Grieving While They Are Still Here: Alzheimer’s, Anticipatory Grief and the Hidden Weight of Caregiving
There is a kind of grief that begins long before death. It can begin when your mother asks you the same question for the fifth time. When your husband gets lost driving a route he has traveled for decades. When your father looks at you for just a moment too long before remembering your name. […]
Every Grief Counts: Making Space for the Many Faces of Loss
By: Cami Thelander, Certified Grief Coach, Community Engagement Leader, Confident Grief Coach School When you hear the word grief, what comes to mind? For many of us, it’s the death of someone we love. And certainly, that is one of the most profound ways we experience grief. But grief has many faces, and they’re not […]
What a Great Blue Heron, Three Eagles, and One Grieving Mother Taught Me About Continuing Bonds
There are days when nature has a way of slowing us down enough to hear what our hearts already know. This week, I found myself floating quietly down a river in my kayak. No agenda. No destination. Just the gentle rhythm of the current carrying me downstream. Earlier, a magnificent great blue heron stood motionless […]
From the Margins to a Movement: The Evolution of Grief Coaching Over the Last Decade
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, […]
Why Your Body Feels Different After Loss
By: Cami Thelander, Certified Grief Coach, Community Engagement Leader, Confident Grief Coach School If you’ve ever experienced a profound loss, you may have wondered why grief affects so much more than your emotions. Perhaps you’ve struggled to sleep, felt constantly on edge, forgotten simple things, lost your appetite, or noticed headaches, muscle tension, or digestive […]
Opening My Heart to Love Means Opening My Heart to Grief
By: Cami Thelander, Certified Grief Coach, Community Engagement Leader, Confident Grief Coach School Father’s Day has always been a time when I feel especially connected to my dad. He died when I was 11 years old, yet I still carry a deep belief that he continues to “parent” me. His death has shaped the way […]
When the Coach Becomes the Student: Why Professional Coaching Requires Continuous Learning
Five years ago, I founded The Confident Grief Coach School with a vision of creating a compassionate, evidence-informed, heart-centered approach to grief coaching. Like any meaningful body of work, our program has evolved over time — not because the foundation was flawed, but because growth requires humility, listening, and the willingness to keep learning. One […]
Mother’s Day: A National Holiday or a Daily Reminder?
Do you know the history of Mother’s Day? I love to research the history of holidays and wondered how Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and all those “… Days” came into existence. Apparently in the United States, Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration in 1908 to honor her late mother, Ann Reeves […]
Grieving the Living: The Silent Loss of Family Estrangement
We don’t talk enough about the grief of losing someone who is still alive. No funeral.No closure.No clear path forward. And yet—millions of people are carrying this exact kind of loss every day. Family estrangement is far more common than most people realize. Research from Cornell University suggests that nearly 27% of Americans are estranged […]
There Is No Timeline for Grief: Releasing the Pressure to “Move On”
By: Cami Thelander, Certified Grief Coach, Community Engagement Leader, Confident Grief Coach School One of the most common and unspoken pressures people experience after loss is the expectation to “move on.” It may not always be said directly, but it is often felt—in the quiet pauses when others stop asking how you’re doing, in the […]