Course Description:
Learning Objectives:
1. Describe how the specific words and language providers use during NICU conversations shape a family's sense of safety, identity, and long-term emotional healing, with a focus on those surrounding loss and bereavement.
2. Identify how narrative medicine and storytelling function as therapeutic tools supporting parental meaning-making, coping, and connection — and how they apply to NICU loss specifically.
3. Learn to apply practical language, relational care, and narrative-based strategies for holding space, using supportive phrasing, and inviting a family's story before, during, and after a NICU stay or loss.
Certificate:
By completing and passing this webinar course, you will attain the certificate NICU Bereavement Care.
Learning Credits:
Continuing Education Units 1.0
Presenter Bios:
Mahaley Patel, LMFT, PMH-C is a licensed therapist specializing in perinatal mental health. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA and a Master’s degree from Pepperdine University. Mahaley brings a deeply compassionate, client-centered approach to her work, supporting individuals and families as they navigate pregnancy, postpartum, loss, and the complex emotional landscape of parenthood. In addition to her clinical practice, she serves on the bereaved parent advisory board at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and facilitates a child-loss support group for grieving parents. Mahaley’s work is shaped not only by her clinical training, but by her lived experience as a bereaved mother. After losing her daughter, Saachi, she became passionate about helping bereaved parents. She is the co-author of Your NICU Story, a guided reflection journal for families navigating the NICU, and her work centers on helping parents feel less alone in moments that can feel isolating and overwhelming.
Emily Souder, MA, LCSW-C, PMH-C is a licensed therapist specializing in perinatal mental health who enjoys supporting neurodivergent families. With BA and MA degrees in sociology from University of Maryland, Baltimore County and an MSW from University of Maryland School of Social Work, Emily has written multiple books, including Your NICU Story (co-authored with Mahaley Patel); Birth Story Brave, Reimagined; and Birth Story Held for Loss and believes in the healing properties of doing story work in therapy and in life.
Mary Farrelly, RN, BSN, RNC-NIC, C-ND is a certified Level IV NICU nurse, NICU doula, nurse educator, and founder of The NICU Translator, where she works to bridge the gap between complex neonatal medical care and the emotional needs of babies and their families. Through her work, Mary trains doulas and care professionals to provide trauma-informed, NICU-informed support to families navigating high-risk births, NICU stays, and life after discharge. She is the creator of NICU Doula Academy, a certification program preparing professionals to support NICU families before, during, and after their NICU experience. Mary is passionate about helping create more compassionate, connected care for families during some of the most vulnerable moments of early parenthood.
