the type, when you woke up in the morning, you take care of your hair and you brush your teeth, you shower, and you're up, ready for the day, even if you have nowhere to go. And then now you're like, I don't want to get out of bed.
I want to be in my PJs all day, which by the way, full disclosure, if I don't have to go anywhere, grief or no grief, I love being comfortable. So there's nothing wrong with that. But if there's changes in how you're taking care of yourself after a loss, that might be a response to the loss. It might be just ways that grief is impacting you.
And then we look, personal interests also can be impacted, where maybe I used to love to crochet, to paint, and now I don't have interest in that. Work takes too much energy, even to go there. Planning things for the next day, the next month, it's like, I can't. There's just too much. I can't get involved in all of that.
And if that's happening after a loss, that could be definitely grief. And we talked about, mentioned how sometimes it's hard to focus. But also when there's grief, there are times people can get to a place where they're still feeling hopeless. And then it takes them into this deep depression. Sometimes it's not even wanting to be there because they want to be with the person who's no longer there-- an example.
Or the loss was so great, whether it's their job or it's a business, whether it was an experience they were looking forward to, and now they're like, well, life will never be the same. I don't want to live this life that I don't know what it's going to look like. And if anybody is in that situation, please, please, please, please, 988 is our free hotline that you can reach out for support if you're feeling you need that.
And sometimes, also I mentioned grief impacting us spiritually. It's not specific to one faith per se. But sometimes people, because of their grief, because the loss is so great, they're like, how come whichever higher power they believe in didn't stop this from happening? So there's that anger that comes in, too. And those again, very, very legit, very valid.
And we talked about isolating from friends. But also sometimes there's the lack of trust that comes. And I've also seen when it's death, grieving someone who died, sometimes we become fearful of losing other friends, other family members. We become very hyper vigilant, very protective of those we still have. And people are like, oh my goodness, they became a little bit controlling. But they might not be seeing it from your perspective where that's just your way of trying to keep them close enough so that you don't lose one more person.
So all those things are very, very legit. And like I say, it can be one, it can be all, it can be others. And so if there's something here that I've missed, and you're like, yeah, this is how maybe grief had impacted me, feel free to share. And I'll pause here and catch up on the chat. Yeah, someone said there's sorrow without the tears. Yeah, you can be very sad and no tears come out. It doesn't mean that you're not grieving, just grieving differently.
Yeah, something was supposed to be one way, and then it's different. Yeah, and sometimes those type of griefs where it's an expectation that was not met, others might dismiss it and think like, that was nothing. But maybe for you was a big thing, right? It was something that was so important to you that that thing that happening or happening in a different way impacts you that you feel that loss in a great way. Yeah.
There we go. So someone mentioned depression when we're talking about grief. Because sometimes that depression does show up with grief. But there's a little bit of a distinction. I just wanted to touch on that a little bit here. So when we have grief, usually there's a loss we can identify-- we lost a thing, a person, and an experience. But when we have depression, there's maybe not a specific loss. And sometimes it's just we have this feeling of sadness, but it's not because we lost something.
And when someone is grieving, they're often focusing on the loss, whatever the loss that created the grief. When someone is depressed, the focus is often on themselves, not in a bad way. I'm not saying that, oh, they're all self-centered, no. The depression often looks inwardly. It's like something is going on with me. I could be doing better. But it's very self-focused, but not in an intentional way, if that makes sense. People, when we go for depression, we start feeling bad about ourselves, not necessarily about the loss like it is the example with grief.
And with grief also, often your ability to feel joy, to feel pleasure, to feel calm will fluctuate. Sometimes people will say, well, I was fine this morning. I got to work, and I realized it was 10 o'clock. That's the time they usually went to school. And then I'm like, oh, they're not going to school. They're not here. And then we can be fine watching a movie and laughing, and then the next minute it's a scent of the person's perfume that reminds us that, oh, that person's not here anymore.
Or maybe it's a commercial about something related to what you lost, whether it was the job or experience. And I remember in our family, my kids wanted this trip. And their friends went to this specific place. And they felt like, we needed to go there. And so it didn't work for our family. It wasn't where we were. And there were more things we need to prioritize.
And so every time a commercial came that reminded my kids of that place, and especially one of my children, he would just shut down. He'd say, turn the TV off, turn the TV off, turn the TV off. Well, everybody else didn't seem to notice that. Well, we're just watching TV. But for him, it was, oh, he was fine playing and watching everything else that was on TV, but something that reminded him of what he was not able to experience, that brought back that grief for him.
And usually depression, it's hard to enjoy anything, especially things we want to enjoy. It's like, I used to love golfing. I used to love going to the theater, for example. And nothing brings them joy. Often, nothing brings them joy. But with grief, we can fluctuate. There's moments of happiness, moments where it's like, ooh, I'm reminded I'm struggling.
