Jill Johnson-Young
 LCSW

Jill Johnson-Young, LCSW is the co-founder and owner Central Counseling Services in Riverside and Murrieta, California. Jill specializes in grief and loss, dementia, and end of life, and is an international speaker in those areas. She has shaped her career to change the conversation about grief, to make preparing for the death of a loved one productive time to say goodbye, and to make dementia part of everyday conversation. Jill’s career has included being on the frontline in the initial AIDS crisis, close to two decades in child welfare and adoptions, and spending more than a decade with hospice as a medical social worker and a director. Jill co-hosts the Friday Grief Chat on Facebook Live and facilitates a monthly dementia support group online. Her most recent book, The Rebellious Widow, was released in March, 2021, along with other grief books for children and adults. Jill speaks into grief and dementia from both professional training and from being widowed twice and a caregiver for both her wife and her mom with dementia. She is an interactive and humorous speaker on tough subjects we all need to be able to talk into.

Intimacy Loss - We need to Talk About it When Doing Grief Work
Friday | May 3, 2024
1:45 pm - 3:15 pm
(1.5 CEs)

Workshop Description:

In this interactive and fast paced workshop we will tackle the special losses involved when a couple dies and an intimate partner is a survivor. We will cover trauma reduction after loss through a brief review of the dying process, discussion of reduction of trauma in the illness for those who may treat clients prior to death, and special considerations for sudden deaths. We will look at the special issues related to loss of intimacy and an intimate partner, the need for both couples and survivors to talk about the loss of sexual connection and recognition of that part of their relationship, new relationships and sexuality in grief, and ADC (after death communications) needs specific to intimate partner loss. We will check ourselves and our assumptions about what grief should look like for intimate partner survivors, and the impact of imposing grief rules on intimate partners recovering from loss.

Jill is known for courses that are lively, relaxed when covering difficult subject matter, being sensitive to the needs of those in the room, and comprehensive.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

• Describe at least one way the dying process is important in grief work.
• Describe the difference between the tasks for anticipatory grief for a dying couple with the grieving process for the survivor.
• Be prepared to compare and contrast the tasks of anticipatory grief for a dying couple with the grieving process for the survivor, and what the IP expecting loss may have accomplished prior to the death that changes the trajectory of grief.
• Explain at least two holistic needs of clients coping with grief after IP loss to provide psychoeducation for clients. 
• Name four kinds of ADC’s that are expected by the majority of IP loss survivors. 

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