There Are No Tips & Tricks for the Grieving — But There is a Tool Kit

I wrote recently about the reviewer who lamented that my new book, Soul Messengers: A True Story about a Mystic, a Guardian, and a Businessman, lacked any “stand-alone tips or tricks for the grieving.” And the reviewer is right. It most certainly is lacking in that regard. As I went on to explain, I actually don’t have any, because there are no tips or tricks for grieving. But there is a tool kit.

Challenging the Idea of Grief Therapy

As a clinician who has spent the last twenty-five years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that the term “grief therapy” is really a misnomer. The word therapy comes from the Latin word therapia, which means "medical treatment of disease.” But grief is not a disease or an illness that can be fixed, nor is it something that we can simply get through and be done with. Grief is messy. It’s unpredictable. It doesn’t unfold in neat stages that have a known endpoint. And yet, in its purest form, grief is an opportunity. Grief is the long hallway leading to a doorway of light that many would never discover if loss had not taken them by the hand and forced the path.It is in that long hallway where I have been meeting my clients for the length of my career. And whether this has meant companioning the dying in their final days, or walking with the grieving after loss has entered their world, I have found that for those willing to stay the course and continue to move forward down that long hallway, the doorway of light that appears has the ability to transform their lives in ways nothing else can.The journey is unique for each of us, but the doorway at which we eventually arrive inevitably opens up to the universal truth that this journey we are on is a destined one — and that in the end, we never came here simply to exist. We came here to evolve. And sometimes, loss is the very thing that brings back to us the wisdom that we didn’t even know we had forgotten.

Unpacking The Grief Kit

The Grief Kit is a unique collection of tools and teachings designed to meet you in that hallway and help you begin to move in the direction of your doorway of light. The tools — not tricks — are the same ones I have used successfully in my work with thousands of individuals the world over as they moved forward in their lives after loss.The kit is comprised of five modules that combine art and science — touching on everything from mythology and ritual to personality typing and the afterlife sciences. The modules cover the macro and micros aspects of the grieving process, feature self-help tools that can be used daily, and includes audio and video downloads intended to open your eyes to a farther horizon.It is my hope that when you are finished unpacking the Grief Kit, you will find that these tools have become worthy companions that you bring with you as you move forward in your journey through life. The Grief Kit is the embodiment of one of my favorite sayings that I share often with my clients who are on the journey of grief. I’ll hold the light. You dig.