Check out BEST in Second Life, virtual world support for the individuals and communities.
Our programs offer peer and caregiver support, educational opportunities, special events and activities and more much.
It’s free and all are welcome!
Click here to start your journey today!
This fall, Cognicon returns! Save the date for October 14-15, 2022 for a virtual event that is like no other!
For those not familiar with Cognicon, the event was started in 2019. This virtual cognitive convention is designed to share information about brain health, wellness, self-care, empowerment, and supportive communities and programs in the virtual platform of Second Life.
There is no charge to attend and all are welcome!
As we get closer, we’ll be posting more information on what to expect and how you take part.
In the meantime, if you are new to Second Life, we highly encourage you to join BEST in Second Life today! It’s free to visit, explore and take part in activities and events. Click here to learn more and how you can get started.
The Meet Your Neighbor Project shares the work of nonprofits in Second Life.
Recently, BEST’s own Gloria Kraegel (a.k.a. as Namaara MacMoragh in Second Life), warmly welcomed community partners and supporters to explore BEST in the Metaverse in our virtual home of Etopia. Gloria/Namaara gave a short presentation on BEST’s history, services, programs and activities designed for those in the disability and neurodivergent communities.
Here’s the short YouTube video below. Enjoy!
For more information about BEST in Second Life, please click here. It is a free to participate and all are welcome!
Posted in Brain Health & Healing, Brain Injury Awareness, Caregiver Matters, Our BEST Stories, Self-Care & Mindfulness
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American society at large can hold standards and expectations when it comes to grieving and expressing grief. Those standards can be shaped, maintained and reinforced through television, movies, magazines and other means shared by society at large.
Types of grief that are widely accepted are types considered enfranchised by the majority.
However, some forms of grief are not widely recognized as appropriate. This is called disenfranchised grief: grief that doesn’t fit in with society’s attitudes about the proper way to grieve or grieving outside of areas generally acceptable by social norms.
Examples of disenfranchised grief include:
There are many more examples of grief that are not validated by society at large. Some grief inspires stigmas or disapproval, and can lead others to judge or criticize the one experiencing grief. It can give the message that such grief is inappropriate or you’re supposed to grieve alone. The reactions of others might cause feelings of shame or embarrassment instead of comfort and can prolong the grief and the pain.
Some people who might otherwise offer sympathy and support may not know how to respond to grief related to something not often discussed.
Unexpressed disenfranchised grief can lead to insomnia, substance abuse, anxiety, depression, diminished self-esteem, shame and physical symptoms like muscle tension or stomach distress.
Inability to maintain healthy relationships, difficulty focusing and mood swings are other possible difficulties that can also result from disenfranchised grief.
How does one cope with disenfranchised grief?
One of the most important coping strategies is to seek people who are comfortable with you sharing your grief and will be nonjudgmental. If there are no close, sympathetic friends available, support groups or therapy may be helpful.
Acknowledge your grief and give yourself permission to feel the grief, even though others may not validate your feelings or approve of them.
As with other forms of grief, keeping a journal may be helpful. Journaling may help process and express the grief that others may not feel is appropriate.
Taking care of your body is important. As I stated before, unexpressed grief can have negative physical effects as well as mental and emotional. Staying hydrated, maintaining a healthy diet, getting adequate sleep and exercise are advisable parts of a coping strategy. This is always a good idea, regardless, but may also help manage grief.
If your grief is for the passing of someone near and dear and there was a special place where you shared good times, spend some time in that place and think about the good times you shared.
None of these coping strategies may work for you, but when you are having difficulty expressing that grief, feel free to find your own way to express it privately.
Above all, give yourself permission to grieve, to grieve for as long as you need, and to grieve in your own way, whether or not others approve.
Grief is a topic that is currently generating a lot of interest in certain quarters. The conversation has tended to focus on grief in general. I wanted to expand the scope of grief to include types not normally discussed or even commonly recognized.
The types of grief I’ve examined so far are as follows:
There are at least nine other types of grief I haven’t touched on:
And there are likely other forms of grief of which I’m not yet aware. I may address some or all of these types of grief in the future.