Same thing with physical symptoms. People might be like, I feel tired, but I have moments where I'm fine. With depression, usually it starts gradually, like slowly, and then it's like, I feel more and more tired. And it goes from just maybe yawning a little more or taking a nap to now it's hard to get out of bed.
Same thing with closeness with others. When we're grieving, many of us, when we feel connected to others, it brings our comfort. When we're often depressed, it's the opposite. Like, we want to isolate, nobody nowhere. We feel we don't deserve others, although it's definitely not the truth. But when we're depressed, our mind can go there.
We talked about the joy fluctuating, so same thing. Usually with grief, you have a wide range of emotions. With depression, it's very fixed. You feel stuck in that deep sadness that you can't shake off. And when you have guilt, when you're grieving, it's usually related to an aspect of the loss. Like I feel bad that I didn't get to tell them X, Y, and Z. I feel bad I didn't get to take that trip before. I didn't have the money to do so.
So it's very specific. If there's guilt, it's very specific to the loss. When we're dealing with depression, it's generalized. Even things that we didn't do, things that have nothing to do with us, we still feeling like it's our fault. And then we have this unnecessary guilt about it. When we're grieving, usually a sense of worth or self esteem is usually preserved.
You might feel a little guilt for things that we wanted to do better before the loss occur. But we're not seeing yourself as a bad person, that we're not good enough. Those things are often not true, but very common when we're having depression. Depression has that sense that we're not worthy, again, which is not true. But when we're depressed, our minds go there.
The last one here is the thoughts of death are deeply related to wanting to reunite with the person. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes people, the loss is so great that they can't envision the life without that person. For example, like, well, I wish maybe I wasn't here so I could be with them. But it doesn't mean that they don't like life in general, but it's very specific.
When we have depression and we get to that point, usually it's kind of an all-or-nothing type of thing, right? So I like sharing this slide just because the two can coexist, but they're also different. And this note, this graphic here from Very Well Mind, actually, does a great job at that. So the two, you can have that intense malaise, which is like, I don't feel like myself. Things are just off.
And then your sleep can be disrupted. You can lose your appetite. And because you're not eating, then some of us might lose weight per se. But with depression, you have that guilt that keeps happening and it's not related to grief. You're preoccupied by the feeling of not being enough. And it's really hard to function. It's not just 5, 10 minutes or an hour a day. It's like all the time.
And then we're continually thinking about not wanting to be here. When we're grieving, we might be irritable. We might have that deep sadness. But it's hard to practice acceptance of what's happening. But we're also seeing and hearing things related to grief, to loss. So if we say things that might feel or sound off to others, it's because we're seeing it through the lenses of loss, not through the lenses of, I'm not good enough.
So we'll stop for questions there. But hopefully that kind of gives a good distinction between the two. So you can have depression while you're grieving. And you can also just have grief and not depression, where you're sad, but it's not a deep sadness that is related to depression per se.
So stages of grief-- and many of us probably have seen this and heard this. This is what we call the Kubler-Ross model. And she created, Elizabeth was her first name, she-- I think it was like 1969 maybe, so it's been around for a while-- has these five stages here that often we acknowledge are emotions that comes with grief. And so denial is often saying, well, this can't happen. I heard it, I seen it, I read it, but I can't accept this right now.
And then sometimes it's that anger. It's like, well, how can this be happening? I'm mad at something or somebody because of whatever that loss is that it actually happened. With bargaining, we're kind of going back and forth thinking, OK, maybe if I had done X, Y, and Z, this will not happen. Maybe if I was home on time, maybe-- and I can go on and on with even for those of us with loved ones with autism, there have been many theories of what caregivers could have, should have done for kids not to have autism.
Now we know that's not even true. But if you start getting wrapped up in those theories, that's kind of what bargaining looks like. If I may have done this, maybe if I did not do that, this will not happen. And then depression is also the part where it's that sadness. And sometimes I know the stage of grief talks about depression. But I like to often say that the sadness that you feel when you're grieving, it's not always necessarily clinical depression.
So it might be sadness that we lightly call depression, but it's not meeting the criteria, if you want, for clinical depression. But you might feel hopeless about your future because of what happened. And then acceptance is that time or that space, if you want, where you're still like, OK, I don't like what happened. I don't like that this loss happened. I don't like that I have to deal with life this way moving forward. But I'm choosing to try. I'm going to do my best to move on.
Often I say "moving forward." Because moving on, it's almost like I'm going to, what happened, kind of push it aside as if it didn't happen and neglect that. That's not healthy either. Acknowledging that it happened is healthy. And choosing to move forward is also healthy. The two can coexist.
