Supporting Grieving Clients: Continuing Bonds and Holiday Traditions

CE Hours 2

About this live event

✨ Heatlight Center is pleased to offer this continuing education session at no cost to our community care professionals—our gift to you this holiday season. ✨ For many grieving people, the holidays can feel overwhelming. Traditions and rituals that once brought comfort can now feel painful or empty, leaving families unsure how to navigate the season. This session is for grief and mental health professionals who want to better understand how ritual can help during times of loss. We’ll look at research on the role of ritual in grief and the concept of continuing bonds theory, exploring how to apply these when supporting grieving clients through the holidays. The session will cover: How grief disrupts familiar traditions—and how new or adapted rituals can help people cope Ways to use clients’ own values to guide meaningful holiday choices Practical tools to help grievers stay connected to those they’ve lost in healthy and dynamic ways We’ll also address common challenges while working with grieving clients at the holidays, like letting go of traditions and navigating family conflicts at the holidays.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the principles of continuing bonds theory, the relevant research, and its relationship to other grief theories.
Identify the significant paradigm shift introduced through continuing bonds theory.
Conceptualize the role of ritual and tradition in grief, with specific attention to the challenges and opportunities presented during the holiday season.
Discuss and apply concrete tools and activities for assisting grievers in applying a continuing bonds in adapting or creating holiday rituals.

Learning Levels

Intermediate

Agenda

Time Zone: 9:00 – 11:00 am MT/11:00 am – 1:00 pm ET

9:00 – 9:10 am (10 minutes)

Welcome & Introduction
Session overview and objectives
Seasonal context: grief and the holidays

9:10 – 9:30 am (20 minutes

Grief Theory in Context
Brief review of “grief work” model and its limitations
Paradigm shift to continuing bonds

9:30 – 10:00 am (30 minutes)

Understanding Continuing Bonds Theory
Principles and supporting research
Applications across diverse grieving experiences

10:00 – 10:30 am (30 minutes)

Ritual, Tradition, and Re-Grief at the holidays
The role of ritual in coping and meaning-making
Re-grief and the intensification of loss during holidays
Supporting clients in adapting rituals and traditions

10:30 – 10:55 am (25 minutes)

Clinical Tools & Interventions
Concrete activities to integrate continuing bonds into practice
Case vignettes: applying strategies with clients facing holiday grief

10:55 – 11:00 am (5 minutes)

Closing & Key Takeaway
Reflection and Q&A
Summary of resources

Live event Instructor(s)

Litsa Williams MA, LCSW-C

Litsa Williams, MA, LCSW-C is the co-founder of the online grief organization What’s Your Grief. She’s a grief therapist with 15 years of experience, with expertise in sudden and traumatic loss as well as ambiguous grief. Drawing on personal and professional experience with grief, WYG was built as a resource offering concrete, practical, creative, down-to-earth, and relatable support, founded on the values of psychoeducation and creative coping. It has grown to serve more than 3 million visitors each year. Litsa received her master's degree in Clinical Social Work from the University of Maryland School of Social Work, as well as a master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Warwick (UK). She has been interviewed as a grief expert for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and New York Times. She co-authored the 2022 book What's Your Grief: Lists to Help You Through Any Loss.

Disclosure

DISCLOSURE OF RELEVANT FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS CE Learning Systems adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. Any individuals in a position to control the content of a CE activity ― including faculty, planners, reviewers, or others ― are required to disclose all relevant financial relationships with ineligible entities (formerly known as commercial interests). The following relevant financial relationships have been disclosed by this activity’s planners, faculty, and the reviewer: PLANNERS AND REVIEWER The planners of this activity have reported that they have no relevant financial relationships. FACULTY The faculty of this activity have reported that they have no relevant financial relationships.

CE Process Info

Professional boards across different states vary in what they will accept. The approvals associated with this event offer credits to a target audience of behavioral health professions, across the widest number of states. If you are unsure if the provided approvals will be accepted by your board, we recommend reaching out to your board office for clarification regarding whether the offered CE’s will be accepted.

Each professional is responsible for the individual requirements as stipulated by his/her licensing agency. Please contact your individual licensing board/regulatory agency to review continuing education requirements for licensure renewal. Please note: You must attend "live" (in real-time) for the duration of the training to earn CE credits.

Before the event, you will receive an email from CE-Go with access to the virtual event. After the event, you will receive access to your evaluation and continuing education certificate via a personalized "attendee dashboard" link, hosted on the CE-Go website. This link and access to the virtual event will be sent to the email account you used to register for the event.

Upon accessing the CE-Go "attendee dashboard", you will be able to:

Complete evaluation forms for the event
Download your continuing education certificate in a PDF format

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the CE-Go platform, please contact CE-Go at 888-498-5578 or by email at support@ce-go.com Please Note: Emails for this event will come from "support@ce-go.com".

If you have any continuing education related questions, please contact your event organizer.

Please make sure to check your spam/junk folder in case those emails get "stuck". We'd also suggest "Allowlisting" support@ce-go.com. This tells your email client that you know this sender and trust them, which will keep emails from this contact at the top of your inbox and out of the junk folder.

Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners (MBSW)

What's Your Grief is authorized by the Board of Social Work Examiners in Maryland to sponsor social work continuing education learning activities and maintains full responsibility for this program. This training qualifies for XX Category I continuing education units.
Minnesota Board of Social Work (MN BOSW)

What's Your Gref is an active Minnesota Board of Social Work approved continuing education provider CEP-2480

CELS Grievance

If a grievance arises pertaining to continuing education activities or processes, please contact Tyler Gibson via confidential email to tyler@celearningsystems.com as soon as possible, so that the nature of the concern may be addressed in a timely fashion.

Disability Accommodation

ADA accommodations will be made in accordance with the law; please indicate your special needs upon registering at least 30 days prior to the event by sending an email to support@ce-go.com or by calling us at 888 498 5578.

Technology

1. This virtual event will be hosted via Zoom Webinar, and you may be prompted to download or upgrade your Zoom app if using a mobile device. A strong WiFi connection will be required for best quality.

2. We recommend clicking your "Join Webinar" button early and checking that your speakers are on before the event begins. Please do not worry about being seen or heard! Attendee video feeds and mics are turned off by default when entering a webinar. You will be able to ask questions via the Q&A feature.

3. Please respect that no copying, recording, or distribution of live session content is allowed. CE's are provided for the "live" sessions only. CE's will not be available for the recordings.

Cancellation

Should this event be cancelled for any reason, What's Your Grief will make every effort to reschedule the event. Registrants will be given the option to be enrolled in the rescheduled session or will be issued a full refund. If the event cannot be rescheduled, all participants will receive a full refund.

Refund

If you find that you are unable to attend an event, you may request a full refund at any time before the start of the live event. Refunds will not be issued after the start time of the live event. A recording of the event will be made available to all registrants within one week from the live event. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, please contact litsa@whatsyourgrief.com.

Supporting Grieving Clients: Continuing Bonds and Holiday Traditions

About this live event

Learning Objectives

Learning Levels

Agenda

Live event Instructor(s)

Disclosure

CE Process Info

Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners (MBSW)

Minnesota Board of Social Work (MN BOSW)

CELS Grievance

Disability Accommodation

Technology

Cancellation

Refund

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