Who would have thought a simple thing like grief could be so complicated?
 | Isaac Peterson grew up on an Air Force base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. After graduating from the University of Wyoming, he embarked on a career as an award-winning investigative journalist and as a semi-professional musician in the Twin Cities, the place he called home on and off for 35 years. He doesn’t mind it at all if someone offers to pick up his restaurant tab and, also, welcomes reader comments. Email him at isaac3rd@gmail.com. Read more articles by Isaac here; https://www.brainenergysupportteam.org/archives/tag/isaac-peterson |
Posted in Brain Health & Healing, Brain Injury Awareness, Caregiver Matters, Our BEST Stories, Self-Care & Mindfulness
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Most people have likely heard, at one time or other, of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief:
That’s all well and good, but those stages don’t deal with varying types of grief.
Types of grief? I had only thought grief was just grief, but it turns out there are categories of grief itself.
I’ll deal with two types of grief: ambiguous grief and anticipatory grief. Understanding and explaining these types of grief can get kind of messy and confusing, but I’ll do my best.
I’ll address ambiguous grief here today, and anticipatory grief in a separate piece.
Ambiguous grief is the grief we feel with the loss of someone who is still alive. It’s different from the feeling of grief and loss from the actual physical death of someone near and dear. The person is still physically present, but may not be mentally or emotionally the same way they were before.
I think this is the kind of grief many traumatic brain injury survivors face when they feel key qualities or abilities they had before the injury are gone or diminished. Their grief is over the loss of the person they were before.
That kind of grieving can be experienced by the people in a survivor’s life as well. Ambiguous grief is very well known by people who have a loved one with dementia or Alzheimer’s. The person is physically here, but not emotionally or mentally present as they were before. That grief is largely over the loss of the loved one as he or she once was, but it can also be about the loss or change in the relationship.
A person going through ambiguous grief may not realize that what they are experiencing is grief. Ambiguous grief can take the form of sadness, anger, guilt, or a range of different emotions.
Our love for that person hasn’t changed; but we deeply miss the person our loved one used to be and our relationship with them.
This type of grief may be made worse when others don’t acknowledge or understand those feelings. It may feel like others are not giving their permission to feel grief and can lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation. Those feelings can be made even worse when others are not open to letting them talk their way through them.
So how does someone cope with their sense of grief and loss when experiencing this kind of grief?
There are uncountable ways of coping, depending on the person.
Some ways I found online to cope with that grief are the following:
1. Give a name to what you’re experiencing. Just understanding what you’re going through and being able to recognize it is the first step in building resilience to the loss.
2. Find a therapist.
3. Join a support group.
4. Celebrate what remains of your loved one.
5. Try to develop new hope for the future.
The daughter of a dear friend was in an auto accident on the freeway. She survived, but with a severe traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress. She was a college student with her whole life ahead of her, but her whole life was turned upside down, and what the future holds for her is uncertain. She is unlikely to get back to being the person she was before the accident.
About that loss my friend says this: “I am definitely grieving the daughter that I had prior to the accident.” She is constantly looking for ways to cope and seems to have settled on numbers four and five, noted in the list above.
She shares this as well: “I have a piece of paper taped to the dash of my car. I read it multiple times while I am driving. It says ‘It is okay to grieve the daughter you used to have. Someday you will celebrate the daughter she will become. I have not reached the celebration point yet. And quite frankly, I don’t know how to get there.”
But she will keep on going until that day comes.
These coping strategies are not the only possibilities, but it is very important to try to find our own ways to cope with the loss.
But first it’s very important to identify and acknowledge the cause of the grief; that baseline will help zero in on a coping strategy that will help make it through the difficult emotional times.
More to come on the different types of grief along with resources, tips and strategies to help you cope with it.
| Isaac Peterson grew up on an Air Force base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. After graduating from the University of Wyoming, he embarked on a career as an award-winning investigative journalist and as a semi-professional musician in the Twin Cities, the place he called home on and off for 35 years. He doesn’t mind it at all if someone offers to pick up his restaurant tab and, also, welcomes reader comments. Email him at isaac3rd@gmail.com. Read more articles by Isaac here; https://www.brainenergysupportteam.org/archives/tag/isaac-peterson |
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
In a world full of change, especially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Brain Energy Support Team (BEST), took the quote above to heart.
In 2020, BEST was rocked by the pandemic, like many other organizations. BEST in-person programs were closed, and a major funding source shifted priorities impacting BEST financially. While transformation for the organization and community was not easy, BEST literally made the best of it, exploring new service delivery methods as well as tried and true established models.