And now there's also other grief experts, if you want, who now take this a step further, saying there's another stage of grief, meaning, when we start finding meaning and purpose through what has happened to us. And often that's where we start building that resilience to bounce back and move forward per se.
But those stages of grief, it's not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, where it's like, I'll check the box, no. I went through denial, so I'm fine now. And then I'm going to go through anger and then I'm going through depression. It doesn't actually work that way. You can experience all 5 at the same time. Often at the same time, the same day, your emotions can go up and down.
So people think it's this image on my left and maybe your right, that seems like I'm going to go down, but then I'll come back up and I'll be fine. No, it's a mumble-jumble mess of just what we call grief. And again, that is OK. Sometimes we spend too much energy and we don't realize it. But I've been there myself. We spend too much energy suppressing or feeling, suppressing what we're dealing with than we'll actually take to just process and acknowledge that it's there.
It doesn't mean that whatever happened, it's OK. It just means that it is. It is what it is. Some of us often say that. And that's the beauty of grief and the messiness of it all. I can be sad about it. I can be angry about it. And then one moment, I'm like, you know what? It is what it is. And that's when I'm like, this cannot be happening. Now maybe if did that, I would have changed. All of that can happen in a split second.
And it doesn't make you weaker. No, it makes you human. It makes all of us human. Maybe when you think about for our community, when we get a diagnosis, this cannot be happening. Oh my goodness, this is not what I expected for my loved one or for myself. Or that doctor is not true, I'm going to get a second opinion, which I encourage all of us, we should. That's good.
But then three or four or five second opinion, third, fourth opinion, we're like, OK, it's still that. Maybe there's something I did? I should have done something differently. We're like, OK, maybe at some point we're like, you know what? This is who my loved one is. This is who I am. I'm accepting where I am and choosing to embrace this part of our lives.
And our lifestyle's looking different than what we have hoped, but it's still nevertheless beautiful. So we're going to pause here. I already talked way too much. We're going to pause here. And I know Stacy and Jonathan, the team, will stop the recording for a bit. And I want us to think.
So I mentioned earlier, loss often happens first, and then the grief is the response to the loss. And sometimes we think of just one loss where I lost that job opportunity or I lost the dream I had of going to college, of starting a business, of learning a new skill. But even with one single quote/unquote "experience," there can be multiple losses. So when you think about those of us who are caregivers, for example, there's a loss of identity.
There's a life before we became caregivers and there's a life after caregivers. It's almost like there's an invisible line there that separates the two. And sometimes we're like, I don't know who I am anymore. And not just for caregivers, that can happen with any loss. But that loss of identity is real. And it's OK to acknowledge that, even for others who, let's say their loved ones or children are leaving the nest and they're starting their lives on their own, going to college, and all those things away from home.
There's also that loss of identity, like the empty nest syndrome that people talk about. That's a loss of identity. If we spend a lot of our time caring and supporting someone and they're no longer there, whether it's because they moved physically or because they're no longer there at all, that often leads us to start questioning who we are. Who am I outside of this person? Who am I outside of this experience?
And there's also a loss of safety, whether it's an experience, whether I keep going back to the job, per se, but there's a lot of other things that could happen that you could think, well, you're physically safe, yeah. But there's this loss, this experience actually creates-- maybe not jeopardize-- maybe that's a big word. But that's the only word that comes to mind right now-- kind of jeopardizes my emotional safety, my financial safety even.
When I was looking forward to this experience and it didn't happen, now I'm like, well, I'm going to grow up and never know what it feels like to go to the beach. And maybe others will say, well, you'll get a chance to go to the beach later on. But in this moment, for our loved ones, I think about my own children, it's like, this is where they get quote/unquote stuck per se.
But that's what they just need to process until they process and release it. But it's one experience that didn't happen. You think, well, tomorrow we can still go to the store. Well, we're not there. In their mind, they might not be there tomorrow yet, they're here. And that becomes what they need to focus on and deal with that.
But also loss of personal goals-- so if I had those dreams as, oh, maybe five years I'm going to do X, Y and Z. Well, for me, for example, that could have been, let's say, five years ago, I had limited mobility, but I was physically still able to somewhat walk. And then now I'm like, OK, now I'm in a wheelchair. So the things I wanted to do back then, I might not physically do it the way I thought I'll be doing it now.
But guess what? Like I was sharing earlier during our break, now I have to think outside of the box. What are ways, what are resources, what are opportunities and people that can support me to still reach those goals just in a different way? And the loss of independence comes a lot for many of us with disabilities, where there's things I used to do on my own. And then now my health changed and now there's less things I can do or sometimes people just assume you cannot do because they see you quote/unquote, as "disabled."
