Adding a New Dimension to Grief Counseling: Creative Personal Ritual as a Therapeutic Tool for Loss,Trauma and Transition

Abstract

This article explores the use of creative personal rituals and ceremonies for accepting loss, managing strong emotions and inviting the sacred into the grief journey. These tools can help clinicians incorporate spirituality and multi-cultural modalities into a grief counseling practice, and can be used effectively by both intuitive and instrumental grievers. The use of ritual and ceremony can also help end-of-life and bereavement professionals become more present for the dying, and more competent in spiritual meaning-making for the bereaved

Keywords

bereavement grief counseling spirituality ritual

Introduction

It is not unusual in casual conversation,when talking to (or about) a bereaved individual, for someone to mention grief counseling as a helpful resource. But many lay people and professional counselors don’t realize that for most grievers, clinical intervention is not necessary, unless the grieving process has become debilitating to the point where normal functioning is impaired and the individual is experiencing complicated grief (Shear et al., 2011, p. 4). Jordan and Neimeyer analyzed the value of counseling for people experiencing normal (non-complicated) grief, and found little evidence for the efficacy of grief counseling in these cases. While acknowledging that research methods in this area need improvement,they pointed out that the popular psychotherapeutic approach to grief counseling is based on a medical treatment model in which a clinician diagnoses a patient and then treats the “relatively passive” patient for a specific condition. They concluded that this model may have only limited use for working with bereavement (Jordan & Neimeyer, 2003, p. 756).

Another limitation to grief counseling is that facilitators tend to show a bias toward “intuitive”grievers. Doka and Martin identified two different styles of grieving – intuitive and instrumental – that can go unrecognized by therapists who lack training in current grief theory. Intuitive grievers are more rooted in emotions and feelings, and more comfortable sharing those feelings with others and reaching out for support. By contrast, instrumental grievers process more cognitively, and work through their pain via engaging in tasks, projects and activities (Doka & Martin, 2011, p. 11). in terms of counseling, Doka observes that the mental health profession has a bias toward the intuitive style, pointing out that in traditional therapy,clients are often asked how they feel (intuitive) rather that how they reacted, which would be more of instrumental response (Yalom, 2010, n.p.).

In addition to these limitations, many counselors and therapists are not familiar with alternative or multi-cultural modalities, nor are they necessarily trained in pastoral care or spiritual counseling for working with grief.

So If the medical model (clinician/patient/diagnosis/treatment) has limited use, and if the primary grieving style understood by therapists is the intuitive one, and if clinical interventions are only needed when grief becomes complicated, then what can we offer as counselors, chaplains and educators to assist clients with normal grieving?

This article explores the use of creative personal rituals and ceremonies as tools for accepting loss, managing strong emotions and inviting the sacred into the grief journey. These tools can be used effectively by both intuitive and instrumental grievers, and can also help clinicians at the bedside become more present for the dying while becoming more competent in multi-cultural ritual practices.

Creating an Intersection Between Psychology and Spirituality

In recent years, in large part due to increasing multi-cultural awareness since the advent of the internet, therapeutic rituals have become popular in the West for the treatment of both complicated and non-complicated mourning (Rando, 1993, p. 313). Rando (1993) observes that mourners who don’t participate in appropriate rituals for acknowledging a death tend to have difficulty accepting the reality of the death, which can be a risk factor for complicated grief (p. 395). She discusses several psychological benefits of death and grief rituals (Rando, 1993, pp. 314–318), including but not limited to the following (NOTE: The headings below are Rando’s; the descriptions are my own):

Acting out – Using symbolic representational objects, body movements, songs, dialog and other physical expressions of emotion creates a ventilation system for strong feelings that otherwise might be suppressed.

Legitimization of emotional and physical ventilation – A planned, organized ceremony – whether performed privately or with a group – can validate and sanctify emotional responses.

Provision of symbols and outlets to focus thoughts, feelings and behaviors – Symbolic objects, gestures and language assign a physical, tangible form to feelings that would otherwise seem esoteric, abstract or undefinable. In one of my ceremonies, I ask grievers to find a small rock and blow into it, releasing pain and anxiety from the constricted chest area (through the breath), and transferring it to the rock. The rock now holds the uncomfortable feelings, and in the ceremony, the rock is buried in the ground or tossed into a river, releasing that energy from the griever’s body.

