On Tuesday, March 15, TCR’s Colleen Shannon and Nancy Frumer Styron, along with our partners from the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Rachel Rodrigues and Alexandra A. Chery, presented a webinar entitled “Providing Culturally Responsive Grief Support to Children and Adolescents,” hosted by the National Alliance for Grieving Children (NAGC).
These four care providers, from diverse backgrounds, talked openly and thoughtfully about what it means, as individuals and as organizations, to bring cultural sensitivity and cultural awareness to our work in grief support.
One of the program’s biggest takeaways? Before all else, we must first build self-reflection into the very fabric of our work and how we provide services. As individuals and as agencies, we must first look inward to understand the influences that shape our beliefs, behaviors, values, attitudes, and traditions. We need to understand the factors that shape our worldview, the many cultures we come from, as well as those that influence how the world views us.
Self-reflection is not just a first or one-time step. Self-reflection is an ongoing process that requires continual adjustment and refinement as we learn more and ask more questions and receive new information. As Colleen noted, “Just as grieving is a cyclical process, being culturally responsive can be seen as an ongoing cycle of self-reflection and growth.”
As Alexandra said, we must continually “tune in to our comfort and discomfort” when we’re working with others we identify as culturally different than us. We must be ever mindful of our own cultural biases and interests that come to bear on our work. A crucial piece is being aware of the language we use and a willingness to change that language in an ongoing way. It is also important to recognize when there are power dynamics between individuals and within and between organizations.
Through their webinar collaboration, Alexandra, Colleen, Nancy, and Rachel demonstrated how the practice and the process of self-reflection and questioning works on the organizational level. This dialogue has been crucial to building the lasting partnership between TCR and LDB that has been formed and strengthened over the past decade.
For questions or more information about the program, please email info@childrensroom.org.
