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Navigating Grief: Helping Clients Find Their Way Through Loss, Transition, and Life After Loss

CLINICAL EVENTS

Innovate, Educate, and Elevate

Navigating Grief: Helping Clients Find Their Way Through Loss, Transition, and Life After Loss

May 28, 2027

10:00 AM - 1:15 PM (EST)

Virtual Event
3 CE Credits
Explore grief beyond bereavement and help clients navigate losses involving relationships, health, identity, careers, and unrealized futures. This experiential grief training helps clinicians understand ambiguous and disenfranchised grief, recognize the intersection of grief and trauma, support meaning-making and continuing bonds, and help clients integrate loss without imposing timelines or expectations.

Grief extends far beyond the death of a loved one. Clients may grieve relationships, marriages, health, careers, identities, unrealized dreams, family connections, or the life they believed they would have. While grief is a natural human response to loss, clinicians can sometimes feel pressure to help clients “move on” rather than helping them learn how to carry loss while continuing to live. This experiential training explores grief as a nonlinear and deeply personal process. Participants will examine common misconceptions about grief, different expressions of loss, disenfranchised and ambiguous grief, and the relationship between grief and trauma. Clinicians will gain practical strategies for helping clients make meaning, tolerate difficult emotions, maintain continuing bonds when appropriate, and gradually integrate loss into their lives without imposing timelines or expectations on the grieving process.

Session Highlights
  • Grief Beyond Bereavement: Explore the many forms of loss clients experience, including relationship changes, health challenges, identity shifts, career transitions, estrangement, and unrealized futures.
  • The Many Faces and Layers of Grief — Examine ambiguous, disenfranchised, cumulative, traumatic, and prolonged grief, including primary and secondary losses that may be overlooked, minimized, or mistaken for other clinical concerns.
  • Grief, Trauma, and the Body: Explore how grief affects the brain and body, including attachment, memory, stress, and emotional responses, while distinguishing grief from trauma and related clinical presentations.
  • The Six Needs of the Grieving: Explore a practical framework for helping clients have their pain witnessed, express emotions, address guilt and old wounds, integrate pain and love, and find meaning after loss.
  • Integrating Loss and Reconnecting with Life: Explore trauma-responsive and body-attuned interventions, including grounding, regulation, continuing bonds, meaning-making, and Brainspotting, that support clients in carrying loss while gradually reconnecting with life

 

This live interactive webinar is designed for behavioral health professionals, including:

  • Counselors
  • Social Workers
  • Psychotherapists
  • Marriage & Family Therapists
  • Psychologists
  • Substance Use Disorder Counselors
  • Case Managers
  • Physicians
  • Other Mental Health Professionals

Ann Dillard, PhD, LMFT

Ann M. Dillard, PhD, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist, educator, author, international humanitarian, and trauma specialist whose work centers on helping individuals and families heal from experiences that have disrupted their connection, identity, safety, and sense of belonging. With more than two decades of experience across mental health, education, community development, and professional training, she brings a relational, culturally responsive, and brain-body perspective to the work of healing. Dr. Dillard is the Founder and Director of KIP Consulting Services, LLC, established in 2003, where she provides psychotherapy, clinical consultation, professional training, and parent coaching. Her clinical work focuses primarily on professional young adults and adult women navigating trauma, grief and loss, self-esteem and self-worth, attachment wounds, life transitions, and complex mother-daughter relationships. Her approach recognizes that healing involves more than understanding what happened; it also requires attending to how experiences are carried in the body, relationships, beliefs, and sense of self. A Certified Brainspotting Therapist and Consultant and Provisional Trainer for Brainspotting, Dr. Dillard integrates Brainspotting with other trauma-responsive and somatic approaches, including Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR. She is also a Certified Daring Way™ Facilitator, incorporating principles of courage, vulnerability, authenticity, shame resilience, and wholehearted living into her clinical and educational work. Grief is both a professional and deeply meaningful area of Dr. Dillard’s work. She is the author of Journey: Healing My Grieving Heart, which reflects her commitment to creating space for the complex and deeply personal experience of loss. Her approach expands the understanding of grief beyond bereavement to include the loss of relationships, marriages, health, identity, family connections, dreams, expectations, and significant life transitions. Rather than viewing healing as “moving on,” she encourages individuals to discover how to honor what has been lost while continuing to build meaningful lives. Dr. Dillard’s scholarly interests include attachment, intergenerational trauma, immigration and serial migration, cultural identity, and mother-daughter relationships. Her doctoral research examined the use of Brainspotting in addressing attachment within Caribbean-American mother-daughter dyads. She has developed and facilitated numerous clinical and community programs addressing trauma, grief, relational healing, cultural responsiveness, and intergenerational wellness, including Daughters HEAL, Mother Hunger Groups, and Mosaic of Care: Strengthening Roots of Healing Across Cultures. Her commitment to healing extends beyond the therapy room. In 2008, Dr. Dillard founded Project Safety Nets, an international humanitarian organization committed to strengthening developing communities through education, health, economic development, and mental health initiatives. Her work has taken her throughout West Africa, where she has partnered with communities and professionals in Senegal, The Gambia, Ghana, and Togo. These experiences continue to shape her understanding of culture, resilience, community, grief, trauma, and the many ways people create meaning in the midst of adversity. Dr. Dillard is also an educator and sought-after presenter who translates complex clinical concepts into practical, accessible, and culturally responsive learning experiences. Her trainings invite participants to move beyond pathology and consider the whole person, their history, relationships, culture, body, environment, strengths, and lived experiences. In 2026, Dr. Dillard was inducted as an Honorary Member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. at its 61st Biennial Boule, in recognition of a body of work that bridges mental health, education, humanitarian service, and community impact. Dr. Dillard’s faith is the foundation of her commitment to compassion, service, and restoring hope. She has devoted decades to ministry and humanitarian outreach, embracing the calling to serve the nations. She honors the diverse beliefs and experiences of those she serves while recognizing the role of faith and spirituality in healing. Above all, Dr. Dillard cherishes being the mother of three adult children and affectionately known as “GiGi” to her three grandchildren. These treasured relationships enrich her appreciation for family, love, and the legacy we leave for future generations. Guided by faith, informed by experience, and grounded in compassion, Dr. Ann Dillard believes that healing is not about erasing the past, but learning to carry our stories differently, with greater hope, meaning, and freedom to embrace what lies ahead.