And now you're having to fight to remind them, like I still want my independence. There's still things I can do and I want to do by myself. Yeah, I remember having an aide who is very caring and her intentions were right. Her heart was the right place. But she just thought because she was worried-- I guess she didn't want to write an incident report of me falling in the bathroom-- that she thought she had to stand there after I was already positioned.
I'm like, no. You already helped me. I need my privacy. You can move. And then when I'm done, I can holler for help to transfer back to my seat, to my chair. So it's those things sometimes others don't always think about. But when you're going through the experience, I encourage you to be mindful that it's not always just one loss. There's maybe one incident, there's all those things happening.
So the last one I'm going to mention here, and then I'll go back to the idea I just mentioned, is secondary loss. Sometimes it's, I lost one thing. We became disabled right after an accident or something. Then, now I am questioning my identity. Now, my identity, it's losing who I was before. Now I also have that loss of safety because I might wonder, well, there's things that if something happened to me, am I able to defend myself like I did before?
Those goals that I had now have changed. The independence that I had is not the same. And all of those things are valid. And you're going to hear me saying that over and over again. Because if you take anything home, the way you're feeling, the grief and all the emotions that come with it are all valid. And so when you might have a loved one focusing on one part of the loss and another one processing another part of the loss and you all experience the same thing, that's OK too.
Because again, we process things differently. So we'll do another pause here again. And I'll go back to that slide. And this is not a comprehensive list, obviously. So if there are other type of loss that you experienced that you don't see there, feel free to share. But when it comes to caregiving, what type of loss has been the hardest for you to cope with?
So we did that. So loss happens, and then we grieve or that natural response to the loss. And there are, again, more types of grief than what's listed here. But these are the ones that I think are more common and I just wanted to touch on. So there's the anticipatory grief where we're grieving ahead. Sometimes it's when we know, someone, we know something is happening.
And we know something is going to happen and we're kind of already grieving the loss that will be in the future, that is that anticipatory grief. We talked about milestone too, when we're thinking, oh, at this age, other children, other people are doing X, Y and Z. And then we start going, well, I want my loved one, which is that age, I don't know what that will look like for them. That's anticipatory grief.
And then with the second one, disenfranchised grief, happens after loss that people don't see as valid. The example I put there, when someone, often I say, died by suicide, and I'm not going to open that can of worms, but because there's such a stigma around mental health, people are like, oh, they did it to themselves. They don't realize somebody was hurting to get to that point.
And sometimes, we mentioned, too, when it was maybe some experience. I'll give you an example of my own family where not being able to go to a specific place became this grief that was so big and real for one family member. And the others in the family were just moving on, just as nothing was happening. It's like, yes, we kind of grieved at that moment, we wished we could have went, but, OK, life moves on.
So if you are grieving something that others are not seeing as a real quote/unquote grief or that's not a loss that's big enough that's worth grieving, that's kind of that dismissal. It actually adds another layer of pain. Often, again, because people are not seeing your initial pain as pain, then that second layer, it's not even acknowledged either.
And abbreviated grief is when you have grief and it's short lived. Sometimes whether it's someone, because life just gets too busy, there's so many things you need to do. Like when people are planning for making all the arrangements after a family member is no longer there. And so we're busy and we're not even giving ourselves that space. And not always intentionally, sometimes because life just keeps happening.
And then we go, we jump back into our routines as they happen before, which routines are good, but sometimes when we go too quickly into what life was. We don't give ourselves to acknowledge what had happened to us. And then it starts coming out in other places. like, oh, I didn't see that coming. And I've also seen, just with the previous one that I mentioned, where you might be giving yourself the space to grieve the fact that, well, it doesn't matter that my loved ones are not 30 and 40.
We have the diagnosis of what it was, like Down syndrome or autism when they were born or when they were five or three or whatever the time frame was, and now they're in their 40s. I still want to maybe grieve that. You might still want to be grieving. People are like, well, time, now that's gone. You've been living this for a while. It's fine, just move on, right? So not only are they dismissing it, so it becomes again disenfranchised, but also then it becomes abbreviated. So they dismiss it and then kind of cut your grief short.
Chronic and complicated grief is that grief that doesn't get better. So often, when we say better, it's not acting like the grief never happened, but we learn ways to cope with it. We learn the way to support ourselves when the grief "triggers," quote/unquote, happen or things that remind us of the grief. But when we have that grief that it's still as strong as it was in the beginning and maybe to the point where it's impacting our ability to function, doing our daily in the beginning of grief, that's typical.
Things are hard. It's hard to go back to your routines per se. But if after time, and there's definitely criteria for all of that in the clinical side of things, but when that takes for so long and we're not able to start transitioning to somewhat, whatever our new quote/unquote "life" will look like, then that becomes chronic. And I really encourage, especially at that point, to do get professional support.
