Saturday is Grief Awareness Day, a chance to understand more about the grieving process and to encourage open communication on the issue.
Heart of the Cumberland Community Progam Manager Kim Mendoza said grief is the cost of loving someone. Mendoza said love changes after death because of the way people adjust to separation. Mendoza said many people do not understand grief.
“It’s not validated in our culture as much as it should be,” Mendoza said. “And it needs a voice. We need to hear ourselves share about our loved one and get through the awkwardness.”
Mendoza said grief can often be an uncomfortable topic to discuss. Instead of addressing grief, Mendoza said people would rather skip over it or try to create distractions for someone who is grieving.
Mendoza said there are more causes for grief than the death of a loved one. She said grief can come from care giving may need support. Mendoza said kids may also experience several other reasons for grief.
“Those losses include not only death, but divorce, family incarceration, deportation, deployment,” Mendoza said. “we’ve got foster care kids or kids living with their grandparents that are experiencing loss of what their families used to look like.”
Mendoza said Heart of The Cumberland offers lots of resources and support groups for people going through grief. At the heart of those groups is community, which Mendoza said is an important part of working through a loss.
To find that community, the Heart of the Cumberland social media pages have been accepting photos of lost loved ones to arrange into a slide show. Mendoza said the slide show will run on August 30th.
Mendoza said there are community support groups for all kinds of people throughout the week. She said most of the peer support groups meet on Tuesdays, with some offerings on Wednesday and Thursday.
“All of our programs are free of charge, and we would love to speak with anybody that would like to join us,” Mendoza said. “And then for best groups, those are the school groups, there are currently 50 peer support groups that are meeting in our Putnam County School System right now.”
Mendoza said the face-neutral school groups are led by Putnam County Schools staff members, and Heart of the Cumberland provides snacks and volunteers for those programs.
Mendoza said adult groups typically meet for 11 weeks at a time.