Rendering of control – As you will see in the case example that follows about Nick and Lucy, taking ritual action can relieve some of the griever’s focus on the trauma narrative, which can establish a sense of control and boost feelings of empowerment for managing the situation.

Delimitation of grief – A properly designed ceremony (ideally with a follow-up component), adds a sense of structure, organization and chronology to the healing process, providing a sense that there is a beginning, middle and end.

Enhancement of appropriate connection to the deceased – Ceremonies that involve sending messages to the deceased or bringing the deceased’s presence into the mourner’s current and future life help maintain continuing bonds.

Learning through gained experience – When a ritual is practiced regularly (with updates and modifications as needed), mourners gain wisdom and insight into their own grief healing trajectory and the progression of healing for the family and community.

Provision of structure, form, and containment for confusing emotions – Rituals create a “container” for feelings and responses that seem out of control or too big to manage. In the example of Lucy and Nick, creating a grief altar in their large house helped to contain their pain in a smaller, more workable physical space.

Provision of group experiences that allow kinship and social solidarity – A ceremony performed in a group or community creates social opportunities, which is especially important for grievers who have been isolated and/or feeling unsupported.

Structuring celebrations, anniversaries and holidays – A creative, adaptable ritual performed on milestone days can help to make those days less dreadful. A ritual can add meaning to the milestones and mark the progression of healing over time, so that the event is no longer viewed with dread, but with love and hope for healing.

In addition to the benefits described by Rando, Rynearson (2010) describes the value of identifying – and transforming – the different narratives we hold about our losses, particularly in cases of violent death (p. 180). The death of a close loved one, even a pet, can trigger two conflicting narratives. In one, we remember the loved one’s life with fondness, but in the other, we recall the traumatic circumstances of their death, which can overshadow the more pleasant memories. With violent or sudden death, there is no time for what Rynearson calls “the unfolding dying narrative,” and no opportunity for the nurturing and caring that accompanies an expected death. As Rynearson (2010) explains:

The narrative reenactment of violent dying is a solitary enactment of horror and helplessness isolated from the care, respect and protection of loved ones. This narrative is retold as an alienated event, a surreal story that loved ones cannot ‘own’ because they played no role in its unfolding, and is rendered meaningless because it never should have happened (p. 180).

A Case Example

An ongoing traumatic narrative can be intrusive, disrupting daily functioning and impeding a healthy healing trajectory. As an example of how ceremony can assist a griever in finding a place to “hold” the narrative and the troubling imagery, I will share the story of a couple that brought home an adorable new puppy only to have it hit by a car and killed two weeks later.

The husband, Nick, was a man in his 60s who’d struggled with attention deficit disorder his entire life. He and his wife Lucy often bickered about his lack of focus and organization, and when the new puppy, Daisy, arrived, their different styles of attentiveness to the dog became very apparent. At one point, when Nick had forgotten – once again – to close the front door securely to keep Daisy inside, Lucy screamed at him, “You’re going to kill that dog one of these days.”

The next night, while Nick was walking Daisy, she somehow managed to pull out of her collar, and ran into the street, directly into the path of an oncoming car. She was killed instantly. Nick had to call Lucy, who was at home just a block away, to tell her the bad news. When Lucy arrived at the scene, she found her husband sitting on the curb, rocking back and forth with Daisy in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably, saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” This is the image that continued to haunt Lucy. For Nick, it was the image of the moment he realized he was holding a leash with no dog attached to it, and looked into the street just in time to see Daisy get hit.

The couple called me about a week after the incident. They had not been able to sleep, and had been crying through most of the days and nights. Despite Lucy’s attempts to comfort Nick, she was filled with anger and resentment, feeling that if she’d been the one walking the dog, this would not have happened. At the same time, she felt guilty for what she’d said to Nick the night before the incident. Nick not only struggled with the traumatic images of Daisy’s death, but also with the fear that his wife would never forgive him, and feelings of overwhelming guilt and shame.

One of the most striking benefits of a grief ceremony for processing trauma is that it can provide a sense of deep relief in an acute situation. For Lucy and Nick, I prescribed the following three-part ceremony:

Together, they would create an altar – or a designated sacred space – in their home, where they would place pictures of Daisy, her toys, her food bowl and other meaningful objects. Whenever they felt overwhelmed with sadness or anger, they would go to this sacred grieving space, which provided a defined, manageable container for their grief within their very large house. Because memories of Daisy were everywhere in the house, the smaller, dedicated space created a special location for coping with flooded feelings.

