We are entering a brand new year, and you know what that means?! We get a fresh start! It’s a time of reflection, change and moving forward. So much has happened for me, personally, that I have been taking these first few days of the New Year to decompress and really process everything that has happened, good and bad. I always try to keep things positive and look for ways to improve myself for the year ahead and in order to do so I sometimes I need to find closure with things that happened the year prior.
Working in an environment where we provide both physical and emotional care for people, we develop close-knit relationships with our residents. It is a very unique work environment and one that I personally cherish. We share in their love, laughter, joy and sorrow. As we support our residents and their families through this phase of life, one thing that often goes overlooked in our line of work is the emotional toll that the loss of these relationships has on our staff. In this line of work we expect that residents will leave us; they may pass away, move-on to a higher level of care, or relocate closer to family.
After a resident has left us our staff carries on with their duties, while often coping with missing someone they greatly cared for. It is a continuous cycle of love, loss and healing. At the end of every year our community partners with a local hospice company and holds a reflection service for our staff to remember those residents who have left us and to process their emotions. Following this service, starting at the end of January, we also hold a 6 week group therapy session, called Moving Through Grief. This is open to our staff, residents, current and past family members.
Dealing with grief and loss is not something we generally look forward to, but there is something very cleansing about working through your emotions and understanding them. As Helen Keller once said “What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
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