Find Hope, Acceptance and Connection Navigating Your Journey with a Grief Coach
Grief, I say, come in. Sit down…This will take as long as it takes.
grief coaching
Are you you keeping yourself busy and distracted to avoid the discomfort of your grief yet worry you’re not dealing with it in healthy way?
Are you struggling to connect to yourself and feeling lonely and isolated in your grief?
Are you unsure how to care for yourself as you grieve?
Are you afraid that letting go of your pain means letting go of the one(s) you love?
Are you getting through each day stuck in survival mode?
Grief is messy, confusing, and unpredictable. It rips us open and leaves us numb and overwhelmed in a completely destabilized world. It moves on its own timeline. And even when we feel we’ve found a measure of equilibrium, it can sneak up on us and set us reeling. Grief is also a natural part of life. Yet what do we do with this immense experience when our culture does so little to prepare us for it? How do we navigate this threshold knowing we’ll never be the same ? You can begin by gifting yourself dedicated space to process your grief and be witnessed in your raw and honest emotions. By having a skilled and compassionate guide to help you move from heaviness and paralysis to:
prioritizing time for you to turn toward your grief with care, curiosity and compassion
broadening your awareness of support to meet the emerging parts of yourself with courage and kindness and feel less alone
finding ways to nourish and honor yourself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually as you express your grief
creating new pathways of connection with your loved ones so your relationship can deepen and evolve
learning to trust life again as you become more confident navigating your grief
I will journey with you through the wilderness that is grief, recognizing that each griever’s path is unique and there is nothing to fix, get over or move on from. What you will receive is support to carry your grief with more ease, greater boundaries, perspective, insight and deep care for yourself.
services
One-on-one coaching sessions: $125/hour-long session or a 5-session package at $531.25 (15% off). Couples and groups are $175/hour.
In these sessions, offered in person, via Zoom, or over the phone, we will make space for your feelings, your stories, your relationship to grief and the patterns, behaviors and messaging that may be keeping you stuck. In addition to reflective listening and guidance, sessions may include writing prompts, ritual suggestions, meditation, and light movement. In-person sessions may also incorporate Reiki and Indigenous Andean healing practices from the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition.
Grief walks: $85 - $125 sliding scale
Offered in the Wissahickon, these one-hour walks are a chance to explore your grief in safe and gentle conversation while being held by the grounding energy of the Earth and nourished by the flowing waters of the Wissahickon Creek. Less focused on tools and practices, they center nature as the container of care and support to create more spaciousness to be with your grief.
Ritual: $250 and up
Looking for a way to move your grief, connect with your loved ones or create a healing space for family and friends to share their sorrows? Ritual and ceremony can bring healing balm to the grief journey by reminding us of our place in the wider web of life, connecting us to our ancestors and the more-than-human world and inviting offerings of beauty, art, song, food, prayer and more to honor the places and beings that support us in tending our grief.
For additional offerings and packages, see here.
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There are many kinds of losses in life that bring us to unbearable grief. Most of my clients come looking for support after a loved one has died. But I also hold space for many other griefs including changes in/loss of a relationship, loss of connection to self, job loss or retirement, health changes and diagnoses, and the overwhelm that can come with navigating challenging times. I have worked with clients at various stages of their grief journey from navigating the immediacy of loss to grieving childhood losses to moving through the more vague and murky ambiguous losses that impact how they’re showing up in life. Whether it’s been months or years, a willingness and openness to engage one’s grief at any point along the journey is always a welcome starting point.
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Everyone feels and processes grief differently. There is no right or wrong way, or timeline for moving forward, but there are healthy and unhealthy ways of grieve. If you feel you do not have supportive spaces in your life to be with your grief; if you feel pressured to move on or grieve differently than you’ve been doing; if you’re numbing out and choosing distraction but ready for a different approach; if you feel stuck, blocked or lonely in your grief; if you’re longing to stay connected to a loved one who has died; or you’re looking for new possibilities for your life within the paradigm of loss, then grief coaching may be for you.
