GRIEF SUPPORT
Let me be your guide.
We offer restorative circles, loss literacy workshops, a grief companioning program, keynote speaking engagements, and grief coaching. If you are interested in understanding your grief, want to explore how to integrate your life losses in a more holistic manner, or are longing to companion others in their grief and loss journeys, learn about the options below.
Dina was trained in Dignity Therapy by Dr. Harvey Chochinov, a Canadian psychiatrist who specializes in palliative care and who advocates for dignity based care.
He teaches that people who are living with a life limiting illnesses or are actively dying need to know that they matter and that they are seen as whole human beings.
At its core, dignity therapy offers participants with an opportunity to review their life, share their values, and offers a keepsake document that captures the insights shared by the patient. The process involves:
Step 1: Getting to know the patient and sharing the process with them.
Step 2: Conducting the interview where we ask questions of the patient to better under their life story including exploring their accomplishments, meaningful roles, hopes and dreams. There are also questions that invite patients to share words of advice that they might like to pass on to their significant others.
Step 3: Reviewing the interview transcripts with the patient for accuracy and further meaning making.
Step 4: Presenting the document to the patient and their families as a treasured keepsake.
Dignity Therapy
Dignity Therapy is a holistic and evidence based approach to supporting people who want a safe and welcoming environment to share their life experiences, with someone who will listen and capture their stories.
These brief, personalized sessions are designed to provide person-centred care to patients suffering from life limiting illnesses or who are actively dying by: Offering a sense of meaning and purpose among people who may be living with a life limiting illness
Providing patients with an opportunity to share their story so that their families and loved one can review them
Creating a sense of comfort by being listened to and having someone capture stories that matter to them
Generating a sense of shared meaning among the patient, family members and friends
Dina can conduct the interviews in person or on ZOOM and will support the entire process, including producing a keepsake document that captures the insights shared with her by the patient. The cost for this service is $1500 + HST and includes the keepsake document.
Grief Café (90 minutes)
Grief Cafés are 90 minute peer to peer restorative conversations that give participants permission to share their stories of loss in a safe environment. The purpose is to deepen our understanding of grief and loss and offer a refuge for those that want to explore healthier and healing practices for self and others.
Grief Cafés raise money for SchoolBOX, where Tracy’s legacy continues to positively impact the lives of children in Canadian Indigenous communities.
Interested in signing up? Click here to join our next session.
Interested in creating your own Grief Café for your team/community?
Grief and Loss Essentials Workshop (1 day)
This one day virtual workshop is for professional coaches and those in the helping profession. The workshop creates a safe and enriching learning environment for people who want to better understand the impact of unreconciled grief, how to support self and others through life transitions, explore myths related to grief and loss, and increase capacity to more skillfully accompany people who are grieving.
This workshop helps you understand there is a better way and provides practical teachings, an integration workbook, recommended readings and a certificate of completion.
Cost $495 + HST
Course Dates
October 4, 2023
Book a call to customize your community or organizational workshop.
Becoming a Grief Companion (6 months)
Becoming a Grief Companion is an embodied six month program for compassionate people who who want to develop the loss literacy required to support others through their grief experiences. Rooted in experiential wisdom, bereavement theory, and enriched by Dina’s own lived experience with loss, this program is a game changer for those that want to understand, grow from, and experience a healthier approach to bereavement care. Executives, professional coaches, therapists, and councillors will benefit from the wisdom that this program will provide.
To better understand the program, try our Pebbles and Petals Practice.
First Leg of our Journey
Grief and Loss Foundations: Participants will become familiar with key bereavement theories, learn new ways to talk about grief and loss, appreciate diversity of coping styles, explore grief myths, and understand complicated grief. It includes three, four hour sessions, each spaced 2-3 weeks apart, and provide key death education teachings, reflection questions to contemplate in between sessions, and practices to further support integration.
Second Leg of our Journey
The Art of Companionship is designed to cultivate the heart of a grief companion through interactive sessions, learning by supporting others, integrating our grief experiences through open sharings, and through ongoing micro practices to build greater grief and loss literacy. It includes a pre and post integral coaching session with Dina, 5 group sessions and practices, readings, and peer to peer conversations in between sessions to support embodiment.
