GriefFree.org
Last summer, a small group of us who had been working with the Healthy Grieving process for about four years realized it was time to get this amazingly effective process out into the world in a bigger way. We had already created a website for the general public, but realized we could reach many more people by reaching out to the counseling profession. So in July, we began calling therapists along the Front Range who used a variety of modalities to help their clients, as this indicated to us that they might be open to a new approach.
The response was amazing.
Rather than hanging up the phone, counselors who had never heard of GriefFree.org or the Healthy Grieving process were eager and open to learning that there was a new way to work with their clients around issues of grief and loss.
One of the first therapists we spoke to said she had just been talking with a colleague about the need for some way to help her grieving clients. They felt that since Kübler-Ross introduced her Five Stages of Grief in the late 1960s, there hadn’t been much in the way of seminal work in the grief arena – and while that model could sometimes be helpful, most people didn’t really do their grieving in any particular order. Additionally, the therapist said, in her experience, identifying stages of grief didn’t actually help people move through their grief.
She felt that other than support, she didn’t have much to offer her clients in helping them to heal – and that most grief counseling and groups were also supportive rather than healing modalities. She was very excited to learn that there might actually be a way to assist her clients in letting go of their grief.
“Sign me up,” she said when we told her we were offering a free introductory workshop about the Healthy Grieving process.
When an experienced, Naropa-trained therapist in private practice says “yes” to giving up a half-day of her time to learn about a modality she’s never even heard of before, you know you’re onto something.
Since that day, we’ve held seven half-day Healthy Grieving Introductory Workshops and a two-day intensive training, with our second training scheduled for February 6th and 9th. More workshops and trainings are being scheduled every month, and we have also taken many individuals through the process who have come to us through the website. In fact, a gentleman from Mexico we recently took through the process is so excited about how Healthy Grieving helped him let go of his pain over his dad’s death that he wants to translate the work into Spanish!
It is very exciting to watch this all unfold, knowing that the world is hungry for a way to deal with grief and loss that is actually healing, not just supportive –and that the Healthy Grieving process can answer that need.