Visiting Nurse’s Peggy F. Murphy Community Grief Center will host a live webinar April 30 at noon: “Grief and Coping in the Era of Covid-19” with Bereavement Coordinator David Wust. This event will encompass coping methods for those who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 and to those anticipating such a loss or are struggling with the disease.

The pandemic has brought up complicated feelings of grief for many in the community, from family members who have lost loved ones, to the front-line medical personnel who are treating COVID-19 patients. The “normal” grieving process has been interrupted by this pandemic due to loved ones not being able to be at the bedside of patients as they are dying or not being able to attend funerals because of the distancing measures that have been put in place.

“We know that individuals are struggling with processing grief and loss at this time and our grief counselors can help through this complicated grief,” Visiting Nurse CEO Leslie Friedel noted. “Each year, our grief counselors conduct more than 1,700 individual counseling sessions to provide support for adults in our community who have experienced the loss of a loved one.”

This hour-long webinar can be accessed at this link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SxezgJOZTFmf2Sb7zxN2gg

“This webinar will be helpful because it will provide ways to manage grief and cope through this crisis,” Wust says. “Drawing from several resources, I plan to give people avenues in which they can lessen anxieties, practice good self-care, and find support in creative ways.”

Visiting Nurse cares not only for seriously ill patients, but also for those who go on living. The Peggy F. Murphy Community Grief Center opened in 2015 on the Visiting Nurse campus. The region’s only free-standing center dedicating to adults who are grieving, the center provides individual grief counseling sessions, grief programming and grief support meetings for adults who have experienced a loss. Support groups focus on specific types of loss, such as groups for men and women who have lost their spouses, a group for the newly bereaved, a group for those anticipating a loss, and a group for those who have lost a loved one to suicide. All grief sessions are available at no cost to participants.

This webinar is free and open to the public, but registration at the above link is required. Please call (260) 435-3261 or visit www.vnfw.org for more information.