Capitalizing on its online and Second Life presence and partners, BEST continues serving the brain injury community. The benefits of learning social, sustainable, and behavioral skills in a virtual world provide unique opportunities and demonstrate the value of virtual worlds for organizational sustainability.
The result was (and is) an empowered, creative, and exciting journey forward for the organization and BEST community alike.
The nonprofit organization had an opportunity to share their story for an international audience at the recent 15th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference which focused on the use of immersive virtual environments for educational purposes including virtual and augmented reality. Attendees are educators, doctoral students, artists, and nonprofit or service organization professionals that provide educational and/or creative opportunities for their community. The speakers are actively engaged in virtual worlds, especially Second Life, to provide immersive learning experiences for their students and program participants, clients, and even patients.
The 2022 conference theme was Phoenix Rising, with the mission of exploring and sharing ideas about embracing the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances and innovative technologies to their best effect.
“I’m proud of so many things. I’m proud of the way our team helped close down physical locations and shift to a completely online operation. I’m proud of the way our community partners have stuck with us and supported us through all of this. I’m proud of the incredible support of our online audience, our program participants, and our online and virtual partners have shown us.
I think what I am most proud of and appreciative for is that our team has remained as close over the past two years as we’d been during the 12 years before COVID overwhelmed us. Many organizations would have folded and that would have been it. Not so for BEST and that’s because of the incredible people on our team.”
And Gloria/Namaara’s biggest challenge with the transition?
“Building a storage unit on my property to store all of the physical assets we didn’t redistribute to others in the community from Our BEST Space in University Place, Washington,” she chuckles.
Aside from the aforementioned storage unit, BEST project partners have been key in collaborations, sharing ideas and inspiration, and conversations.
Gloria/Namaara is grateful for their support.
“Our project partners are both Second Life and real world collaborators,” she says. “For example, BEST hosted a community art exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum in 2019 in Tacoma, Washington. We had so many of our BESTies from across Washington State participate in this amazing show. Renee Emiko Brock, artist and professor, a long-time Second Life project partner joined us for this event Since the onset of COVID, she’s helped us with superhero workshops in Second Life, opened a virtual campus at Etopia and engaged our community in student projects. She did a presentation at this conference about the way she uses Second Life with her Peninsula College students.”
“Whole Brain Health in Second Life is another partner we’ve been working with, especially during our shift from in-person to fully online program delivery,” Gloria/Namaara continues. “They’re a vital partner in helping make our annual CogniCon virtual conference the engaged learning experience that it is. By the way, we’ll host our third BEST CogniCon in October this year. Plus we facilitate a monthly Brain Busters discussion at a virtual model of the Brodmann Brain located on their region. We also partner with Virtual Ability Inc. on best practices for universal design and access for those with physical and/or cognitive challenges in Second Life.”
Where does Gloria/Namaara see the journey forward for BEST? What does the future hold?
As she sees it, it is chock full of opportunities, empowering communities, and so much more.
“The journey forward is filled with so many opportunities to support a broader community of those with cognitive challenges. That excites me.” As for looking toward the future, she says “I think that immersive environments are the future of service delivery. COVID took what was years away and forced everyone, regardless of age, occupation, economic or social position, to adapt quickly and, often, without the skills or tools needed to be successful.”
Gloria/Namaara continues, “However, BEST has always focused our energy on empowering those with brain injury to have meaningful lives and work. In addition to in-person activities and personal coaching, we’ve used meeting software, online tools, and more for a variety of our activities over the years.
BEST is uniquely positioned to support the kind of connections our community wants and needs in a rapidly changing world. For example, in March 2020 when everyone began using Zoom as the video conferencing platform of choice, BEST launched an online, self-paced Zoom course. We also offered facilitators in our network a phone extension and use of our virtual meeting tools.
The media has been full of Facebook calling themselves Meta and their mission to reshape community connections virtually, but the metaverse has been around for over 20 years and we’ve been there for 14 of those years. So, when I look toward the value of immersive, virtual environments BEST is there and we’re building the kind of programming to meet the challenges of the future. Multi-user virtual environments for experiential learning and social connections is the future.
All I can do is invite folks to join us.”
To see Gloria/Namaara’s full presentation at the 15th annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, see the video attached below.
