Pondering Grief: A Conversation with Linda Espie and Dr. Carla van Laar at the 2025 Creative Mental Health Forum and Collective Care Retreat
“The experience and expression of grief is as unique as a finger print”.
Join us for an insightful and interactive workshop designed for creative/experiential therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, allied health professionals, educators, and arts and health workers at the 2025 Creative Mental Health Forum.
In “Pondering Grief Together,” renowned grief counsellors Linda Espie and Dr Carla van Laar will explore the deeply personal and unique experience of grief, emphasising its complexities and the various ways it can be expressed and understood.
This workshop will feature an open conversation between Linda and Carla, where they will share their professional insights and personal experiences related to grief. Topics of discussion will include the dynamics of grief, the interplay between grief and trauma, and the importance of recognising the individual nature of each person’s grieving process.
Participants will have the opportunity to engage in an interactive exchange, fostering a supportive community atmosphere for shared learning and reflection.
Image: One of Linda’s expressions of grief, a giant wave.
Pondering Grief: A Conversation with Linda and Carla
The experience and expression of grief is as unique as a finger print. Our personal story of grief may be explored and embodied in various ways – in our own way and in our own time.
Arts-based expressions of our voyage, while painful and perhaps perplexing at times, may also encapsulate wondrous presence and connection within self and the world, as we learn to “live into” life following the death of a loved one.
This session will provide an opportunity for those gathering to listen and witness an open conversation between two peers who know something about grief.
Image: One of Carla’s expressions of grief, and love, the dancing bottle brushes.
Our conversation hopes to embrace and affirm what may be understood, emerging, familiar, known, not yet known, that which may remain never knowable…the experience of grief.
In our Pondering Grief and bereavement as a backdrop, our conversation will move toward, warmly inviting listeners to partake in an interactive exchange…adding even greater depth to our conversation.
This exchange is designed to be dynamic, such as grief is known to be, stimulating and symbolically insightful as we meander with tenderness and compassion, through themes and arts-based responses including love, sorrow, missing, growth, and community, as well as a consideration of grief in personal and professional development.
Key Features of the Workshop
Dynamic Dialogue: Hold space for an engaging conversation that addresses critical questions surrounding grief, including societal perceptions and the impact of grief education on creative arts therapy and counselling.
Arts-Based Expression: Participants will be invited to create an image response to the conversation, allowing for the exploration of grief through artistic expression.
Collaborative Reflection: After the creative session, attendees will regroup to discuss their artworks, facilitating deeper insights into common themes and personal reflections on grief.
Networking Opportunities: Connect with fellow professionals who are passionate about integrating arts and health practices, enhancing your understanding and approach to grief work.
We ask crucial questions about grief
In this dynamic workshop, Dr. Carla van Laar will engage Linda Espie, an experienced grief counsellor, in a series of pressing questions that invite deep reflection and discussion.
Together, we will ponder:
How did you become a grief counsellor, and what do you do with your own grief while supporting others?
What insights can you share about the evolving nature of grief in a society that often denies death?
How do we recognise when someone is ready to confront their grief, and what does it mean for grief to be as individual as a fingerprint?
We will also explore the role of art in grief work and discuss why grief education appears to be missing from training programs in creative arts therapy.
Join us as we navigate these vital questions and enhance our understanding of grief in both personal and professional contexts.
Dr Carla van Laar welcomes Linda Espie, her wisdom and insights, to the 2025 Creative Mental Health Forum and Collective Care Retreat.
Image: Linda at her work desk.
Introducing Linda:
Image: Dr Carla in her studio.
Introducing Dr Carla
Carla is an Artist and Creative Arts Therapist based in Boon Wurrung Country, Inverloch, Victoria. She brings decades of experience working with people and the arts for well-being in community, justice, health, education and private practice contexts. Carla has lived experience as the parent of a child with disabilities and a life limiting condition, and it was during her beloved son Vaughn’s life that she was introduced to the life enhancing potential of creative arts therapies. She has worked with people who have disabilities since 1991 and continues this supportive 1:1 work today in her Inverloch based Art Therapy studio.
Experiential ways of knowing underpin Carla’s therapeutic work, including embodied attunement and arts-based responding, informed by trauma-centred, strengths-based, existential and narrative approaches. She loves to share creative practices as ways of knowing and being.
Carla’s book Bereaved Mother’s Heart (2007) broke social taboos about maternal grief. Seeing her Stories (2020) presents Carla’s research into making Women’s stories visible through art. Her most recent publication is “Art Therapy First Aid: Growing Capacity with Art Therapists in Communities Affected by Australian Bushfires”(in Scarce, J. (Ed.) 2022).
An educator in the field of Creative Art Therapy since 2001, Carla received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency” in 2018. She is a lead campaigner in the ACTivate Arts Therapy collective, and Founding Director of the Creative Mental Health Forum.
Carla insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life and is an agent of social change.
Join us for the fifth annual Creative Mental Health Forum. 2nd – 5th May 2025.
Boon Wurrung Country: Inverloch, Victoria, Australia.
An immersive professional development event for allied health professionals, educators and creative practitioners who are deeply interested in the new paradigm of creative mental health and wellbeing.
Join us for the fifth annual Creative Mental Health Forum.
2nd – 5th May 2025.
WE WELCOME
CREATIVE THERAPISTS,
ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
AND EDUCATORS WHO:
want to learn more about creative mental health,
be inspired by holistic and diverse workshops and presenters,
connect with like minded practitioners,
and “refill your well” with time in a beautiful nurturing environment and space for self care.
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