Co-created by Kara LC Jones of Mother Henna and Cath Duncan of Remembering For Good, this 12-module Creative Grief Coaching Certification Program is steeped in Cath and Kara’s personal experiences of learning to live wholeheartedly after loss, as well as over 20 years of collective practice as helping professionals.

Cath and Kara will guide you through the 12 modules of perspective-shifting ideas and creative tools, and several guest faculty members (Dr Harriet Lerner, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, Dr Lorraine Hedtke, Jamie Smart, Heather Plett, Vanessa Gorman) will teach their ground-breaking research and practice models.

 

Who this course is for:

If some of the following statements are true for you, then you’d be a great fit for our course and we hope you’ll apply:

  • You already have some experience – either paid or as a volunteer – working in some sort of caring or helping role. It doesn’t have to be a professional role, but we want to know that you have some experience of bearing the responsibility of helping others outside of your family.
  • You have some basic training in the foundational skills of helping professions - either formally or informally – listening skills, empathy skills and rapport-building skills. We’re selecting applicants who already know these foundational skills so that we can focus on the more advanced grief-specific creative coaching tools, and learn to use them with greater depth of understanding.
  • You feel a “calling” towards working within the arena of loss and bereavement, or you work in an arena where loss and bereavement are a big part of your clients’ experience (eg. trauma recovery/ mental health/ hospital services/ disability/ infertility/ divorce and family support, etc).
  • You may already work a lot with loss, and you’re looking for fresh perspectives and new, creative tools to deepen and enrich your practice. This isn’t a beginner’s course – experienced Social Workers, Psychologists, Hospice Workers, Counselors, Art Therapists, Spiritual Counselors and Pastors looking to develop their practice are welcome.
  • You want a training experience that is creative, intimate, real, rich and deep, so that you’ll integrate the theory at a deeper level and can feel confident that you are equipped to work with people who are bereaved.
  • You’re prepared to commit a significant amount of time and attention to this course so that you can keep up with the class pace and homework requirements and be a fully participating member of the class. You will be able to fit this course in with a full-time job, but expect to devote at least 5 hours a week to completing the live calls, prescribed reading and homework for this course.
  • You have some sort of personal experience with loss and grief.

What’s in the program?

The 12-module program draws on an eclectic range of theories and practices that we’ve found to be helpful: narrative therapy, art therapy, appreciative enquiry, neuro-linguistic psychology, shame resilience theory, buddhism, family therapy, learning theory, resilience theory and more. Here’s what we’ll cover in each module:

Module 1 – Introducing The Core Frames For The Course 

  • We’ll introduce you to each other and to the core ideas that run through the entire course: grief is not an illness or broken-ness; grieving as a learning journey; shame as an obstruction to healthy grieving; the benefits of grieving in community; curiosity as a resource, and grieving as a creative process. We’ll also cover what it means to “live wholeheartedly after loss.”
  • Jamie Smart from salad.co.uk will join us as a guest lecturer, to share his “3 Principles” work.

Module 2 – Living Wholeheartedly After Loss

  • You’ll understand how grief affects our personal and social identity. We’ll cover what it means to live wholeheartedly after loss and we’ll share 2 creative exercises that will help your clients to reconnect with their true selves and determine their true values and desires in order to create their new, wholehearted personal and social identity after loss.

Module 3 – The Real Problem: Fear And Shame 

  • Fear is actually a very common grief emotion – especially in the early days and weeks after loss. Shame is a specific fear that can be very destructive and painful, and get us stuck in our grieving. You’ll learn about the way that fear and shame impacts our bodies, our minds, our emotions and our social behaviour. You’ll learn 3 tools for eliciting sources of fear and shame.
  • Interview with Vanessa Gorman, writer and film-maker, about her documentary, “Losing Layla,” in which she filmed the birth and death of her daughter, and the 4 days that she and her family spent at the hospital and at home with her daughter’s body after her daughter died.

Module 4 – The Truths And Myths of Grieving

  • You’ll learn about the 5 widely-believed myths about grieving that only serve to make grieving more painful, and what the latest research tells us is really true about grieving. You’ll learn how to help your clients to dissolve shame and and fear and liberate themselves from these restrictive myths so that they can find authentic ways to experience and integrate their grief.

Module 5 – Embodying Grief 

  • Many grief support models focus primarily on thoughts and emotions, but grieving is a very physical experience. You’ll learn how the body responds to loss, what it means to “embody” your grief, how to help your clients to embody their grief, and how to teach your clients how to look after their bodies while they’re grieving.
  • Dr Joanne Cacciatore will join us to teach us about “embodying grief.”

Module 6 – Riding The Roller-coaster of Grieving Emotions

  • You’ll learn about the nature of emotions and how they work so that you can help your clients to understand how they can manage the emotional side of grieving. You’ll learn tools for helping your clients to “lean into” grieving emotions, tools for transforming emotions, tools for mining the resources and wisdom in their emotions, and tools for helping your clients to de-intensify grieving emotions.

Module 7 – Facilitating Remembering Conversations: 

  • You’ll learn how to guide a client through a conversation where they remember, re-member and reconnect with their family and community (both alive and dead), and gain access to a deeper feeling of belonging, love, and clarity, as well as wisdom to address some of their current struggles.
  • Interview with Dr Lorraine Hedtke from www.rememberingpractices.com, pioneer of the “re-membering conversation” method and author of Re-Membering Lives.

Module 8 – Grieving in Families And Communities 

  • Most grief support models focus on grieving as a private and individual experience. You’ll learn why this can making grieving even more difficult for your clients. You’ll discover a collective paradigm of grief so that you can help your client to better understand and manage the way that their most important relationships are changed by loss and grief.
  • Dr Harriet Lerner, Author of Dance of Anger and Marriage Rules will join us to teach us about managing our most important relationships – our relationships with our partners, family and friends – so that we stay connected and even deepen intimacy while we’re grieving.

Module 9 – Creativity And Grief 

  • You’ll understand more deeply why creativity is so important in the grieving process, discover the 6 different purposes that creative tools can help you to achieve with your clients, and learn how to design your own creative grief coaching tools.
  • Heather Plett from SophiaLeadership.com will share a variety of different creative and transformational tools that she’s developed and share with you the rich ways that she’s used these tools in her own life.

Module 10 – Prolonged Grief And Mental Illness 

  • You’ll learn about the difference between healthy grieving and depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and prolonged grief. We’ll teach you how to know when you need to refer to another professional and how to respond if a client is suicidal.
  • Sherene Zolno, founder of The Leading Clinic, will join us to discuss the boundaries between healthy grieving and pathology.

Module 11 Plan – Q & A And Selfcare: 

  • We’ll use this session to review the content and answer all your trickiest questions, and to develop supervision and selfcare plans so that you’ll remain empathic, present, creative and alert to your client’s unique needs, and build a sustainable practice.

Module 12 – Assessment Preparation and Q And A: 

  • Module 12 is only for those folks who wish to become certified. During this module we’ll help you prepare for your certification assessment submissions, which you’ll complete on your own, as and when you feel ready. Details of the certification assessment submissions are listed below.
The class will be no bigger than 20 participants so that we can ensure that we’re able to get to know all of our participants and offer everyone some individual attention to support their unique learning journeys.

Your Course Facilitators

Kara LC Jones is founder of the grief & creativity practice at MotherHenna.com and co-founder of KotaPress.com.  Her grief support book Mrs. Duck and the Woman was published in both English and Spanish.  Other books she has in print include Flash Of Life, 1,000 Permissions Granted, and 1,000 Faces of Mother Henna.  She’s a certified Appreciative Inquiry and Whole Systems Coach specializing in Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey.

Cath Duncan is a Social Worker, Neuro-linguistic Psychology Master Practitioner and Martha Beck Certified Coach with a background in Child Protection, Trauma Debriefing and counseling for Depression. She helps people to live wholeheartedly after loss at RememberingForGood.com.

Guest Lecturers – Leaders in Their Fields

A variety of guest lecturers will join us to share their research and practice models. So far, they include the following leaders in the field:

Jamie Smart, Founder of Salad.co.uk and Author of Effortless Evolution Dr Joanne Cacciatore, Founder of MISS Foundation Heather Plett, Writer And Founder at SophiaLeadership.com Dr Harriet Lerner, Author of Dance of Anger and Marriage Rules. Vanessa Gorman, filmmaker and author of “Losing Layla” Lorraine Hedtke, MSW, LCSW, Ph.D. & author of Remembering Lives.

What’s NOT in the program?

Foundational people skills and helping skills: 
This program assumes that the participants already have foundational helping skills and knowledge in respect of listening skills, empathy skills, and rapport-building skills. We’ll ask you to demonstrate that you already have training or experience in these areas. This allows us to focus on advanced grief-specific creative coaching tools and methods in our 12-module program.

Business development skills: 
This course focuses on sharing what we know and do best – grief coaching and creativity!

How you’ll learn

Together we’ll work through the 12 modules of content by way of:

  • A comprehensive 12-module manual and workbook that will provide you with the full theoretical base for the course, as well as links for additional recommended resources.
  • 12 Live calls where you’ll experience the creative coaching tools, you’ll observe coaching demos, we’ll respond to your questions and we’ll discuss and more deeply apply the ideas and tools. These will be recorded so that you can re-listen to them anytime.
  • 7 Recorded guest faculty lectures (including Dr Harriet Lerner, Jamie Smart, Dr Joanne Cacciatore  and others still to be confirmed)
  • A “coaching buddy” system in the class, so you can work through the coaching practice homework together.
  • You’ll receive guided experiential training in the use of over 25 creative grief coaching tools.
  • Ongoing access to a private forum where you’ll post your artwork and we’ll discuss your experiences doing the exercises, as well as any other questions you have that we didn’t have time to cover on the call.
  • Ongoing access to our Creative Grief Coaching Tools Library (which we’ll be launching in the second quarter of 2012).
  • A prescribed reading list (yes, actual *books*! We’ll send you the prescribed reading list when you sign up).

Course dates

The next course starts on 11 September 2012. Our live calls will run every Tuesday evening  from 11 September till 27 November 2012.

Time: from 6pm until 7:30pm MST. (This is 8pm to 9:30pm EST; 7pm to 8:30pm CST; 5pm to 6:30pm PST)

Applications to participate in the Sept 2012 class must be submitted by 5pm MST on 4 September 2012.

(2013 Course dates will be published later in the year… you can expect Feb to April 2013 and Sept to Nov 2013, and they will most likely both be evening classes.)

Venue

This is an online course. So long as you have a good internet connection, you can call in and join us from anywhere in the world. You’ll receive the call-in details when you’ve committed to the course.

Certification Options

This course is available as a content-only stream, or as a certification stream. Participants in the content-only stream will end the course at Module 11. Participants pursuing certification will complete module 12 and submit the following materials for assessment:

  • A recording of a remembering conversation that they have facilitated with someone.
  • Instructions for a creative grief coaching tool that they have designed, along with a brief explanation of the rationale behind the tool and the results they got when they experimented with the tool.

If we’re satisfied with the quality of your submission, you’ll receive your certification within 2 weeks. Certified coaches will get:

  • A certificate and badge to confirm your certification, which you may display in your office/ on your website/ on your business stationary or course materials.
  • A listing and bio, with link back to your site, here at GriefCoachingCertification.com.
  • Ongoing access to our Creative Grief Tool Library and private forum.

Investment

The current “Pioneer Price” is available until 31 April 2012. Below are details of our scheduled price increases so that you can plan accordingly if you’d like to secure the lowest course fee possible.  Your “date of registration” is the date that you first applied to get into the course. This is tracked automatically by our online application form.

After you’ve applied, if you are accepted, we will email you an acceptance letter. The acceptance letter will:

  • Ask you to pay a $99 non-refundable deposit to secure your spot in the class. This will be credited towards the rest of your class fee. Your spot in the Sept 2012 class is NOT secured until you’ve paid this deposit.
  • Ask you whether you’d like to receive 1 invoice for the rest of the course fee, or whether you’d prefer to commit to a 3-payment plan for the rest of the course fee. We will then invoice you accordingly and the rest of the course fee (or your first of 3 payments) will be due by 4 Sept 2012.

Application

Applications to participate in the Feb 2012 class must be submitted by 5pm MST on 26 January 2012.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are your entrance requirements so demanding?
We do realize that, in comparison to other coaching certifications, our entrance requirements are demanding. Bereaved clients are potentially more vulnerable than other client groups and this is a more demanding coaching arena for the professionals involved. It’s our responsibility to ensure that any coach who bears our certification logo is mature, ready and well-equipped for this work. Our entrance criteria might mean that we sell fewer spots in the course, but we want to make a responsible, trustworthy and sustainable contribution to the field of bereavement and grief work, because that’s the right thing to do for our coach trainees and the clients they’ll work with.

