I am a certified Grief Recovery Method Specialist.

The Grief Recovery Method was developed by John W. James. John and his wife and daughter were expecting a baby in 1977. When their baby died a few days after birth, John was devastated. He was not able to find the help he needed in dealing with his grief. Well-meaning medical people told him and his wife they were “lucky to have another child” or that they were “fortunate that they were young and could try again.” Well-meaning religious people didn’t do any better, telling them things like, “God just needed another little angel” or “God won’t give you any more than you can handle.”

Frustrated and still deep in grief, John began searching out what he wished had been available for him and his family - what he wished people had said (or not said) that may have helped him and his family recover from their own devastating loss. John had learned that it was a good and right thing for him to “be strong” for his grieving wife. She too held this misguided belief, and so while both were working hard to be strong for each other, they were not honest with each other about how much they hurt - how deep their grief was - and eventually their relationship ended in divorce, as many do after the loss of a child.

As John began to recover, other grievers began seeking him out to help them, too. At the urging of others, he wrote his thoughts and actions down and published the first edition of The Grief Recovery Handbook. He also began to teach others (initially funeral directors)The Grief Recovery Method and how to deliver these tools and help other grievers use them to achieve their own recovery.

The Grief Recovery Method has been taught and practiced for 40 years across six continents and has evolved to include these books and sessions: When Children Grieve (first published after the Columbine tragedy) and Grief Recovery for Pet Loss. In 2019 The Grief Recovery Method became the first evidence-based grief recovery program available.

Whether grief is caused by death, divorce, or another loss, incomplete relationships and unfinished business can have a lifelong negative impact on your capacity for happiness. Unresolved grief is almost always about things we wish we’d said or done differently, better, or more. It is also about the unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations we had for the relationship.

Recovery from loss is achieved by a series of small and correct choices made by the griever. As a Grief Recovery Method Specialist, my job, along with the The Grief Recovery Handbook, is to explain what those correct choices are, create a safe, confidential space for openness and honesty, and to guide you in taking tried and true actions that lead to your recovery and healing from loss.

If your heart (or health) is pleading with you to move from being a storage tank for your grief to becoming a grief processing plant, let’s get to work.