Showing Up: Emotional and Grief Literacy Trainings
“This was the first training that felt interactive and practical towards our work; it was clear that our staff were enthusiastically engaged in the movement and education surrounding grief-informed care”
E-motion is on a mission to enhance coping, connection, and belonging so that every grieving person has a community of support to move with the hardest things over a lifetime. Through the generous support of the Parmenter Foundation, E-motion recently delivered “Showing Up” Emotional and Grief Literacy trainings free of cost to 4 organizations and teams across the Metrowest region of Massachusetts.
“How do we support our community while we, as a staff, are also incapable of supporting each other and our programs through acknowledging and processing grief? The E-Motion sessions encouraged each individual to consider the ways in which we approach grief, for ourselves and our community. This shared vulnerability drastically increased our team’s connection,” reflected Laila Abolfazli MSW, LCSW, Director of Inclusion at the Metrowest YMCA.
The “Showing Up” training is ultimately about a way of being in the world for others. By becoming literate in ways to discuss emotions and topics that are too often ignored - grief, death, mortality, loss - learners become better equipped to support all forms of suffering and to process their own.
“This was the first training that felt interactive and practical towards our work; it was clear that our staff were enthusiastically engaged in the movement and education surrounding grief-informed care, as active living is one of our Y’s core principles. We as an organization rarely take the time to intentionally process our individual role in this process, and are so grateful for our sessions with E-Motion to bring our communal goals to light with concrete activities to implement.
The Showing Up framework and E-motion activities are adaptable; they can be applied to an organizational setting with adults, and also to team settings, including sport teams. After their E-motion discussion, the Head Coach of a Varsity Girls Soccer team shared,
“Your ideas provide a concrete way to create an environment of trust in which a young person can make him/herself vulnerable. You are teaching people to…build groups, teams, families in which people have the tools and the vocabulary to process and understand and grow from the full range of their life’s experiences. I know that people will be so much stronger and better when that is our collective definition of high performance.”
If you are interested in bringing an E-motion training to your team, organization, or community, click the button below to submit an inquiry.