 Global Integration UpdatesCommon Ground for the Common Good Be the people we need--Build the world we need
Special News--November 2020Grieving Well--Healing WellResources for Growing through Loss  Image courtesy and (c) ENOD 2017“Grief is the process you go through as you adjust to the loss of
anything or anyone important in your life.” Tear Soup, page 47 ---------- In this Update we focus on dealing with grief and loss in general and during covid. Specifically, we share an online, interactive presentation--Good Grief--that Michèle recently led with two colleagues, Dr. Jane Ganji and Rev. Tom Miyashiro. The purpose of the presentation, and this Update, is to better understand:
--how grief in response to loss is normal, healthy, and necessary
--how to identify and grieve “hidden or ambiguous” losses
--how grief can keep teaching us if we are open. We encourage you to go through and reflect on the main power point and the list of resources on grief and loss, along with the power point by Dr. Jane Ganji on children’s literature on grief and loss and Rev. Tom Miyashiro’s personal story of supporting his young wife as she struggled with and succumbed to cancer. We also include a set of resources for Covid Care compiled by our organization, Member Care Associates. The Update concludes with a moving poem featured in the Good Grief presentation, “Six Feet Didn’t Seem That Far” by Jennarose Colucci. Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michèle
MCAresources@gmail.com --Share your comments and resources on our MCA Facebook page
--Forward to your colleagues and networks (link to sign up is at the end).
Featured Resources
Grieving Well--Healing Well
Resources for Growing through Loss
 One of the lessons I have learned anew during Covid is that we need each other. I have been touched personally by the compassion and generosity of many. I’ve been inspired at the courage, commitment, and sacrifice of countless essential workers. We can all in some way participate in supporting others during this pandemic. In discussing loss and how to grieve, I hope we can be inspired to be “Grief Leaders” in our homes and communities, modeling that it is normal and smart to face our feelings and grief and give others that permission. We can all give “psychosocial support” where we are.” Michèle Lewis O’Donnell (Good Grief) ---------- Michèle Lewis O'Donnell: Good Grief: Healing After Loss overview, main powerpoint. This power point and its notes (under the slides) uses the book Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss as a springboard to explore various forms of loss and how to grieve them. There is an emphasis on hidden or ambiguous loss during Covid and how to accompany children in grief. Linked resources and video clips are embedded. See also the handout, Resources for Grief and Loss.
Jane Gangi: Children's Literature on Grief and Loss. This powerpoint for the Good Grief Library Talk offers a tailored bibliography for children and youth of over 30 books that address different types of grief and loss. Jane also gives examples of how the arts and "mirror" books can help the healing journey of children processing normal and traumatic grief.
Tom Miyashiro: Amy Crosses from Death to Life. How do you handle the pain and practicalities of supporting your young, beloved spouse as she is dying from brain cancer (a process of several years)? Listen to Tom’s stirring story and Easter Sunday message of hope from 2010 at Palmer Auditorium, Connecticut College USA (Tom is an ordained Christian minister). It was shared just days after he faithfully stood by his wife Amy's bedside at their home as she breathed her last and transitioned into God's presence and eternity. Tom gave some highlights from this testimony-message during the Good Grief presentation along with how he has personally used and widely recommended Tear Soup. 
COVID Care
Perspectives and Resources
Pandemics bring out people's best selves or their worse selves--our selfless and our selfish qualities. The reality of the uncertainties and anxieties of life, and indeed survival--existential risk--is heavy upon the world. Positively, the current COVID-19 pandemic certainly provides plenty of opportunities for us all--individually through internationally--to reflect on the types of people we want to be, the types of societies we need to build, and the types of changes we have to make. We join together in solidarity with the world community's efforts, locally through globally, on behalf of covid care and in hopes to stir up the best selves in all of us. We also note that the many overlapping problems in our world continue unabated--shadow pandemics--even as this covid pandemic dominates the center stage globally: multi-dimensional poverty, protracted violence, human rights violations, gross inequalities, racism, mental ill health, environmental degradation, etc. This is the ongoing, cascading context which challenges us daily as we seek to practically support the wellbeing of all persons/peoples and the planet.
Our recent Updates below are compiled to help ourselves and others with covid care. Examples of issues/resources: anxiety, trauma, depression, confinement, loneliness, loss, grief, relationship strains, coping for children, work insecurities, spiritual struggles, uncertainty/concerns about what is going on, compassion, courage, mutual support, faith-based strengths, etc.
--Tough Times: Tougher People. Best selves--Better world
Global Integration Update (October 2020)
--Solidarity for Covid-Care: Being Real-Life Heroes
Global Integration Update (September 2020)
--Keep Persevering: Stories and Strategies in the Pandemic
Global Integration Update (August 2020)
--Managing Stress and COVID-Distress: Faith-Inclusive Resources
Global Integration Update (June 2020)
--Staying Sane During COVID-19: Mental Health Resources for Ourselves, Others, World Global Integration Update (May 2020)
--Confronting COVID-19: “Be smart. Be safe. Be kind.”
Global Integration Update (April 2020)
See also:
--Helpful Thinking During the Coronavirus Outbreak. National Center for PTSD (USA)
--A Self-Care Guide...during COVID-19. Mary Hock Center, George Mason University
--Everyday Global Heroes. Global Integration Update (August 2017)
--Resolution, COVID-19 Response. World Health Organization (19 May 2020)
6 Feet Doesn't Seem That Far
Jennarose Colucci, May 2020 “6 feet doesn’t seem that far,”
I thought to myself on the first day of quarantine.
“This will be easy.”
It doesn’t seem that far ….
until your mom comes home from a long day at work
and can’t sit at the dining room table with us for dinner
because two of her coworkers just tested positive.
It doesn’t seem that far….
until your parents haven’t hugged in almost two months
because she’s an essential worker
and he’s high risk because he had a kidney transplant.
It doesn’t seem that far ….
until your grandma is standing on her porch
alone
on her 80th birthday
as her seven kids and 16 grandkids
wave from the car.
It doesn’t seem that far….
until you are at a funeral and you can’t even
hug your cousins as their father
is lowered
6 feet away from them
forever.
Stay home and save lives because I was wrong.
Six feet feels like a world away when all you need
is a hand
to hold.
Member Care Associates Inc. (MCA) is a non-profit, Christian organization working internationally from Geneva and the USA. MCA's involvement in Global Integration focuses on the wellbeing and effectiveness of personnel and their organizations in the mission, humanitarian, and development sectors as well as global mental health, all with a view towards supporting sustainable development for all people and the planet. Our services include consultation, training, research, developing resources, and publications.
Global Integration (GI) is a framework for actively and responsibly engaging in our world--locally to globally. It emphasizes connecting relationally and contributing relevantly on behalf of human wellbeing and the issues facing humanity, in light of our integrity, commitments, and core values (e.g., ethical, humanitarian, human rights, faith-based). GI encourages a variety of people to be at the “global tables” and in the "global trenches"--and everything in-between--in order to help research, shape, and monitor agendas, policies, and action for all people and the planet. It intentionally links building the world we need with being the people we need. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability;
it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God,
and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April 1963)
Global Integration Updates and Special News
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