Absent grief is when it appears that you're not grieving. And it could be because you're busy making arrangements and so forth. Or there was an example we discussed earlier where you might have that deep sorrow, but there's no tears coming. So people might be like, oh, they're not grieving. But that's not true. It's still grief because grief will look different from one person to another and sometimes from one moment to another.
Traumatic grief is that grief that happens after traumatic events. So the loss is still there, it's real. And then what caused the loss in itself also was traumatic. And then we have that element of grief, we're grieving the loss, but we're also then kind of traumatized by what happened. Now we see the world differently. We have flashbacks about what had happened.
Not only with grief, we talked about not being able to sleep at nights. Now you're having nightmares about what had happened. That's when it shifts from just that regular grief to now traumatic grief. Again, that's also when I encourage all of us to get professional support at that time so that we can navigate those times in a healthy and better way. So we'll pause again.
Thanks. All right, so we talked a lot about what grief is, stages of grief. We looked at different types of losses, different types of grief. And now all of that's good to know. My question when I talk about things, it's like, so now what? What do we do with all that information that we just learned and all the good information we also share during our discussion.
Now, let's look at those healthy ways to cope with this. And honestly, again, this is not comprehensive. So these are just a few ways to get you started. And I've been saying all along that your grief is valid, all your feelings are valid. All that you are feeling right now are real, legit, it's OK. What I've been saying all along was my way of reminding you to give yourself permission to feel and release those emotions.
I think about emotions almost like a sponge. So imagine, if you can with me, let's say you're standing or sitting, for those of us in chairs here, in front of a sink, and then you have a sponge in your hand. The faucet is running. There's water running there. You have the sponge right there under the faucet. So water is just getting on that sponge and it gets very soggy. It's full of water.
And then from the sink, you still have that sponge in your hand with all that water. Then you go to your front door, you go to the bathroom, maybe you go to your room, what do you think will happen? That sponge will actually start dripping everywhere. So even someone who is not at your house will come and say, oh, they can actually retrace your steps, maybe not in the right direction. But they can see you were at the sink, you were at the front door, you were at your home. Because the water from that sponge will be dripping everywhere.
Our emotions are the same way. And I'll come back to that. But when I got all that water on that sponge and I took the time to squeeze the water out and wring it per se, as some of us might say, and then take that sponge, still have in my hand, now I go into the bedroom, I went to the front door, went to another room in my house, the sponge will still be there. But there will be no evidence of the water dripping everywhere.
Same thing with emotions-- if when we're feeling things deeply, we take the time to do just that, squeeze them out in healthy ways, so those strategies I'll be showing here are those kind of healthy ways to squeeze the sponge so that the water drips maybe in the sink. And now we're not leaking, if you want, our emotions on the floor or everywhere we go. And leaking emotions look like this.
Because maybe I am grieving, I'm more irritable. Now, I'm very short with my coworkers, short with my friends, my family. I'm isolating because I can't deal with people right now. And it's OK if I have to pull away to take care of myself and take the time to process and do things that refills my cup and help me endure the season, I might be able to not let my emotions impact them.
And I don't know in your life, but for most of us, often the people who are most impacted by our emotions are the ones who are the closest to us because we often feel more relaxed with them. My kids are so good at masking. They're getting better. We talk about them, teaching them all those skills too. But I remember my daughter, for so long, she was masking so well that nobody even knew she needed support.
And then she'll come home and it's just like an explosion. Like, what happened? Nothing happened at school. The teacher said you had a great day. But then you come home and I'm not even sure what piece to put back together. That's what happened. That's, again, like emotions leaking everywhere. So, yes, we're going to have moments like that. It's OK to have those safe people that we can come and do that with.
But I encourage you to give yourself permission to feel. And sometimes we're journaling. And journaling is not always writing. Some of us love to write literally with our hands or typing, but some of us maybe that's not something that's feasible for us or maybe something we just don't like to do. You can use, there's so many apps now with technology, right? Record your voice as audio journaling. That way you get your thoughts out.
Maybe it's visual. Maybe for you it's drawing, it's coloring something that just helps you get those emotions out. My youngest, we call him the artist in the house, he loves, loves, loves to draw and color. And often we say, just draw your feelings. And that sounds maybe silly, but that makes such a big difference for him. Because then he'll take a step and go and do that.
So with journaling, when you're processing, here are just some questions that helps with that. It's again, not the only way you can do it, but I've heard friends ask and say, well, I want to journal. I want to process my emotions. I'm not even sure where to begin. So these questions give you examples of where to start. It's like, what am I feeling right now? What do I miss the most? We're talking about losses, right?
Whatever the loss is, what do I miss the most about it? What hurts the most? And sometimes others, not everyone, some people might feel like they need closure when it comes to grief. So we ask ourself, do I need closure? Do I need to have it? And if I do, what will it look like?
