This is a challenging time, and we want to help connect you with supports for your emotional and mental well-being. This collection includes resources we have found from across the internet, as well as ideas created (and practiced!) by the Trellis Supportive Care team. We invite you to explore this page and add some of these ideas to your own self-care practice. Be well and stay connected to your supports: you are not alone.
Please note: some of these links will take you away from our website; please come back to explore more resources!
GRIEF SUPPORT
Online Resources
What’s Your Grief
One of our go-to resources for grief education & support, this site offers perspective on the impact of Coronavirus on grieving, as well as general grief education and support.
- Recommended starting point: 8 Reasons Your Grief Feels Worse Right Now
Podcasts to Explore
- What’s Your Grief: Grief Support for Those Who Like to Listen
- Grief Out Loud (The Dougy Center)
- Terrible, Thanks for Asking with Nora McInerny (covers many topics, including grief)
Printable Handouts
See Mindfulness & Self-Care resources below for more coping supports. For additional grief support and resources, please call (336) 331-1300 or complete a grief counseling request via our website.
SUPPORT for CHILDREN & TEENS
It is important to create safe space for children and teens to share their feelings, questions, and perspectives. This is especially important if you are supporting a child whose rhythms have been upended by the pandemic and/or the loss of someone they love. These resources will provide helpful tips and information for supporting the children in your life.
Online
10 Tips for Talking about COVID-19 with your Kids
From NPR: notice how these tips overlap with grief support advice!
The Dougy Center
A collection of resources for grieving children, teens, and their families
- Listen to the podcast: Grief Out Loud
- Recommended starting point: When Your World is Already Upside Down: Supporting Grieving Children and Teens During COVID-19
- Developmental Responses to Grief
Recommended starting point: Anxiety and Coping with Coronavirus from Child Mind Institute
Coping Supports
- Share Memories
- Memories are a vital part of healthy grieving, and can provide a sense of comfort and connection for children
- Create a Memory Object with Counselor and Art Therapist Susanna Lund
- Go Noodle
- Short, fun videos for kids
- Can help to get the wiggles out, create enjoyable breaks during the day, and reinforce values
- High energy starting point: Milkshake video
- Calming starting point: Have Compassion video
- See Mindfulness & Self-Care Resources below for more ideas
Printable Handouts
- 10 Needs of Grieving Children
- Facts and Misconceptions about Children and Grief
- Tips for Companioning Children through Grief
MINDFULNESS & SELF-CARE
Simply put, mindfulness brings you into connection with the present moment. It encourages awareness and acceptance of thoughts, emotions, and what is felt through the senses. As a team, we are increasingly aware of the impact of mindfulness upon managing stress, coping with difficult feelings, and supporting a practice of self-care and self-compassion.
In a season when your usual activities may be limited, we invite you to explore these ideas to support your self-care and nurturing. Be sure to check back for updates!
Before you begin, we invite you to join us in a simple practice:
- Pause for a moment
- Place your feet upon the floor (or, if reclining, feel the supports beneath you)
- Notice your breath as it moves in and out of your body
- Take a few comfortable breaths, at your own pace
Self-care can begin this simply…with pause and connection.
Online Resources
A Simple Overview of Mindfulness from Psychology Today
The Value of Journaling
We often recommend writing as a coping tool, especially for teens and adults. In fact, we offer annual writing workshops for adults, as well as share in a partnership as a cocoon site for the C2 Foundation Butterfly Book initiative. For more information, call (336) 331-1300
Guided Meditations
Join our Complementary Therapies team in these practices to help create moments of care and ease in your body, mind, and spirit.
- Loving-Kindness Meditation: a practice for sharing compassion with yourself and others (8:39)
- Body and Breath Meditation: join us for quiet moments of reflection & connection along the banks of a beautiful creek (10:12)
- Still: an original composition that invites you to share in a sense of stillness and hope (3:08)
- Strength & Nature Meditation: join in a relaxation experience that invites you to connect with nature and gather strength (5:33)
- Self-Massage Techniques: a guided practice that offers care for your whole body (22:02)
- Gratitude in Nature Meditation: explore the peacefulness and beauty of nature as you connect with a sense of gratitude for the goodness around you (4:23)
A Few Helpful Apps
There are many apps that offer free access to at least some of their resources. See below for apps that we frequently recommend, and that may serve as a starting point for you. You can visit website links by clicking on each image, or find wherever you access apps on your devices.
- Explore meditations, breathing exercises, and “sleep stories”
- Calm has offered a range of Free Resources curated especially for support during this difficult time
- Stop, Breathe, Think for Adults & Stop, Breathe, Think for Kids
- Each session begins with a self-check, and leads to a variety of options to support healthy coping
- Relaxation meditations from teacher Andrew Johnson
- Download a free relaxation meditation by searching for “Relax with Andrew Johnson” in the app store
Escape through Nature, The Arts, and Travel
Take an adventure and explore the world without even packing a bag. View art in famous museums, listen to internationally known opera singers, visit a national park, and let your worldview expand as your mind wanders at the wonders of the world.
If you’re feeling restricted or seeking a feeling of connectedness, there is a world just waiting to be explored. Click on the adventure you want to take.
Nature
The Arts
- Lincoln Center at Home
- Google Arts & Culture
- Natural history, space
- Explore artists
- Visit museum collections around the world
- The Metropolitan Opera
- Louvre Museum Tours
- Andrea Bocelli – Concert for Hope
- Recorded live on Easter Sunday 2020 from the Duomo Cathedral in Milan, Italy
Travel
- Buckingham Palace
- Mount Vernon Estate
- Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel
- Great Wall of China
- Pompeii
- Travel to hundreds of sites around the world through video and photography with AirPano