The Work We Carry

Grief Support for Immigration Advocates

Defending immigrant communities under attack right now is both deeply meaningful and deeply heart-rending work. Attorneys, social workers and paralegals stand beside their clients each day, as they face a system designed to dehumanize and demoralize. Frontline advocacy can lead to exhaustion, numbness, hypervigilance, secondary traumatic stress, or disconnection from self and purpose. Grief is often found beneath the surface – unspoken and untended to.

ENROLL NOW

The Work We Carry is an 6-week, cohort based program designed specifically for NYC-based immigration legal service providers. This cohort-based program offers a space to slow down, acknowledge the weight of this work, and learn practical tools for processing grief and sustaining long-term resilience.

Participants will receive

  • Education on Grief as a Psychosocial Process: Learn how grief impacts the body, mind, and spirit and why naming it matters.

  • Experiential Practice: Each week introduces a different grief-tending practice or processing tool you can use immediately in your day-to-day work.

  • Dedicated Space to Process Loss: Weekly time to reflect and process specific experiences of loss, overwhelm, or moral injury within your work and in the world.

  • Community & Connection: Gather with others who share your values and understand the unique demands of immigration legal services.

  • Personalized Toolkit: By the end of the program, participants will leave with their own grief-tending toolkit and language to articulate what they’re experiencing — empowering them to sustain both their work and their well-being.

This group provides a rare, intentional space to witness, metabolize, and transform grief — building not just individual capacity, but collective resilience.

Details

  • Format: 6 weekly live sessions (60 minutes each)

  • Dates: Tuesdays, January 13 - February 17

    • 1/13, 1/20, 1/27, 2/3, 2/10, 2/17

  • Time: 7-8p EST 

  • Location: Zoom 

  • Who It’s For:  Anyone providing direct legal services to immigrant communities in NYC

  • Cost: We're offering a sliding scale to help ensure more equitable access. Please pay according to the tier that best reflects your average yearly income and if you're able to pay a higher fee regardless of your income, please consider doing so.

    Payment can be made in full at the time of registration or in two equal installments: first half due at registration and second half due after our third session. If you would like to attend but cost remains a barrier, please reach out and we can discuss options.

  • $65k or less = $300

  • $65-85k = $500

  • $85k or more = $600

Meet Your Facilitators

Elizabeth Keeney, LCSW, MPA is a psychotherapist and organizational wellness consultant in NYC. Keeney spent several years as a direct services provider in public defense and legal services organizations including Brooklyn Defenders, The Bronx Defenders, and the Urban Justice Center before transitioning to her own trauma therapy and consulting practice. As a consultant, Keeney specializes in counseling, coaching, training and supervision for legal services providers.


Mangda Sengvanhpheng is an artist, death doula, and the founder of BACII. Through BACII, she offers supportive services rooted in holistic care addressing loss and grief of all kinds. Mangda’s life and death work is guided by her Lao last name, which means “the light of the full moon.” Her work has been featured in VICE, Vogue, Architectural Digest, NY Mag’s Curbed, and more.

ENROLL NOW