Lucy and Nick, separately, would each draw a picture of the most troubling images they were holding, and on the back of the drawing, write a list of all the unhelpful, negative feelings and beliefs they want to release, such as guilt, blame, rage and fear, with a statement of intention for healing (for example, “I open my heart to forgiveness and the continued health of my marriage”). These drawings/statements would be completely private, placed in sealed envelopes, not to be shared with one another. The envelopes would be added to the altar.

At a day and time of their choosing within the next week, Nick and Lucy, together, would take their envelopes into the back yard and bury them in the earth. By doing this, they created a new healing narrative in which they’ve released the disturbing images and negative emotions from their bodies and given these things to the earth, which is infinitely large enough to hold those feelings, ultimately transmuting them into a more positive, more productive energy as symbolic “compost” for growth and new life.

The couple reported to me that after the burial ritual, they both slept through the night for the first time since Daisy’s death. In Nick’s words, “I feel better today. I think I buried most of my trauma the garden. It feels like the bleeding has stopped.”

Grief Rituals for Children

It is also important to consider the psychospiritual value of personal rituals for children who are grieving. According to Faro (2018, p. 2), children want to be recognized as grievers alongside adults, though they are often excluded from funerals and other death rituals. Faro tells the story of a Dutch mother who helped her young children (6, 9 and 12 years) to participate in rituals surrounding their father’s death, and hired a photographer to document these rituals so the children could recall them later in life. Similarly, in Søfting et al.’s (2015) study of Norwegian children between 8 and 12 years old (p. 150), every one of the children said they were happy to have been included in the funeral rituals for their parents, and recommended that other children do the same, saying they would be “sad and upset” if they hadn’t been allowed to participate.

In the 1992 Harvard Child Bereavement Study, 125 children ages 6–17 were interviewed about the deaths of their parents, and the process of “linking objects” was shown to be an effective tool for coping with the loss. These objects were items that had either been given to the child by the parent, or chosen by the child from a selection of the parent’s possessions after the death. The children used these objects in a variety of ceremonial ways, from wearing a piece of parent’s clothing to viewing the objects as having spiritual significance (one girl reported that her father’s keychain made her feel good, “the way some people use crystals” (Silverman et al., 1995, p. 142).

An example of how grief rituals can be helpful for children, I will describe a ritual I observed at a hospice grief camp that was held every summer – free of charge – for children in the community who’d lost a loved one. Many of the deaths they experienced were traumatic, including suicide, drug overdose and murder, and for many of the children, these deaths were not openly discussed at home. For them, the camp was the first opportunity they’d had to tell their stories freely. It was also the first chance they had to interact with other children who’d experienced similar losses.

They responded beautifully to the ceremonies and processes that were offered throughout the weekend. The ceremony that I found most moving was the creation and release of “memory boats.” Directed by an art therapist, the children used large, flat pieces of bark from the local trees (donated by the local loggers)to serve as boats, which they decorated with moss, twigs, flowers, feathers and scraps of paper on which they wrote messages to their departed loved ones. The beautiful little boats stayed in the camp’s arts & crafts room overnight (as if on an altar where their intentions could be sanctified), and the next morning everybody took their boats and hiked to the river, where the boats were set adrift as a visual expression of releasing and letting go. The children placed their boats on the water and watched them get carried away by the current. Some of the kids ran alongside the river, following their boats as far as they could, and others simply stood still,watching the boats disappear around the bend. This, and other ceremonies like it, gave the grieving children an outlet for their pain by creating physical objects, movements and symbols that brought their feelings from a wordless, lonely world into tangible physical reality that could be manipulated and shifted.

Rosmarin and Koenig (1998, p. 58) tell us that the re-enactment of ancient words and gestures in rituals brings forth deep symbolic meaning, and helps us to create an identification with the divine. The authors state, “Rituals link the internal, subjective world of the distressed individual with a culturally available scheme of shared meanings, brining cognitions, emotions and physical sensations into line.”

Creating Personal Rituals and Ceremonies

In his 95 Theses or Articles of Faith for a Christianity for the Third Millennium, theologian Matthew Fox states, “The grief in the human heart needs to be attended to by rituals and practices that when practiced, will lessen anger and allow creativity to flow anew” (n.d., Thesis #92).

