Venue: Grace College – Walcott Street University of Queensland, St Lucia
Guest Speaker: Doris Zagdanski
Doris graduated from Monash University, Melbourne in 1976 and began her professional career as a high school teacher. In 1980, she experienced the death of her second born daughter due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and some short years later began to explore the nature of grief and it’s impact on family and close relationships. She spent several years as a voluntary parent supporter for the SIDS Research Foundation in Victoria and in the mid 1980’s began to work in the funeral industry, where she is still employed today.
Doris spoke to us about connecting with family, friends, colleages on the ‘feeling’ level and explained how we all have different ‘levels’ that we communicate to people with. As a bereaved parent herself we could all relate to her as she gave this very inspiring, funny and heartfelt message.
Once again a number of newly bereaved parents attended this year, plus some of our telephone listeners from Central & North Queensland and Toowoomba. Overall feedback from the Seminar was excellent with workshops after the guest speaker proving very popular.
The sun shone for us again and attendees enjoyed the sunshine between sessions, speaking to other bereaved parents and found this time very rewarding.
During the closing ceremony families were asked to come forward and place a leaf on a tree wth their child’s name and age. This proved a very fitting and moving end to the day.
Thank you to Grace College for giving us the hire of the rooms for our Annual Seminar free of charge.
You can find out more about Doris and her resources on the website allaboutgrief.com
(Click photos below for larger version)
