The Good Listening Project was invited to present at VCU Health’s annual Good Grief Conference, which highlights the presence and impact of grief in health care spaces. Our session, “Listening Like a Poet: Practice for Meaning-Making and Resilience in Bereavement Care,” aligned beautifully with this year’s theme: resilience in relationships.
The session (made available to more than 500 attendees!) explored how poetic listening can support healing and connection for those working in grief and end-of-life care. Through stories and shared reflections, we looked at how deep listening and the creative process can become a space for meaning-making — for both caregivers and those they accompany.
We were joined by Dr. Karen Wyatt and her Listener Poet Leigh Finnegan-Hosey, who shared a moving poem and reflections on how this process facilitated Dr. Wyatt’s healing around her first experience losing a patient as a young physician, now more than three decades later. TGLP Executive Director Jenny Hegland shared a favorite poem she wrote for a patient nearly 5 years ago. The poem is unique in that it was only 4 lines and 11 words, yet has been one of the most impactful poems on the poemee’s life and brought her continued comfort over the years. Listener Poet Ravenna Raven also shared a poem and collaborative statement written with her poemee Dylan Klempner, and spoke about the importance of staying connected to your why — the personal meaning that fuels one’s work.
To close, we guided participants through a reflective mandala poem practice — an invitation to slow down, turn inward, and experience how poetry and presence can strengthen the resilience that grows through relationships, nourishing not only those we serve but also ourselves as caregivers and providers.