SINT MAARTEN (GREAT BAY) - Two St. Maarten practitioners have been named featured keynote speakers at the Caribbean Griefology Conference 2026, a landmark regional gathering at the Hilton Barbados Resort from 12 to 15 November 2026 under the theme Rooted in Awareness, Healing, and Action.
The conference arrives at a moment our region knows too well. Chronic illness is claiming lives that could have had decades left, and families are burying the young alongside the old, often without warning. The grief that follows is carried quietly — absorbed into work, into worship, into the busyness of taking care of children — because we were never given permission to rest, or to be still. That unspoken weight surfaces later in our bodies, our marriages, our classrooms and our clinics.
Dr. Nicole E. Francis Cotton will open the conference with the Thursday plenary, The Biology of Grief, examining what loss does to the brain, the nervous system, and long-term physical health — the direct link between unprocessed grief and the chronic disease burden facing our region. A Marriage & Family Therapist, master therapist of twenty-five years and trauma specialist, she is founder and president of the Victorious Living Foundation. She co-developed the grief course for the University of the West Indies' BSc in Social Work, and developed the Master's Counselling Degree program taught at Grace Hill Bible University, St. Maarten Campus, where she teaches the grief course and the suicide assessment and prevention course within the curriculum.
Mr. Roy Cotton, Jr. brings a voice already familiar in Caribbean homes. Host of the syndicated radio program Love & Inspiration with Roy Cotton, Jr., which rose to first place on New York's Bshani Radio with 1.9 million listeners, he is a perinatal coach and co-therapist in marriage counselling at the Victorious Living Foundation, and has trained recruits within St. Maarten's Ministry of Justice. His work bridges media, mental health and community mobilisation — with particular attention to the silence Caribbean men are taught to keep around grief and loss.
“The Caribbean is not simply a region that needs help with grief,” said Dr. Francis Cotton. “We have been practising collective mourning for generations — our wakes here in St. Martin, Nine Nights in Jamaica, the drumming, our church services, the kitchens full of neighbours. What we have not always done is name it, study it, and offer it to the world as the resource it is. We have something significant to contribute to how humanity navigates dying, death and loss.”
Convened by Dr. Jaycee Mayers, founder of host organisation Reengineering Wellbeing Consultancy, the conference will bring together practitioners, researchers, community leaders and advocates from across the region and the diaspora to build a shared, culturally rooted language for grief. It will also mark the official launch of the Collective Grief Toolkit, a landmark resource for Caribbean communities, practitioners and policymakers.
Early-bird registration closes on Wednesday 30 September at 11:59 p.m. Full conference rates are BDS $650–$850 (US $325–$425); day passes are BDS $275 (US $137.50). Residents of St. Maarten and the region are encouraged to register before rates rise. Conference details are at caribbeangriefology.manus.space; tickets at tixhub.app/event/caribbean-griefology-conference-2026.
