Relearning The World In Grieving, With COVID-19 Variations Presented By Thomas Attig, Ph.D. Program Description: Good thinking about loss and grief is grounded in description and interpretation of the essential features, depth, and richness of experiences of bereavement, grief reaction, and grieving response. Compassionate and effective caring responses to grievers require exquisite attunement to the particularities of their experiences. For both theory and counseling, then, the stories that grievers have to tell about their personal experiences comprise the foundational evidence base, “the heart of the matter,” in securing understanding. My distinctive contribution to the study of loss and grief has been sustained reflection on a) grieving as a process of relearning how to live in a world profoundly changed by loss (How We Grieve) and b) how to make the transition from loving in presence to loving in separation (The Heart of Grief). My most recent work, Catching Your Breath in Grief, captures the substance of that earlier work and extends and embeds it in descriptions and interpretations of experiences of learning how to live from birth to death, learning to carry sorrow, engaging with life’s mysteries, and soulful and spiritual dimensions of loss and grief. As the workshop leads participants through these reflections, it traces the illustrative story of the presenter’s own grieving following the unexpected death of his friend of over sixty years. Throughout the presentation it promotes reflection on implications for caring support of the labors of love at the heart of grieving. And the workshop concludes with exploration together about challenges in relearning how to live in a world shadowed by COVID-19. Program Level: Advanced CE Credits: 4 *Description has been shortened for store purposes. Please visit azpa.org for a full description.