May 16, 2024
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Joliet hospice offering grief workshop series in May

Register by May 1

By Denise M. Baran-Unland
Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care in Joliet will offer the workshop on four consecutive Thursdays in May. Pictured are the grounds of Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care, an independent, nonprofit healthcare provider licensed in 11 counties in Illinois.

Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care in Joliet will offer the workshop on four consecutive Thursdays in May. Pictured are the grounds of Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care, an independent, nonprofit healthcare provider licensed in 11 counties in Illinois. (Denise Unland)

A Joliet hospice organization will offer strategies for coping with grief at a workshop in May.

Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care will offer a Spring Grief Workshop on four consecutive Thursdays in May, according to a news release from Lightways.

These free workshops will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. May 9, May 16, May 23 and May 30. Each workshop will address a different aspect of the grieving process, according to the release.

Registration deadline is May 1. Workshops will be held in-person at Lightways, 320 Water Stone Way in Joliet, as well as virtually.

[ Joliet hospice cares for non-hospice patients with chronic illness ]

Patrice Martin, director of grief Support Services at Lightways, said in the release that Lightways grief counselors will lead the workshops. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one is welcome to attend.

“Through the grief process, people will experience not just a wide variety of emotions, but also other grief reactions that often catch us by surprise,” Martin said in the release. “We explore these reactions with our participants and help them to understand where they might be coming from.”

Features of each workshop include:

• May 9: A panel will share personal grief journeys. Participants may also share their grief experiences in small groups.

• May 16: A discussion of common reactions to grief or the “grief coaster,” as grief counselors describe them.

• May 23: Grief-coping tips and helping participants identify their individual needs.

• May 30: Ways participants can remain connected to their loved ones opportunity for participants to pay tribute to loved ones.

“Understanding the grief process is such an important piece to coping with grief, as it is not always what people expect,” Martin said in the release.

Register for the Spring Grief Workshop by emailing griefsupport@lightways.org.

All grief support services at Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care are free to anyone in the community. For more information, call 815-460-3295 or visit lightways.org.