TGW Grief Stories
An 8-week guided study exploring the narratives we hold about loss
We are all carrying grief, yet here in our Western society we are lacking the support, tools, and resources to engage with loss in meaningful ways. When loss is supported through being with grief and sharing experiences with others to witness, we are invited into healing.
In The Grief Well (TGW) Grief Stories, facilitators will hold the space for participants to explore stories about grief through mind, body, and spirit. This space is created to encourage participants to listen to self, and others with an open mind and an open heart. There is time during each gathering for individuals to share their lived experience with grief, if they choose. The facilitator will use poetry, passages, quotes, story, writing prompts, sharing, and silence to support a kinship with grief. These gatherings are intentionally intimate with no more than 12 participants in each 8 week session.
​
When grief becomes complicated, that is, when there is not a gradual ease in the heavy emotions associated with loss, or when individuals feel stuck in their grief, it is recommended that folks seek professional help. This is common when trauma and grief stem from an experience of loss. These gatherings are not a substitute for spiritual, energetic, emotional, cognitive or physical support offered by a qualified therapist or practitioner. Should any participants experience strong reactions, it is best practice to reach out for additional support.
TGW Grief Stories offering has been reviewed by an advisory board of mental, spiritual, and somatic health care specialists including clinical counselors, therapists, and spiritual care advisors.
These gatherings are built through a trauma informed lens and each opportunity for group participation is offered as an invitation. There is no pressure to share or engage. At TGW we honour that some people are comfortable speaking while others are more quiet and private by nature. All is welcome.
April 21st - June 9th
Gathering online each Monday evening
from 5:30 - 7:00 pm​ PST​
Course Price: $300
The Grief Stories Kinship Journal can be ordered via Amazon and used alongside the course. This is not required, but recommended.
​
We want this offering to be barrier-free. If you feel called to join, but the tuition is holding you back, please send us a message to hello@thegriefwell.ca and we will work something out.
Weekly Stories
Week 1: Welcoming in & Introduction
Week 2: Grief + Story
Week 3: Grief + Culture
Week 4: Grief + Gifts
Week 5: Grief + Wilderness
Week 6: Grief + Body
Week 7: Grief + Joy (and anger too)
Week 8: Grief + Kinship
Visit the Grief Stories guided study registration page for full weekly overview & details.
The Grief Stories guided study will be complimented by TGW Grief Stories Kinship Journal,
The Grief Well Kinship Journal has been created to support our Grief Stories framework, and it can be used as a stand alone grief resource as well.
The intention of this journal is to tenderly guide readers to question the stories they hold about grief and to facilitate a kinship with grief. TGW Kinship Journal supports both death related loss and non-death related loss. In addition to honouring the emotional experience of grief, TGW Kinship journal acknowledges that grief affects us physically, cognitively, socially, and spiritually. To support this notion, The Grief Well Kinship Journal includes poetry, quotes, kinship practices, grief rituals, and writing prompts. There is ample space for reflections and expression of the experience of loss.
This journal is intentionally roomy to guide individuals to find their way by honouring natural wisdom. Grief asks us to be present and groundless, that is to be with what arises from moment to moment without fixating on a future destination. Our culture of knowing and control doesn’t often support this way of being, so for many this can be challenging. TGW Kinship Journal is a companion for navigating loss, it is our hope that it will inspire readers to dream into different possibilities about how to fully live through integrating a lifetime of loss.
Grief Stories
Facilitator Training
If you are interested in becoming a facilitator, our Grief Stories Facilitator Training offers a six-month, embodied journey to develop the skills needed to hold space for others in their grief. Through deep exploration of personal narratives and intentional rituals, you'll learn how to create a supportive environment for grief to be witnessed and honored.
"We will, in truth, spend many of our hours alone with our grief. In the cover of our solitude, we encounter another layer in our apprenticeship with sorrow. Here we are asked to hold an extended vigil with loss in the well of silence, slowly ripening our sorrow into something dense and gifting to the world. Our ability to drop into this interior world and do the difficult work of metabolizing sorrow is dependent on the community that surrounds us. Even when we are alone, it is necessary to feel the tethers of concern and kindness holding us as we step off into the unknown and encounter the wild edge of sorrow.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow