Grief Gardens and Memory Paths: Using Expressive and Sand Tray Play Therapy

Grief Gardens and Memory Paths: Using Expressive and Sand Tray Play Therapy

Come join us at 2205 York Rd on March 4, 2026 at 11:00 AM (Eastern Time) for a unique event focused on using expressive and sand tray play therapy to navigate grief. This interactive workshop will explore creative ways to process emotions and memories, offering a safe space for healing and growth.

Grief can manifest differently across the lifespan, yet all clients benefit from symbolic, embodied, and creative pathways for meaning-making. This training explores how children, adolescents, and adults use sand tray therapy and expressive arts to externalize loss, honor connections, and cultivate resilience. Participants will learn clinical interventions such as grief gardens, memory paths, symbolic rituals, and legacy-based projects that support clients in processing complex emotions, integrating memories, and constructing narratives of healing.

Grounded in grief theory, developmental considerations, and trauma-responsive practice, the workshop highlights how expressive and sand tray modalities facilitate regulation, deepen insight, and foster continued bonds with loved ones. Case examples across age groups will illustrate how these interventions strengthen emotional processing, support developmental tasks, and promote adaptive coping throughout the grief journey.

Objectives:

• Identify grief expressions and symbolic themes that commonly arise in sand tray and expressive play across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• Demonstrate play therapy interventions such as grief gardens, memory paths, and symbolic rituals to support emotional processing and remembrance.
• Apply trauma-responsive and developmentally attuned sand tray approaches to help clients externalize grief and regulate affect.
• Integrate expressive modalities into play therapy to strengthen narrative meaning-making, secure connections, and continued bonds.
• Describe how grief impacts emotional, cognitive, and physiological systems across different developmental stages.
• Evaluate client progress using symbolic representations, narrative shifts, and changes in affective engagement.

Continuing Education:

My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7253. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. My Crossing Paths Counseling Center is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
My Crossing Paths Training Center is approved by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Mental Health Counseling. Provider # 50-37274.

​My Crossing Paths Training Center has been approved by the Association for Play therapy, APT No. 23-705. Programs that do not qualify for APT credit are clearly identified.

​My Crossing Paths Training Center, has been approved as an Association of Social Work Boards Approved Continuing Education (ACE) Provider. ACE provider approval number is 1877. Training that are ACE approved with be identified on the training material with correct CE credit and type.

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Host or Publisher Julia Knach, My Crossing Paths Counseling Center