By Patricia Sheveland, Founder of The Confident Grief Coach School
When I first began working with grieving clients over a decade ago, I didn’t call it grief coaching.
I was simply a coach sitting across from people whose lives had been forever changed by loss.
They were grieving the death of a child, a spouse, a parent, a dream, a marriage, a career, their health or the future they thought they would have.
At the time, there were few places to turn outside of therapy, hospice programs, faith communities, and support groups. If someone wasn’t experiencing a diagnosable mental health condition but still needed support navigating life after loss, there was a bit of a gap.
Some of us found ourselves stepping into that gap.
Before Grief Coaching Was a Profession
Ten to fifteen years ago, grief coaching was not widely recognized as a specialty.
Most professionals supporting grief came from backgrounds in:
- Counseling
- Social work
- Psychology
- Hospice care
- Ministry
While coaching was growing as a profession, grief coaching itself was still emerging.
Many coaches serving grieving individuals today, arrived here through personal experience, intuition and client demand rather than through formal grief coaching certifications.
I was one of them.
The people I worked with didn’t need someone to diagnose them.
They needed someone to witness them.
Someone to help them reconnect with themselves.
Someone to help them imagine a future they could not yet see and take the steps to create that future.
Then the World Changed
In 2020, grief entered the global conversation in a way few of us had ever witnessed.
The pandemic brought widespread awareness to something grief professionals had known all along:
Grief is not limited to death.
People were grieving:
- Loved ones
- Relationships
- Jobs
- Health
- Milestones
- Identity
- Community
- Uncertainty of themselves
Suddenly, grief was everywhere.
At the same time, therapy waitlists grew longer.
Many people wanted support but did not necessarily need clinical intervention.
They needed connection, guidance, accountability and a place to process their life transitions.
From a Handful of Programs to Hundreds of Offerings
When I launched The Confident Grief Coach School five years ago, there were relatively few comprehensive grief coaching certification programs available.
Today, there are dozens—perhaps hundreds—of grief-related certifications, trainings and certificate programs across the world.
This growth is encouraging because it means society is finally recognizing and talking about the human experience of grief and the need for support.
But growth also brings an important question:
How Do We Prepare People to Support Grief Responsibly?
Not all certifications are created equally.
Some programs offer deep mentorship, supervised practice, ethics training and coaching competency development.
Others consist primarily of self-paced videos and a certificate at the end.
As our profession matures, the conversation must evolve beyond simply producing more coaches.
We must focus on developing skilled, ethical and compassionate professionals who understand:
- The difference between coaching and therapy
- The complexities of grief coaching
- Their scope of practice
- How to actively listen versus giving advice
- The importance of human connection
- Trauma awareness
- Cultural nuances
Most importantly, we must prepare coaches to trust that grief is not something to fix.
The Future of Grief Coaching
The future of grief coaching isn’t about creating experts who have all the answers.
It’s about developing practitioners who know how to create spaces where healing, meaning making and transformation converge.
At The Confident Grief Coach School, we believe:
Grief is not something we overcome. It becomes part of who we are.
When supported well, grief can become a catalyst for:
- Love
- Connection
- Compassion
- Purpose
- Growth
This need for grief support is not decreasing.
If anything, our increasingly disconnected world makes meaningful human connection more important than ever.
I believe the next chapter of grief coaching is not about helping people “move on.”
It is about helping people learn how to carry both their grief and their love forward.
And that is work worth doing.
Our next certification cohort for the Confident Grief Coach and B.R.E.A.T.H.E. Coaching Model for Grief™ Facilitator is coming up in September. Early bird pricing has now been extended to July 31.