About
Grief is the experience and expression of loss.
We call people who are experiencing grief, ‘grievers.’
Grief comes in many shapes and sizes – for example, we can grieve the death of humans, the death of pets, and also grieve the losses experienced through migration, or as our health declines, or the many losses we are living from the ongoing climate crisis.
While grief is universal to humans, we each experience grief in our own ways. Perhaps that is why grief is so often misunderstood.
When grief is misunderstood, we can do harm to ourselves, and to other grievers. Grief literacy, a grass-roots movement, is growing around the world to reduce the possibilities of this harm and to better support all grievers. Grief literacy has become is a social movement. And that’s why we held a week-long grief literacy festival in September, 2023!
We understand grief to be the experience of individuals who are living their grief in their communities. Grief literacy is about helping community members to better understand their own and other people’s experience of grief and loss. Our aim is for all grievers to be better supported.
Last September we hosted a week-long grief festival to support and nurture grief literacy in communities across the province of Nova Scotia – and beyond! It was about bringing together citizens from our many overlapping communities to learn and share knowledge, practices, and experiences about grief.
Anyone who has experienced grief is a ‘grief expert.’ Chances are that if you have read this far, then you are too. So please, sign up for our newsletter to stay updated and find out ways to get involved.
Meet the Team
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Mary Ellen Macdonald
Mary Ellen Macdonald is an anthropologist and Professor in Palliative Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She holds the J & W Murphy Foundation Endowed Chair in Palliative Care. She has been researching death, dying, and bereavement for two decades, and is especially committed to supporting death and grief literacy across our diverse communities.
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Susan Cadell
Susan Cadell is a social work researcher and Professor in the School of Social Work at Renison University College at University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Susan is passionate about talking about grief. She does research about positive aspects of stress and coping in various health situations. She focuses on grief through exploring making meaning, spirituality, palliative care and tattoos of all kinds.
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Michele Goldman
Michele Goldman has worked in various web design, marketing, administrative and customer service positions over the years. She designed the Grief Matters website and social media accounts. She is also assisting with administrative tasks. Michele was born in New York City and grew up in Montreal, where she still lives. She is thrilled to be a part of such a meaningful and important project.
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Susan MacLeod
Susan MacLeod is a Nova Scotian artist writing and drawing about health care issues. Her humorous book, Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care, follows her nine-year journey shepherding her mother through a callous long-term care system, which inspired her interest in end-of-life issues. The book was given an “Outstanding in its Genre” review by the American Library Association publication, Booklist and was nominated for a Creative Non-Fiction Award. Her illustrations have been published by Kaiser Permanente, Halifax Magazine, Lion’s Roar Magazine, Maisonneuve, The Fold, and The Globe and Mail.
Follow her work on Instagram and at susanmacleod.ca