Sometimes if we didn't get a chance to say goodbye to someone, sometime it's writing that letter. Or maybe it's drawing something that helps us do that. And maybe we write the letter. You're not going to give it to the person if they're no longer physically here, but it allows us, again, as a way to just process and release those emotions. And that's all OK.
I know people who will write letters to loved ones who have passed years ago. Because, one, the grief is so deep that that was the person-- for one, it was their grandpa-- they can talk to about anything and at any time of the day. And when life gets hard, grandpa's not there. They still writing letters and journals to Grandpa because that not only helps them process, but helps them feel safe because they have that emotional connection that they remember having with Grandpa.
So I mentioned art when I talked about my son. But it's not just painting or coloring. Now, my daughter actually does pottery now. So it could be anything that helps you release those emotions. I mentioned earlier, sometimes the words won't come, but our bodies feel it. We feel a little more tense. We feel we're not able to sleep. And so finding ways to release that tension is good.
And music, not just listening to it, for some people, it's making and creating the music itself is therapeutic to. But for those of us who are maybe not so musical, listening to it and learning it's very therapeutic, too. And I know there's therapies for all of this. And the last one, I put pet therapy. It doesn't mean that it has to be a specialized program. Because I know in our disability community we like to put programs about everything.
All these things, you can do journaling by yourself with a friend, with a loved one. And you can also do journaling with a therapist. But you don't have to be seeing a therapist in order to do journaling. Same thing with art, there is art therapy. But you can do art at home in your own space without a therapist per se. Same thing with music, music therapy is great, but you can also start at home with someone who can support you or do it with you.
So same thing, if you have a pet of your own, for some, being with one pet is very therapeutic. I know someone who they don't have a pet, but they'll go to actually volunteer at the animal shelter because they love cleaning the dogs and the cats there, walking them, petting them. That's very soothing for them.
So when they went through a period of grief, they actually just added more days on the volunteer schedule. So they're doing a little more there so they can also get their therapeutic benefit, if you want, of being around those animals. So it doesn't have to be your own pet. It can be someone else, a friend, a neighbor. Again, make sure you're safe doing it.
But my point here, these are ways that we can release emotions, allow yourself to process and feel that doesn't always require us to get, quote/unquote, "approved" for a program. That's where I'm getting at with this. We can get stuff, we buy little journals from Dollar Tree and Five Below and we use that. And now even digital journals, too, a lot of them are free that we can just download the app and do it on your phone.
So as you're giving yourself permission to feel, you don't have to wait for someone to provide the space and the resources per se. That's what I'm trying to say here. We can start on our own. And if you see your friend, your loved one struggling with grief, with any emotions, you know them best, better than I do most likely, so it's OK to start offering these things.
And obviously I mentioned, too, if it's something you realize, OK, now it's chronic, now it's traumatic, then we need to definitely reach out for professional support. We're so good as human, and again, this is general statement here, so it's not true for everyone, but often as human, we're so good at numbing our feelings because feelings do not feel good sometimes. So then we say, well, anger is bad or sadness is bad.
But they're not really bad. They might feel uncomfortable, right? So often I have to talk about feelings about emotions that are comfortable emotions and uncomfortable ones. But they're not good or bad. They're all good, actually, because that's what your body is experiencing, that's what your mind is experiencing.
And when you give yourself permission to do that, it helps you to start healing. Running away from it does not make it go away. Back to the illustration of the sponge there, we start squeezing or leaking our emotions on our relationships and everywhere else. So sometimes the only way out is through it, through feeling it, and then letting it out.
All right, I spent a lot of time on that one. And this one, you're going to have the PowerPoint. So I'm not going to do the activity per se here. But I want you to start thinking about it. And for those who are doing with us online, you can put in the chat, we'll read it later. But music could be therapeutic, we talked about.
How about creating a coping playlist? I have a playlist on my phone for when I'm working. Actually, right now as I'm presenting, there's smooth jazz going in the background. You can't hear it, but I'm hearing a little bit of it. It helps me calm down and slow down and actually create a better experience for myself. That's how I choose to support myself.
So there's a list for that. But maybe you have a list too. Like for me, I have a playlist where it's a day I don't have enough energy and things are maybe not going the way I want them to go. Then I have a Pick Me Up list, I call it, where it's more upbeat and just encouraging and gets me going. So maybe think about it. I'll read each one of these and I want you to think in your mind. And if you want to put in the chat later, we'll read it later.
Or maybe if you're at home or there present, you can write it down too, if you wish. But what's a song that gets stuck in your head over and over again? That might be a good one to add to your playlist, a song that gives you energy, like I mentioned, with my Pick Me Up list. A song that makes you feel safe-- when life is so chaotic, there's so much we can't control, sometimes we have that song, we're just like, oh, I feel like I can breathe again. I can let my guards down.