If you would like to take this training but are concerned about whether your experience levels meet our requirements, apply anyway. We’ll interview you if we feel that your application doesn’t meet all of our requirements and we’ll make a decision taking account of your unique experience and character.

Why is the course fee so low if it’s a certification program? 
We’ve researched other coaching certification programs and they average around $3000 for 6 to 8 modules. This is our introductory pricing since this is the first time we’re teaching this material as a certification program. We plan to raise the fee by at least $1000 the next time we run it, so if you’re looking to save on your training fees, consider joining this first group.

What sort of international accreditation will this certification get me?
Currently this certification is independent and will not get you automatic accreditation with any international coaching organization. The certification will simply confirm to your clients that you have undertaken this training with us and that we can confirm that you have an acceptable level of understanding and skill to use this knowledge. You will be able to call yourself a certified grief coach, but you will not be able to call yourself a “grief counselor” (or any other professional title, such as Social Worker, Psychologist, Doctor, etc) unless you meet the registration requirements for that professional title within your country/ state.

If I want to support people who are grieving, but my main niche isn’t “grief support,” will your course give me relevant tools and skills?

One of our foundational beliefs is that grieving is unique from person to person and one loss to the next loss. This is the main reason why we teach and encourage creative approaches to loss. Because of this flexible, creative approach, you’ll be able to take our tools and ideas and apply them to working with people who are grieving in a variety of niches and contexts. For example, our tools will be just as useful if you’re supporting people who are grieving the loss of a job, or the loss of a marriage (via divorce), or the death of a beloved pet, or the death of a loved one.

Also, there is opportunity during the live calls (which will be very practical and discussion-based) to ask questions and get help with applying the ideas to your niche, and you’ll have ongoing access to the private forum where you can ask questions and get support with applying the ideas and tools in your niche.

How do I pay?
Because of our entrance criteria, this certification program is by application only. After you’ve applied, if you’re accepted into the group, we’ll ask you whether you’d like to pursue certification, and whether you’d like to choose a one-pay, two-pay or three-pay payment plan, and then we’ll send you an invoice which you can pay online, using your credit card or PayPal account.

What happens if I fail the certification assessment?
Certification is NOT automatic if you pay the certification fee. You will need to demonstrate that you can facilitate a remembering conversation and design a creative grief coaching tool. During our 12th live call, we’ll prepare you for your certification submissions and share with you our detailed criteria of what we’re looking for you to demonstrate in your assessment submissions. In addition, we will also take account of your interactions in the live calls and forums – we expect our students to uphold the course values and handle discussions of difference with respect, so that we can confidently back-up and recommend you as a skilled, empathic and professional creative grief coach with our certification badge.

If we feel that your assessment submissions aren’t demonstrating enough of the skills and values we’re looking for, then we’ll give you detailed feedback on the areas that were lacking and you may submit again and no extra cost. If your second submission is still not up to scratch then you can submit again but you will need to pay $850 for each subsequent submission after that.

What’s your money-back policy?
We’re really proud of the course we’ve put together and we know you won’t be disappointment with the quality or delivery of the content. We’ve also worked really hard to convey the values of this course so that anyone who applies will be a good fit with our course’s core values. (Download our live call and check out our prescribed reading list if you’re wondering about the values that underpin this course). For these reasons, after the module 1 live call has taken place, we don’t offer refunds on the course fee.

We do realize that you might have a tragedy or illness or you might be feeling overwhelmed in your own grief journey after the course has started. In this event, we don’t offer refunds for your course fee, but we would be happy to let you transfer to the next class in a few months time.

More Questions?

If you’d like to discuss whether this course is a good fit for you, feel free to get in touch with us:
Cath: cath (at) griefcoachingcertification (dot) com or phone: +1-403-708-3146 (Mountain Time)
Kara: kara (at) griefcoachingcertification (dot) com

Have a cool bulletin board for sharing flyers in your neighborhood?

We’d love to have you print out our flyer for the Creative Grief Coaching Certification program in your community!  Click on the image to the right to get a high resolution version of the flyer for printing and hanging in the location of your choice.  Thank you so much for sharing the Creative Grief Studio with others!!