Finding a healthy way to deal with grief is a crucial tool for everyone to possess, and it's perhaps even more important over the holidays.

That's why the Millersville Community Church's Circles of Strength program for December is "Responding to Grief, Surviving to Thriving."

The free session will be held Saturday, Dec. 27, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the church, 163 W. Frederick St., Millersville.

Preregistration by Wednesday, Dec. 24, is encouraged but not mandatory in order to attend the session. Contact Kelly Dennis at 717-951-0266 or kelly@kellyfdennis.com to register or for additional information.

The program will help attendees realize the impact grief has on their lives, learn mechanisms to heal, and find local and online resources that can assist in the grieving process.

Church member Marj Paradise will be the guest speaker. Paradise, a retired psychologist, has worked at Philhaven and in the Ephrata Hospital Mental Health Unit. She also worked in the Hempfield School District for 28 years. Paradise will talk about her losses in life, including the death of her daughter, Elizabeth, at the age of 25.

"We all have gone through experiences of grief, obviously," said church member Bruce Heydt, who is one of the team leaders of the Empowered By Grace ministry. "I have lost both parents and my only sibling. When my mother, who passed away from cancer, was going through her struggle, my brother passed away during that struggle. And when the holidays came, it was just different because it used to be the family would get together. It's different now because when Christmas came, there was an empty chair."

Heydt recalls it was a particularly trying time for his mother, especially since she was dealing with her own cancer diagnosis. "The holidays bring back those memories," he said. "Of course, the loss goes on day by day throughout the year. I think (part of) of dealing with grief is that you move on and you continue your life and you could even use some of those experiences to help others like we're doing here."

Managing the initial shock of losing a loved one is taxing. "One of the things that really struck me in the lessons that we teach is that those who participate in that group, even in those early stages of shock, have a useful purpose," Heydt said. "We need a brief period of kind of shock of numbness until we can make that adjustment and then we move on to intense sadness, but even the sadness has a purpose. It validates that there's really something going on here, and I think that's an important point. Grief is not a bad thing to feel. It's a loss. It's natural. ... We need to express, in a healthy way, our grief."

Dennis, a church member and a licensed professional counselor, stated that the meetings are designed to provide encouragement and assistance. "We created Circles of Strength workshops for support because research really says that support is the best indicator of recovery from any sort of mental illness," she said. "We want to create these circles of family, and friends, and peers, and people who have struggled and/or are struggling, so that we can bring them together and show love, compassion. There's lots of information in these groups, but then there's also a lot of personal sharing a lot of times. Even though it's only an hour and a half, people really can feel like they've really made a connection and they've bonded."

Heydt noted that "Responding to Grief, Surviving to Thriving" will also be helpful to people who are not currently experiencing grief. "Sometimes people will say, 'I don't need that workshop because I'm not grieving,'" he said. "But I think it's a healthy thing to do it and probably a productive way to learn some of these strategies while we're in a good spot. Because when we're actually in the intense grief, that's a bad time to learn new strategies because our minds are just not thinking clearly sometimes. If we can learn how to help others along and how to be a support for others while we're not in crisis, then we're better prepared when that crisis does come."