My Approach To Grief Coaching

Hi. I’m Jennifer, and welcome to Your Sanctuary In Grief.

I have a deep passion for and dedication to the work I do. But I didn’t enter the grief profession through education alone. This career chose me after the death of my beloved Father. Let me explain …

My Father’s death in 2019 was traumatizing and transformative. Grief lay down on me, huge, heavy, and unrelenting. It seeped into my thoughts and behaviours and even rearranged my vocabulary, as some words do not work in grief, like ‘healing’ and ‘resiliency.’

My life and calling changed – as it happens when we endure the death of a loved one. I am who I am and where I am in my grief and career because of the wisdom, patience and compassion of my trauma grief psychotherapist.

His work in helping me move from trauma to survival to living forward in balance, peace, and in a loving connection with my Father is why I became a grief coach.

I am passionate about being a grief companion. I deeply enjoy and feel privileged to be the constant source of support for other grieving hearts, just as I received when I was grieving Dad’s death.

For six years now, I have been walking alongside grieving adults, helping them feel seen, heard, safe and supported. By offering grief wisdom and practical coping tools, I have helped them effectively manage their grief and find hope for what’s next in life after loss. I have done this through volunteering as a grief group facilitator with local charities and in my private practice.

My Approach to Grief Coaching

For me, grief coaching is about recognizing that you are the expert on yourself, your life, and your grief. I see us in a car, with you as the driver deciding where we go, how fast, and for how long, and me in the passenger seat. You ‘drive’ the sessions by choosing the topics and helping me understand your needs and wants. I sit beside you, looking out the window with you and listening.

I want to understand you, your grief, and your world as it is shaped by loss. So, I ask thoughtful questions and give you space to breathe and think. If you want to understand grief, I will share that wisdom when you ask. If you want to change how you are dealing with grief, I will ask whether you would like me to suggest coping tools other clients have found practical and helpful. I am here for you, beside you, as your companion in grief.

Every grieving heart deserves a safe place to share their grief. That’s why I make our sessions feel like a sanctuary: a safe place to be vulnerable, ask the hard questions, find answers, and see how you can move forward into a life you want. You will soon be able to deal with rather than react to your grief. And you will, at your own pace, move into a place of balance and peace. You will have knowledge and tools that will allow you to live with grief, stay connected to your loved one and have dreams, hope and happiness.

What My Grief Taught Me

• There was no beauty in my grief. Dad’s death had no silver linings, no lessons to be learned, and the ‘better’ place was alive and in my life. His death felt too soon and unfair.

• The hardest feeling in grief was the permanence of death.

• Grief is not simple. There is a lot going on inside my mind, heart and body, making it complicated to understand.

• Grief affected my whole self, which surprised me. Feelings, thoughts, behaviours, my body, my relationships with people, my relationship with myself and my world all shifted and changed because of grief.

• Grief was personal; it was about Dad and me, and comparing my grief and my coping to other people’s experience hurt me more than helped me. So, I stopped doing that, and feelings of guilt and shame around my grieving lessened.

• Grief changed my calendar into ‘before and after’ death.

• I started to understand the different theories and models about grief and coping. My grief didn’t follow any of them as stated. My grief was messy. I saw myself in bits and pieces of every theory, but my grief was mine.
While I didn’t follow the grief theories and models as they were written, learning that some of what I was experiencing had names and were recognized grief concepts was powerful. It helped me understand that some of the things I thought were wrong with the way I was grieving weren’t wrong at all.

• There is, in fact, no “right” or “wrong” way to feel grief or express it. I began to understand this when I attended grief groups after Dad died. I began to understand and accept that how I grieved was shaped by my relationship with Dad, our ages when he passed, my beliefs around death, dying, and grieving, my religion, my social circles’ acceptance and dismissal of my grief, the lack of support I had around me, and who I was as a person. This wisdom was powerful medicine in helping me to let go of shame, guilt, and embarrassment about my grief.

• You do not have to explain, justify it, or hurry through grief just to please anyone. Mostly because people who are not actively grieving will never ‘get it’.

• Ignoring my grief didn’t make it go away. I had to understand it and cope with it in a positive way.

• It felt good to talk about my grief in grief groups and with my therapist. Family and friends meant well, but they often suffered from foot-in-mouth syndrome, which made me feel that I was doing grief wrong. So, I needed grief boundaries, which became a self-care practice.

• Grief and love are intertwined.

• Grief never ends, but it shifts, changes, and softens with time.

• Staying connected to Dad daily was good medicine for me.

• If grief is a journey, then the destination is learning how to live forward. Mixing grief and love and creating balance and harmony. And my peace came when I kept my loving connection to my Father alive through daily heartfelt rituals.

• I did live again. I redefined who I was, what I wanted and what I needed to feel OK-ish. And I ended up having hopes and dreams.

• Life with loss, grief, and loving Dad is still hard at times, but he lives on inside of me. He is the voice that drives me to be the best grief coach and to live as happy as possible while loving him and honouring him.

If any of what I’ve shared feels like parts of your grief, then please consider booking a free discovery call with me. We can talk about your grief, what you need and want, and whether I might be the right person to support you as you learn to live forward with your grief.