After this training, participants will be able to:

  • Differentiate normative grief responses, traumatic grief, ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, and prolonged grief presentations using clinical indicators, contextual factors, and contemporary grief frameworks.
  • Assess the interaction of grief with attachment, trauma, culture, identity, secondary losses, bodily/interoceptive experiences, and stress responses to inform case conceptualization and treatment planning.
  • Apply at least three trauma-responsive and body-attuned grief interventions, including loss mapping, regulation strategies, continuing bonds, meaning-making, and/or focused experiential processing, to support integration of loss without imposing a prescribed timeline for healing.

10:00 -10:05 am – Introduction, orientation & opening reflection

10:05-10:30 am – Grief beyond bereavement

10:30-11:00 am – Grief, the Brain, the Body & Clinical Assessment

11:00-11:30 am – Ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief & cultural considerations

11:30-11:45 am – Break

11:45-12:15 pm – Six Needs of the Grieving

12:15-12:45 pm – Trauma-Responsive & Body-Attuned Grief Interventions

12:45-1:05 pm – Integrating Loss & Reconnecting With Life

1:05-1:15 pm – Q&A

Intermediate.

Registration Cost

Registration $67 | May 28 | Virtual Event | 3 CE Credits | 10:00 am – 1:15 pm ET

Registration Deadline:  May 28, 2027

Cancellation Policy

All registrations are non-refundable. However, you may request a full credit toward a future training if:

  • You notify us at least 72 hours before the event start time.
  • Credit is valid for up to 6 months from the original event date.
  • No credit will be issued for no-shows or cancellations made on the same day.
  • When you register for an event, you agree to these terms

Please email [email protected] to request a credit or reschedule.

A total of 3 CE credits are available.

APA

Clinical Events, LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Clinical Events maintains responsibility for all programming and its content.

ASWB ACE

Clinical Events, LLC, (provider # 2201) is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 11/01/2025 – 11/01/2028.

NBCC

Clinical Events, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7643. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Clinical Events, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

NAADAC

Clinical Events, LLC has been approved as a NAADAC-approved education Provider for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #320899, Clinical Events, LLC is responsible for all aspects of its programming.

Course Approvals

Please note it is your responsibility to contact your licensing/certification board directly to determine eligibility to meet your continuing education requirements. Please check with your state licensing board to ensure that nationally approved courses can be used to satisfy your continuing education needs.

State Provider Approvals & Accreditations

New York Board of Psychologists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0292

New York Board of Psychoanalysts

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0073.

New York Board of Social Workers

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0828.

New York Board of Mental Health Practitioners

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0329.

New York Board of Marriage & Family Therapists

Clinical Events, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0140.

NJ State Board of Social Workers & Professional Counselors
  1. New Jersey Social Work Examiners Board accepts ASWB ACE Provider credits.
  2. New Jersey Professional Counselors Board accepts NBCC-approved CE provider credits.
  3. New Jersey Professional Psychologist Examiners Board accepts APA-approved CE Provider Credits
Florida Certification Board

Clinical Events is approved by the Florida Certification Board (FCB) to offer continuing education programs (Provider # 5527-A).

Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation

SWB Provider # 159.001697 PC and CPC Provider # 197.000434.

All Other States Psychologists, Social Workers & Professional Counselors

All other states accept APA, ASWB ACE Provider credits and NBCC-approved CE provider credits. Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their jurisdictions. States and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Canada Psychologists

Clinical Events is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Continuing education requirements and acceptance vary by Canadian province and profession. Participants are encouraged to confirm eligibility with their applicable provincial regulatory body.

Canada Counsellors

Clinical Events is an NBCC-approved provider. Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

Canada Social Workers
BC, AB, SK, MB, ON, and QC accept ASWB ACE-approved provider programs to meet licensure renewal requirements. Licensees are responsible for determining whether courses meet the CE requirements in their province. Provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for credit.

 

Questions:  [email protected]

In accordance with continuing education standards and requirements, the presenter discloses that they have no relevant financial relationships, affiliations, or conflicts of interest to report.

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