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Generally speaking, therapists are trained and licensed to help individuals struggling with their mental health, while coaches are not. Therapy also tends to be more focused on the past to illuminate its impact on the present while coaching takes a future-oriented approach, helping you move toward living a life that feels true to the you that’s emerging. Grieving, however, is not meant to be a goal-oriented journey, and while my intention is to help you build and navigate life after loss, knowing your grief will always be a part of you, I believe this evolution begins with creating space to feel and express your emotions. That’s the ground where we’ll meet.
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There are no requirements for the duration of a coaching relationship, and the number of sessions you need may depend on where you are in your grief journey. You may be in the acute and immediate stages of grief or be a few years out from your loss. You may be dealing with multiple losses at once or be ready to confront the grief you’ve been avoiding for years. Or you might want guidance around a specific area unique to your grief or help creating a practice/ritual to honor your loss. My intention is to meet you where you are and work from there, though I do recommend a minimum of 5-6 weekly sessions for those beginning or looking to deepen their grief care and support. While sessions can also be booked on an as-needed basis, your commitment to show up weekly or biweekly helps to root you in your healing journey and the shifts, insights, changes and meaningful moments that come along the way.
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While I do not take insurance, I do offer a reduced rate of $100 per session to those who need it. You can assess where you fall on the sliding scale here. I also offer workshops and other community events throughout the year, which you can learn about by signing up for my newsletter.
Upcoming Online Offerings
Unlocking Grief Through Poetry
In this virtual, 3-week class, we’ll make space to explore and tend to our losses through the words of poets. As we read the poetry of Ross Gay, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Danusha Lameris, Denise Levertov, Mahogany L. Browne and others that journey through the landscape of grief, we’ll write in response to those poems and how they speak to our own heartbreak, inviting us into more compassion for ourselves, into connection with our loved ones who have died and into honoring our own unique experience of loss. No poetry writing experience necessary. Classes meet from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays October 14-28 via Zoom Register and learn more here.
Upcoming In-Person Offerings
Grief Walk in Nature
This popular offering in collaboration with the Philly Goat Project is an invitation to gather in community to feel less alone in your grief, to lean into the support of the more-than-human world and to share in brief creative and ritual practices to help express what’s in your heart. Walks are held seasonally with the next one scheduled for September 26. This is a FREE event with no registration required but you can read more about it here and check out this short film made by Recovery Diaries about how Philly Goat Project supports grievers in community.
Grief Medicine Retreat: A Gathering to Soothe the Broken Heart
In these times of wild uncertainty, chaos and collapse, we need more spaces where we can come together to travel the vulnerable terrain of grief and loss. Join Amy Hyun Swart and me for three days of sacred grief tending and ritual at the Historic Ben Lomond Quaker Center in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California Oct. 2-4. Participate in guided meditations, somatic practices to connect to the wisdom of the body and the land, and creative offerings to learn how to carry our grief with care and patience rather than ignoring, or being obliterated by, it. There will also be time to be nurtured by and rest in our serene surroundings while being nourished by delicious plant-based foods.
Single and double rooms and camping are available and pricing includes the course, all meals and lodging. Early bird pricing is available through Aug. 1.
For all details, pricing and registration information, visit here.
Held by the Earth: A Grief Careshop
In this careshop, scheduled for October 11 from 1-3 p.m. at the Franciscan Spiritual Center, we will spend some time outdoors reconnecting to the Earth through poetry, journaling, and embodied practice, to open up to her support. To listen for what wisdom she may have to offer to meet the sorrows we carry. All griefs, from the personal to the planetary, are welcome. Learn more and register here.
Gathering on Sorrow’s Ground
Many of us are carrying grief in our bodies and our lives while holding onto harmful messaging that we must push through, get over it, move on. Grief is natural and sacred to the human experience. In this 5-week series, running from 3-4:30 p.m. Oct. 15-Nov. 12 at Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting, we’ll create a welcome space to learn what our grief has to teach us, and how to care for our grief and approach it from a place of reverence. Through wisdom sharing, writing, embodiment practices, poetry and ritual, we will tend this ground of sorrows together, gathering in community as we were always meant to. Learn more about this Mt. Airy Learning Tree fall offering and register here.