Sitting Without a Script: Working with Grief in Individuals and Families
Presenter: Sara Corse, PhD
Bio: Dr. Sara J. Corse is a licensed clinical psychologist with 36 years of experience working with individuals, couples, and families. She serves as Chief Clinical Officer at Council for Relationships, where she is also Director of the Community Partnerships Initiative. Her integrative clinical approach draws on individual, relational, and systemic perspectives, with particular expertise in grief and loss, trauma, and the complexities of family relationships. Dr. Corse is the author of Cradled All the While: The Unexpected Gifts of a Mother’s Death, a memoir exploring caregiving, grief, and the transformation of a complicated mother-daughter relationship during terminal illness. She has presented workshops and seminars on grief and loss, trauma, healthy relationships, and family dynamics.
About This Training: Grief takes many forms beyond traditional stage models, including ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, prolonged grief, and losses associated with trauma, relationships, and major life transitions. This training explores contemporary grief theory through a relational and family-systems lens, examining how loss affects identity, relationships, family roles, and the ways people adapt to change. Drawing on clinical examples and selected material from Sara Corse’s Cradled All the While: The Unexpected Gifts of a Mother’s Death, participants will explore how to distinguish typical grief from conditions requiring additional intervention and apply evidence-informed approaches that support adaptation, meaning-making, and connection without imposing a prescribed timetable or path to recovery.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Differentiate normative grief responses from Prolonged Grief Disorder and major depressive disorder, and recognize the distinct experiences of disenfranchised grief and ambiguous loss.
- Describe the Dual Process Model, continuing bonds, and meaning-reconstruction perspectives and contrast their clinical applications with traditional stage-based models of grief.
- Analyze how loss may affect identity, relationships, family roles, communication, and family-system organization, including the clinical implications of family members grieving differently.
- Identify evidence-informed clinical interventions for differing grief presentations, including loss- and restoration-oriented coping, grief-focused cognitive-behavioral strategies, and meaning and narrative reconstruction.
Audience: This training is for interns, pre-licensed therapists, and licensed professionals. It is designed for a professional audience and includes time for networking with peers.
Continuing Education: CFR is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Council for Relationships maintains responsibility for this program and its content. CFR’s continuing education programs may also qualify for licensure renewal credit for Pennsylvania LCSWs, LPCs, and LMFTs, as well as New Jersey psychologists, LPCs, and LMFTs, subject to applicable licensing requirements. Participants licensed in other states or professions should verify credit acceptance with their licensing boards.
Discounts: Available for CFR staff and members of the clergy. Please contact CFR for discounts and promotions.