Sas and Coman (2016, p. 558) observed that in postmodern Western culture, we have developed an interest in creating fresh new rituals, partly due to a loss of trust in established religious and cultural traditions. They point out that despite this interest, we actually know very little about how to design an effective ritual that incorporates symbolic objects and actions that have therapeutic value. To explore this topic, they interviewed ten psychotherapists about grief rituals, and determined that such rituals tend to fall into three specific functions or types:

Honoring

Letting Go

Self-Transformation

They also identified different types of symbolic objects that can be used ritualistically, and formats for interacting with those objects that include using them for creation of artifacts, remembrance, framing a story, and sense-making (Sas & Coman, 2016, p. 567).

With these foundations in mind, there are endless possibilities for creating personalized ceremonies that can span the spectrum from casual and secular to deeply religious. I will give several examples in the following pages, but first I will attempt to offer a definition of ritual vs. ceremony.

It is generally understood that rituals are routines or customs that are practiced routinely, for example, having a Christmas tree every year or jogging at the same time on the same trail every day. A ceremony is a special, spiritual process that is performed for a specific purpose with a specific intention, and can either be contained within a ritual, or stand on its own. As an example, every year since 1990 I’ve hosted a Winter Solstice Ceremony and Celebration at my house to acknowledge the winter holiday season and honor the return of the light. The yearly gathering, with a potluck meal, Christmas music and holiday merriment, is a recurring, annual event, which makes it a ritual. But within that ritual, there is also a ceremony, which takes place in two parts. In the first part, after dinner, each person lights a candle on the altar and states their intention for bringing more light into their lives and into the world during the coming year. In the second part, each person writes on a slip of paper a description of an energy or an attachment they would like to release in the coming year. We then gather around an outdoor fire where the strips of paper are burned to symbolically release those energies.

This ceremony, because we repeat it yearly as part of the Solstice celebration, could also be considered a ritual. But it is also a ceremony because it involves the symbolic representation of an intention or an action to create a shift in consciousness. Therefore, because “ceremony” and “ritual” cannot be clearly defined as separate concepts, they are not mutually exclusive, so the terms are frequently used interchangeably.

There are no rules for what a personal ritual or ceremony should look like, but in my ceremonial work over the past ten years, I’ve identified these helpful guidelines (Daniel, 2018b):

Rituals contain a mystical or metaphysical component, such as acknowledging spiritual energy, higher planes of consciousness, divine presence or other unseen forces. This might involve sending a message to the spirit of a deceased loved one, or asking God, spirit guides, ancestors or angels to help with healing.

Rituals can be performed alone or in community. No institutional structure is needed.

Rituals are designed to shift energy from one condition to another. A ritual involving breath, dance or movement can release emotional pain from the body. A ritual in which the client draws a picture depicting a traumatic event and then burns that picture in a ceremonial fire helps to release disruptive or obsessive attachments to that image.

Rituals work with symbolic representations of emotions and experiences. These symbols can include drawings, personal sacred objects, or objects from nature, such as stones or feathers. Moving or manipulating these objects in a ritual fashion (by burning in a fire, burying in the earth, purifying with water, etc.), symbolizes moving the pain from where it is “stuck” to a new location in spiritual space where it can be transmuted.

Echoing my metaphysical description of ritual – and Rando’s (1995, p. 322) psychological one – Anderson identifies these characteristics of healing ritual from a Christian perspective (p. 46):

Rituals connect people to communities of care and to the earth. The experience of community softens the isolation that lingering pain generates. God's healing is the work of restoring and redeeming the whole creation.

Rituals make a correspondence between intense emotions or painful memories and words or images to express those emotions. The words and images of Christian rituals make explicit the link or correspondence between God's story and our stories.

Rituals foster coherence of meaning in spite of inevitable mystery, because the deepest truths of life and faith are hidden in God.

The human need for ritual is universal; it makes no difference whether we send our prayers and ritual offerings to the god of Abraham, the Native American Great Spirit, the Hindu pantheon or the sun, moon and earth spirits… the function of ritual is the same. As shamanic practitioner Martin Prechtel says, “Humans have a tribal need to express the grief we feel over our natural transitions. These rites of passage must be honored. Otherwise, they are left unattended rather than being converted into beauty and cultural continuity” (Prechtel, 2015, p. 10).