Cost $2,995 + HST (For groups of 6 or more, discounted rates apply. Please contact Dina for small group offerings)
Becoming a Grief Companion 2023 Program (On demand sessions only)
Becoming a Grief Companion is an immersive journey of the heart and soul. Launched in 2020, this program was inspired by Grief Unleashed Founder Dina Bell-Laroche’s years of devoted practice and a longing to bring more grief and loss literacy to the world. This Program is for coaches, helping professionals, and those inspired to support a healthier way to accompany the bereaved through a life loss. If you are interested in becoming more informed about death, dying, and ways to better support others, then this Program is for you. Dina is an Integral Master Coach and has nearly 2500 coaching hours as a certified International Professional Coach. She is also immersed in the field of thanatology as a student, which enriches her teachings. Dina is devoted to offering solace to the bereaved and to train people in the art of companionship.
This program is organized into two stages. The first three sessions will equip participants with a solid foundation to better support your capacity to be in the presence of those suffering from loss. The next stage is designed to hone your ability to meet your own life losses from a place of grace and to deepen your capacity to bear witness to others skilfully and compassionately. Here are a few comments from participants:
“The Grief Unleashed experience has expanded my awareness of my own grief and loss and how I related to it. I feel more capable of companioning others, in large part because Dina models a way of being in this experience that has us witnessing how we might be with others when they are grieving. We aren’t simply talking about grief, we are living through it, together. I feel more curious, more capable to explore my own grief and am more confident to walk alongside others as a companion.” Stephanie Potter, Integral Master Coach
Exploring this space with Dina was an honor and a gift. Dina has a unique and differentiated way of simultaneously leading and walking beside, sitting with you in everything so you never feel alone. There’s no one I’d rather companion me on this journey. Thanks to Dina and Grief Unleashed, I’ve seen the depths of my grief and the heights of my joy, opening myself to the idea of a fully-lived life. Thanks to Dina, I’ve finally surrendered to the notion that grief is beautiful and healthy and all around us, a shared experience and shared language I can use if I simply shed the fear and allow it in. Whitney Schmiesing, Google Account Executive
“Becoming a Grief Companion is an absolute game changer. Dina will hold space and guide you to all the places you never knew you needed to see. This was a truly transformative experience. I am much more able to hold myself and also hold other in grief. This program is for everyone!” Stephanie Puetz, Integral Master Coach
What you will receive:
A pre and post coaching conversation with Dina on a life loss you want to explore
A psychometric tool to create shared language and approach our grief from a ‘different way’
Eight communal conversations that uncover different aspects of grief and loss
Curated practices between sessions to be with your grief holistically
Mini voyages with other participants to practice and hone your grief companioning skills
A list of resources including poems, songs, and readings to support further integration.
Now accepting groups of 4-8 for customized learning opportunities.
Grief and Loss Foundations:
Initial Intake: Coaching Session with Dina
Group session1: Setting Sail - Understanding our grief and loss landscape
Group session 2: Grief Literacy - Uncovering hidden gems
Group session 3: The shape of grief
The Art of Companioning:
Group session 4: Awakened hearts
Group session 5: Unexplored caves - deepening our capacities
Group session 6: Listening deeply - soothing the battered soul
Group session 7: Stormy Seas - When things get complicated
Group session 8: The Journey Home - How to integrate and launch this work into the world
Final session: Connected closure coaching session with Dina
Dina is committed to helping people re-imagine a new relationship with life losses. If you are inspired by her work and call to action, please feel free to connect with her at dina@griefunleashed.ca. If you feel that the cost of this program is too high, and would like to explore alternative options, please know that Dina is open to receiving this conversation.
“Grief Unleashed is an absolute game changer. Dina will hold space and guide you to all the places you never knew you needed to see. This was a truly transformative experience. I am much more able to hold myself and also hold other in grief. This program is for everyone!”
— Stephanie Puetz, Integral Master Coach
Grief Coaching (for individuals, teams, couples, families, and organizations)
Are you longing to make sense of a loss that shattered your world? Are you struggling to find joy and meaning in your life? Are you scared about what comes next in life? Life is full of transitions and working with a grief coach can help you better understand why letting go of the past is so hard. Through our work together, you’ll discover that you can move into a new way of being while carrying what is treasured with you.
I offer individual coaching programs and group sessions for bereaved families, teams, or groups looking to better understand what has happened to them (not what is wrong with them) so they can have more freedom to express their stories of loss from a place of health and hope.