Helping Grieving Hearts Heal

Please visit the Koch Funeral Home website to learn more about these offerings.

Helping Grieving Hearts Heal 

This program is designed to provide services that support individuals as they grieve. In conjunction with Koch Funeral Home and as a spiritual director and celebrant, I can companion you on your grief journey and help you create a funeral experience that helps you both honor your loved one and start to heal.

Through the Helping Grieving Hearts Heal program, I offer:

Have the Talk of a Lifetime

One conversation that is so important to have but is sometimes difficult to ini­tiate with family members concerns how you want to be remembered. Such a conversation can actually help you: live your life more fully now; prepare for your death; and make decisions that need to be made as you age. I am available to meet with individuals to Have the Talk of a Lifetime and help docu­ment this important information.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. 

~Hannah Arendt

Grief Companioning

Grieving is a spiritual process. When you grieve the window to your soul is open. As a spiritual director, I can welcome your soul and companion you on your grief journey to healing by: 

  • Helping you understand that grief is not an illness; it is a healthy re­sponse to a loss. 
  • Creating a safe space for you to tell your story and look for meaning and purpose in your experience. 
  • Providing you with information about the journey through grief. 
  • Listening to, supporting, comforting and encouraging you as you ad­dress the needs of mourning. 

 One often calms one’s grief by recounting it.

~Pierre Corneille

Memorable Ceremony Creation

Funerals and memorial services are times to embrace the memory of a loved one in a supportive en­vironment. They are also one of the first important stages of grieving for the fam­ily. This experience honors and celebrates the life of someone who has died while providing comfort for those left behind. As both a spiritual director and celebrant, I am present to your pain and listening deeply to you through this process of preparing a memorable funeral ceremony. 

The services I can provide include:

  • Meeting with the family, providing support and coordinating a person­alized service with a funeral director and/or member of clergy. 
  • Creating and officiating at a funeral service based on personal memo­ries that will reflect the personality and lifestyle of your loved one, in­cluding writing and delivering a eulogy. 
  • Creating and officiating at a service for a graveside committal and/or scattering. 
  • Creating a theme based tribute video with pictures and videos you provide. 

What happens at the funeral greatly affects how the bereaved go on to find meaning and purpose in their continued living. 

~Alan D. Wolfelt, PH.D

Remembrance Service Facilitation

When someone we care about is dying or has died, we have an innate need to come together and tell the stories of their life. It is an important and meaningful part of the healing process to set aside this time and create a space to remember. Words will be spoken here that otherwise may not be said. I can facilitate a unique Remembrance Service for you, your family and friends:

  • Before a loved one’s death;
  • While a cremation is taking place;
  • Before or during a funeral or memorial service; and/or
  • Instead of a funeral or memorial for those who “don’t want a service.”

Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.

~Author Unknown

Legacy Reception Coordination 

After honoring and remembering your loved one at a service, spending time with friends and family at a reception can provide additional comfort. The healing continues when you gather at a Legacy Reception to reminisce and share stories. This is an opportunity to be with those you may not see often and feel the support of the many who care about you. I can lighten your load by helping coordinate a person­alized reception.

 Eating together is a most satisfying and significant setting for human relationship.

~Gertrud Mueller Nelson

Community Outreach 

I am available to customize a program for you or to make one of the following presentations to groups and businesses:

  • Grief Education and Support Group Introduction - Grief is our bodies’ natural reaction to loss.  By grieving and mourning, we heal. The purpose of this session is to introduce you to how and why a Grief Education and Support Group can help you, and provide you with information about local groups. 
  • Voices of Grief: Honoring the Sacred Journey – Voices of Grief: Honoring the Sacred Journey is a 42-minute documentary film that encourages conversations about: the importance of grief and mourning; the need to normalize losses as natural, unavoidable, and sacred facets of life; and the life-enhancing ways to companion ourselves and others through losses. We will view the documentary and have a short discussion afterwards. 
  • Monday’s Moments Experience – When you experience a loss, your life changes drastically. One of the challenges is then finding ways to embrace your new life, even if it is one you didn’t choose.There are certain practices, skills, intentions, postures, and activities that can help you through these transitions. This session will provide information about and opportunities to practice the tools that transform you from the inside out.
  • Live, Love, Learn & Leave a Legacy – Stephen Covey once said, “There are four needs in all people: to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.” This session will help you assess your legacy and learn about ways to make it stronger, including considering how you want to be remembered.
  • Living Fully Now – When we attend to issues surrounding dying, death and grief, we learn to live more fully now! In this program, we will discuss topics, such as cultural values, what really matters, bucket lists, spiritual aspects, instructions to the funeral director, etc. 
  • Stories, How Do They Heal? - Telling our stories of loss is part of what we do to heal. Hearing others’ stories helps us too. This session will include information about the importance of storytelling and provide opportunities to engage in this practice yourself.

Hope is not pretending that troubles don’t exist…
It is the trust that they will not last forever,
That hurts will be healed and difficulties overcome…
It is faith that a source of strength and renewal
Lies within to lead us through the dark to the sunshine.

~Elizabeth Chase