And then maybe there's a song when you get angry or annoyed, you're just like, oh, this one actually helped me get my anger out in a healthy way with nobody knowing anything about it. And maybe there's a song that reminds you of a good memory. And a song doesn't always have to be with lyrics. Sometimes I love instrumental music. And I love nature sounds. So sometimes I just have sounds of the beach, like when the waves crashing, I love that. It reminds me of when we go to the beach. It's a good memory for me.
So here are just a few lists you're going to have actually. My team, we were just brainstorming and then people start putting their songs. So these are not all my songs per se, but it was nice to see how as a team, we came up with songs that meant a lot to us that helped us in some of the ways that I just mentioned. So if any of these are songs that you know and enjoy, feel free to steal them if you want and add them to your own playlist.
But with feeling, there's also that need to remember. Often people feel like, well, if I do X, Y, and Z, I'm going to think about what happened then and experience didn't have, the dream that didn't come true, or the person that I lost. And then we literally dissociate, if you want, pull away from everything we once knew as it had never happened, as it was never part of our lives.
And sometimes for some of us, maybe like, I need to do that for this period of time where the grief is so real, so deep, until I get a little stronger, that's OK. But living as if your past never existed for a long time is also not healthy. So eventually it's good to come back and remember some of those old rituals. So if it's someone who's not here, maybe it's a friend.
I've seen this, too. People will talk about a friend that we were in the same program for so many years, and then they moved. Or we did elementary school, middle school, high school together, and then the bus stopped coming. So now we don't even know what they're doing. We're both 21 or now 22. And someone maybe they're at home, maybe they're doing another program, we're not getting to see each other again.
Imagine that, if someone you've seen for maybe 18 years of your life, and then all of a sudden, you don't get to see them because you have no control about transportation and programming and all of that. That's a lot, right? And it's good to think about those old rituals. What are the things we used to do together with that person?
And do I want to continue doing that? Maybe it's an outing you used to go to, so you miss them when you go by yourself. But it's OK to go there and remember, when we used to go watch the movies at this movie theater. And I'll go there and it would be sad, but this is my way of remembering them and acknowledging that they were an important part of my life.
I remember someone with losing a job, the were like, I love this job so much. And it was not a fault of their own per se, but the organization were closing. But for them, it was even just driving. They didn't do it every day, but part of the grieving well was driving back the same path they used to go to that job. And sometimes having the lunch and eating out in the patio on the outside.
It's not a yard, but in the space outside with chairs where they used to have lunch. That was part of the grieving, to remember, oh, I put so much of my life years in this. And that was OK, right? So if it's someone who had passed away per se, what are maybe some family or cultural ways that you mourn? Because it could be totally different.
Now I'm originally from Africa. In my culture, from Congo, in my culture, when someone passes away, everybody comes from everywhere and stays at the house of the family that lost the loved one. But the funeral does not happen until three days later. People are going to be crying every day, every night, especially for some times a week or longer.
And so that three-day period in time here for me doesn't align with my culture. And I remember losing my grandma. And I needed that community, and it was hard. So I was grieving my grandma, who I lost. And then given the fact that I couldn't go back home to grieve with my family the way that we culturally do, that was another loss on top of that.
But going back to those old rituals reminds you, validates your pain, yes, validates your grief, but also reminds you of the good times, of those things, actually, that you are grieving for or grieving about. Those losses happen, but it hurts because it mattered to you. It hurts because it was important to you. So let's validate that. Let's remember that.
And then it's OK, also, now to think about new rituals. What are some new things now? The movie theater, maybe I can't go out there with all the time with this person because they moved out of the area, for example, but I still like movies. So my ritual would be, I can still go to maybe another movie theater if the old one kind of triggers too much grief, for example. But I'm still going to enjoy my movies. Maybe now I'm going to learn a new hobby. So it's not that you have to deny your past before the loss in order to move forward.
But also, if you only get stuck in the past, you cannot move forward. Does that make sense? So the two again can coexist. And then who do you want to include in your life in the future? People to do things with, creating new dreams-- I didn't get to do X, Y, and Z. Maybe now I can look at something else or maybe a different way to do what I thought I wanted to do. It's OK to remember what you lost. It's OK to celebrate your loved one.
So I mentioned about two things can exist at once. And what I've seen also just in the society at large, it's often people say like, if I'm grieving, I can't be happy. Well, actually, you can be grieving and still have moments of happiness. You can feel a little anxious about something and still also feel excited about something else. So what seems maybe contradictory emotions can coexist. I can be traumatized by one event, one experience, and be successful in so many other areas of my life.
