The Grief Recovery Method is an evidence-based, action-oriented grief program that helps people move through the pain of loss. Grief is an emotional response, yet often, we try to ease our grief by using intellectual tools—we try to “figure it out,” “solve it,” or “understand” it, just as if we to paint a room, but given a hammer and a screwdriver to paint with. We cannot accomplish the task of recovering from grief with inappropriate tools. We can paint a room if given a paintbrush, paint, and drop cloth. Given the proper emotional tools, we can recover from our grief. That’s what the Grief Recovery Method (GRM) provides—the appropriate dynamic tools for doing this work.

Grief is the normal and natural emotional response to change or loss—death, divorce, moving, financial changes, health changes, relationship changes, and so on. It is also the result of unmet hopes, dreams, and expectations and the loss of intangible concepts such as safety, trust, security, respect, faith, and hope. Grief is universal. All of us have experienced grief throughout our lives due to many changes and losses. But we are not prepared to handle, manage or recover from the emotional impact resulting from these changes and losses.

The GRM explains why we are so ill-prepared to recover from our grief if it’s so universal and a normal and natural response.

Just as our grief is universal, the ineffective ways of dealing with it are also universal. How we manage our grief is often the same or similar to how our parents and other key figures in our lives have managed theirs, sometimes for many generations. In addition to parents and key family members, we learn ineffective tools for dealing with grief from other key adults in our lives as we grow up—teachers, clergy, coaches, counselors, and even the media and tv and music personalities.

The GRM is a method and a step-by-step process built as an “action program” for unlocking and respecting the emotional experience of our grief for both the immediate or presenting grief issues and those that may have been holding us captive for years. So often, the most recent or presenting loss is made more difficult by related experiences from our past which were not recognized or addressed at the time – adding weight to that resulting from the current loss.

Through a defined step-by-step process, the GRM first explores the “old, ineffective tools” we’ve been using, with the belief that it’s hard to learn new tools if we don’t understand why the old ones might not have been effective. Then, the process shifts to introducing new tools which can be used across a wide gamut of losses – from persons to pets to hopes and dreams and expectations, to those intangible things like trust, safety, or faith. At every step, the griever is respected, listened to, and heard without judgment or analysis and is supported in identifying and giving voice to the array of emotions that accompany the full extent of the loss. Once the GRM process is completed for one loss, it can be used repeatedly to address other past or new losses.

The GRM is an evidence-based program documenting statistically significant improvements in grievers’ knowledge, attitudes, and grief-related behaviors that involves reading and writing assignments as outlined in “The Grief Recovery Handbook, the Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce and Other Losses.” This method has been shared for over 40 years, on six of seven continents, with the book translated into over 20 languages.

The GRM is a time-limited program with a set number of sessions, depending on whether an individual works the program alone or in a group. If done in the group format, it is not a “drop-in” group, meaning those who participate are there throughout the program to help build a sense of safety and trust. The GRM is facilitated by a Grief Recovery Specialist certified by the Grief Recovery Institute. These specialists are trained to deliver the GRM and have experience working with various types of loss and people from all walks of life. In addition, each of our Specialists has a deep desire to help grieving people.