The Valley Hospice Foundation has a Grief & Bereavement Committee which meets to discuss the activities and initiatives our community could benefit from, including the Grief Library. During a meeting on April 7, Board Chair Gerry Morey called to inform us we had been awarded a grant from NSHPCA Healing Pathways Our application was successful!
We will be launching a Grief Book Club in a Bag program. Each bag will have multiple copies of a book; where possible, large print and audio books will also be provided. These book clubs will serve to facilitate informal group discussion about grief through the vehicle of reading books together. There is a plethora of grief groups online; however, those who lack reliable Internet access cannot engage in them. We intend our kits to fill a gap: to know you are not alone, and to find strength by bringing grief into the light of community.
The inspiration for this approach was the Book Club in a Bag program of the Annapolis Valley Regional Library. We will work carefully to ensure there is little overlap in the titles we choose (that is, we wish to supplement, not duplicate, the good work of our public library colleagues) and perhaps together, we can find creative means for book clubs to meet and share books together across the province.
We thank the NSHPCA for this welcome support and will announce more news as the kits become available.
Image cc0 by Mizuno K [Pexels]