The Many Roads to Grief Recovery

By Diane Sturmer

This month’s guest blog is by Diane Sturmer, a faith community inclusion specialist at Heritage Christian Services, who shares from her new book about supporting people through grief.

In this fast-moving world, people often ask how long it takes to move on from the loss of a loved one or how to start the process.

The grief team is made up of behavioral specialists, speech therapists, music therapists, a dance therapist, an art therapist and faith community inclusion specialists. We take an interdisciplinary approach to grief that allows someone to decide the vehicle they wish to drive on the road to healing. This approach also preserves the memories of their loved one in unique and inspired ways.

One of my favorite examples is when Sara Corona, an art therapist, printed different emotions on different colored ribbons and invited people to place their feelings in a clear ornament dedicated to the person they were grieving. It became a keepsake. We have also invited people to create “homes in heaven” on poster boards for a deceased loved one and fill them with all of the words and memories they associated with them.

The root of our work is celebrating the whole person, which means supporting the people who knew them in filling the gaps that person may have left behind. We want people to be celebrated for who they were in life and death.

You can read more about Diane’s work on grief in her new book, Good Grief: Help in Sad Times, available now on Amazon Kindle and coming soon in paperback.