I can feel lonely, maybe, let's say at work, and feel supported at home. One does not negate the other. That does not erase the other. Like, that's OK. So the more we take the time to feel emotions and process, the more we acknowledge, if you want, all that we're feeling, both the comfortable and uncomfortable one.
So I'm wrapping up here with this. And I think someone mentioned it earlier, too, especially caregivers, when we're grieving the new diagnosis, grieving, anticipatory grief, where things that we worry that our loved one might not be able to achieve later in life, and how even being a caregiver disrupts our own life, changes how we did life before. Their grief is valid, but you don't have to do it alone.
So I said earlier, find your tribe. All of us are here are here because we care about this community. And connect with others who are part of the community that matters to you, and still getting that support. And there is the time we need to pull away and take care of ourselves and be away from people. That's totally OK. But we don't have to always be alone in order to grieve. And especially for grief not become chronic, we need people to support us.
So maybe some questions, some things to think about. Who can support you during your time of grief? And maybe you're like, well, right now I'm fine. I grieved the diagnosis and we're in a place of acceptance. But as I shared earlier, when some milestone happens, it's 18, it's 22, it's 5, one day, and you're like, ooh, they could have, should have been doing X, Y and Z. And that's not what I'm seeing right now.
So maybe you're not grieving right now, but it's good to have your support team if you want that can help you be there for you when grief gets hard. So that could be people you trust. Maybe we should go to old friends. It doesn't always have to be someone who lives next door, especially now with technology. People who support me the most are the people who live the farthest away from me, physically, per se.
Technology helps us. Like right now, I'm in the western part of the state right now, today. Some friends are there in Philly, and we'll all heal together. So don't let distance be a barrier. But also exploring new things in your area. And put Eventbrite there, that's one way that our family gets to build community. It's seeing what events are happening in the community and which one we can attend.
And then we get to meet new people who have common interests or have common experiences. And then our support team expands a little bit. Sometimes starting a new hobby-- if you look it up at your library, for example, might have a regular class every single Tuesday. You showing up every single Tuesday, everybody that shows up every single Tuesday also, we start to get to know each other, if you want to and want to explore that. So that you don't feel like I have to start making new friends. But they're there. You're there every single week. And naturally it becomes easier to make those connections too.
And then learning something new in general. It's giving yourself that permission to start doing something new, even online. You get connected to more people now. I've got a lot of support groups that are actually on Facebook, moms with kids like mine or people who are sharing common challenges, as I am. Joining a support group-- I'll share a few here about our support groups, but there's many, many others.
And when you're grieving, there's also GriefShare, which I think it's griefshare.org. And that one I believe, it's faith focused. So I'm not saying you have to, but that's one example of one group that I know is specific to grief. And it's all across the nation. You can put your zip code and find a location near you or add one online.
But also getting professional help when you need it. Support can look different. It goes from the pet, the dog at home you can pet. It goes to the friend you can call that lives 2,000 miles away, maybe. And then it also goes maybe to the therapist, to the clergy, to someone else that can support you. Life gets hard no matter who we are. But it's been proven that the number one predictor of well-being is support.
All right, so this one will be, just looking at the time here, yeah, you have this in your slide. Take the time, I encourage you, to start thinking about your own support team so that you can expand that not just for grief, but caregiving in general. Because again, caregiving is hard. We might make it look easy. We're like, you do it so well. But it doesn't mean that it's not heavy.
So I will skip this one. We're going to do it towards the end. For those of you who can stay, we'll be here. And then we'll open for questions as well. I just wanted to quickly share this. And then we can stop the recording and then do new questions, that last slide there. So we have some workshops. And I'll send these to Stacey as well, actually, the flyers, that way you can use it from the PowerPoint or you can also read the full flyer.
But we're doing a workshop about navigating the holidays with your child with disabilities. And yes, it's for birth to 5, but if you have a child beyond 5, you're still welcome to come. There's no one next week and then one on the 21st. And then the support group I mentioned, we have one actually this past Tuesday, but there's another one on the 15th. Again, all these are all virtual. It's all on Zoom like this and totally free to you.
And then we have a support group for all caregivers. If you have someone, your loved one is above, beyond 5, you can still come. And we have a separate support group for that. And there's one on the 12th because the one on the 2nd already passed. And here are my contacts. You have that. With that being said, thank you for being here. I'm going to stop the recording. Then I'll go back to our last discussion slide and then any questions that you guys might have.
STACY PHILLIPS: I just want to thank you. We really appreciate you being here. And thank you to everyone that logged on and in person today. And I'll stop the recording now.
This session is an activity of the Philadelphia Interagency Coordinating Counsel (PICC), funded by Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS) and Elwyn Early Learning Services.
