At the core of our Creative Grief Studio mission is a deep value for the significance of life. We want to create a world where, in the face of great loss and grief, we appreciate and care for the uniqueness, preciousness, and significance of all grief and life experiences.

 

All grief and life experiences are worthy, but this is not yet the way our world treats everyone. For this reason, we are committed to standing with lives that are often not treated as worthy, including people of color, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, female, elderly, and young lives, and people who are discriminated against because of their religious beliefs.

 

We find it problematic that the current world of grief support is dominated by White, Western, relatively wealthy, Christian, female, heterosexual perspectives. We want to see more diverse representation in grief support practitioners and approaches. We take a strong stand against ideas and systems that treat some groups of people as “other” and “less worthy,” including white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy, expert culture, and capitalism.

 

All losses are valid, but our society constructs certain kinds of losses as worthy of validation and support, while ignoring, down-playing, silencing, or stigmatizing other kinds of losses that so many people grieve deeply for. We wish and work for a world where the wide range of unique and different losses is fully appreciated, and all people impacted by any kind of loss can enjoy a sense of belonging in grief support services, rituals, and gatherings.

 

Grief is not a pathology, but grieving people are still often treated as if they’re ill or broken. We promote the kind of grief support that centers the client’s experience, needs, and resilience, instead of pathologizing grief responses, trying to fit clients’ unique stories into universal theoretical models of grief, or prescribing what “healthy” grieving should look like.

Grieving people don’t need grief experts, and yet our cultural ideas of professionalism still promote hierarchical relationships that give greater weight to professional voices and theoretical models than clients’ experiences and views. We’re doing it differently. We’re training creative, flexible, humble, and respectful grief support professionals who understand and love the fact that practitioner and client can have conversations together as equals. Conversations that change both the client and the practitioner. Conversations that hold theories loosely and centralise the client’s experiences, voice, and choices. Brave conversations that ask both client and practitioner to reflect on their biases and prejudices. Conversations that support clients to craft their own preferred way of living with or after great loss.