Dealing with Grief and Loss around the Holidays

The holidays can bring a wide range of emotions. While the season may be associated with celebration and connection, it can also intensify feelings of grief, loneliness, and loss. Missing a loved one, remembering a difficult experience, or facing changes in relationships and traditions can make the holidays especially challenging.

For Peers, these experiences create an important opportunity to come alongside individuals through shared understanding, hope, and recovery-focused support. Dealing with Grief and Loss Around the Holidays will help Peers better understand the experience of holiday grief while developing practical, peer-based communication tools they can use to support individuals as they navigate loss, identify their own strengths, and move toward hope and resilience.

Participants will:

• Identify common experiences, triggers, and patterns that can intensify grief and feelings of loss during the holiday season.
• Explore how lived experience and appropriate self-disclosure can be used to create connection, mutuality, and hope when supporting someone experiencing grief.
• Practice peer-supportive questions that help individuals explore their grief, recognize personal strengths, and identify what they need during the holiday season.
• Learn communication strategies for listening to and responding to the words people use to describe grief, loss, loneliness, and difficult holiday experiences.
• Explore how internal representations, including images, sounds, memories, and other sensory qualities—can influence a person’s emotional response to holiday memories.
• Develop strategies for helping individuals honor important memories and relationships while identifying meaningful ways to participate in the present and envision a hopeful future.
• Recognize the boundaries of the Peer role when supporting someone experiencing grief and identify situations in which additional professional, community, or crisis resources may be appropriate.

About the Trainer

Chuck Hendrix is a Certified Peer Support Specialist, Certified Life Coach, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Practitioner, and Board-Certified Hypnotherapist. He has studied personal growth, communication, and personal change for more than 25 years and develops specialized trainings designed to expand the practical tools Peer Support Specialists and Recovery Coaches can bring to their work.

Chuck combines practical skills, lived experience, interactive learning, and humor to create trainings that are engaging, applicable, and focused on helping peer professionals strengthen the impact they have with the people they serve.

Eligible for 4.5 virtual Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Continuing Education credits.

Registration: Please register below (on this site) using a credit or debit card, which is the quickest way to confirm your attendance.

Only if you need to pay by check, please complete this form (click here) and email it to: registration@mipeers.org. Do not use this form if you are paying by credit/debit card. Please note that this form takes up to 5 business days for processing, and registration is not assured until we receive the check, and you receive a confirmation of your registration.

Cancellation Policy: Registrations may be transferred to another employee of the same agency upon written request to registration@mipeers.org. Cancellations must be received in writing at least 7 days prior to the date of the training. Failure to cancel registration within the allotted time will result in registration fees being forfeited. For questions, e-mail registration@mipeers.org.

Attendance Policy: You must attend the entire training. If you are more than 10 minutes late you will not be allowed to attend as part of the CE requirements. Please note there is absolutely NO driving during the training. If you are driving while attending the training, you will be removed from the training for your own safety. Training guidelines must be read, signed, and returned back to the office before a zoom link is sent to the participant. Attendees must follow the training guidelines.