Sample Ceremonies and Liturgies

To illustrate how ceremonies and community liturgies can be effective tools for healing, I offer the following examples of ceremonies I’ve created for groups and individuals.

End-of-Life Ceremony for Alice

Alice developed multiple sclerosis in her early 40s. When I met her, she was 55, and had been completely paralyzed for several years. A few years after we met, as her body began shutting down and she began making plans for her death, she asked me to help her create a “letting go” ceremony to help her release her earthy attachments. She had planned her funeral and her cremation, said goodbye to her loved ones, and had a date scheduled to use the assisted death program in her state. But she felt something holding her back.

People were visiting during her last days, and she tried hard to interact and converse with them, even though it was painful and difficult. All she really wanted to do was gently slip away, but she felt anxious about her emotional bonds and perceived obligations to the people in her life. She was ready to go, but did not want to carry that anxiety with her. She also worried about the grief her adult children would experience after her exit, and her sadness about leaving them.

Alice had been an award-winning horsewoman in her youth, and loved all things equestrian. Together (via Skype, because she was in another state), she and I created the following “Loosening the Ropes” ceremony, which she performed with the help of her caregiver:

A table was placed in the middle of the room to serve as an altar. Photos of loved ones, symbols of Alice’s accomplishments (equestrian awards, academic diplomas, favorite objects and other items representing her ties to earth) were placed on the altar.

On the floor around the altar, her caregiver placed a length of “ranch rope” (the kind used for horses), laid out in a circle around the altar, like a lasso, to symbolize reining in and holding the objects on the altar.

The end of the rope extended beyond the circle to Alice’s bed, where it was tied around her wrist. She could keep it tied there as long as she wished, to represent her sense of being “tied” to physical life. When she felt ready, she would ask her caregiver to cut it for her. It was a symbolic umbilical cord; just as it was cut when she came into this world, she could now cut it when she felt ready to be born into the next one.

Guilt-Releasing Ceremony for Ramona

Ramona was 60 when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. They’d had a difficult marriage due to his alcoholism, and Ramona had recently moved out of their house and into her own apartment… after 40 years together. She was devastated when he died, and tormented by guilt about leaving, berating herself for not having done enough to help him. Her two adult sons, both of whom had recently married and moved to other cities, also felt guilty for abandoning their father.

Ramona told me about conversations she’d had with her sons in which each tried to assure the other that it wasn’t their fault. But despite these reassurances, each of them clung to their guilt. It was as if they were playing a game of “reverse catch,” tossing a ball of guilt among them, but instead of wanting the other person to catch it, each person wanted to hold on to it. Nobody wanted to relinquish the ball.

The image of ball-tossing inspired the ceremony I created for them. Ramona and her sons lived near the ocean, so I suggested that she and her sons get a beach ball, take it to the beach, and toss it back and forth, with each toss, saying the words, “I release myself from blame and guilt, and I release YOU as well.” As the ball gets tossed around, the energy of guilt is loosened and freed, and the family begins to laugh and play. When they feel complete with the process, they take the ball and pop it with a pin, deflating it and releasing the guilt energy.

Letting Go Ceremony for Lacey

Lacey and her husband had moved into a new house. Their old house was now empty, and on the market for sale. Their son Lucas, who was born in that house, had died from Leukemia there, at ten years old. Lacey was having a difficult time leaving the house, feeling that it represented an abandonment of her son’s memory.

Fortunately, Lacey and I lived in the same town, so I was able to participate in the ceremony with her. We burned sage as we walked room-by-room through the empty house. In each room, Lacey shared a memory of Lucas. In his bedroom she showed me where he liked to sit on the floor to play with his Legos, and she recalled the many nights she laid beside him in his bed as he suffered through his illness. In the bathroom she talked about his little potty chair from when he was a toddler, and in the kitchen, she recalled the two of them baking cookies together.

In each room, we cleared the memories so that they would not be stuck inside the house, but could go with Lacey wherever she went in the future. Lucas had been very artistic, and when she moved, she took all of his drawings with her – hundreds of them. She knew she didn’t want to keep them all, but she couldn’t bear to throw them away either. I suggested that she keep the ones she wants, and burn the others in a ceremonial fire in which should visualize the smoke and heat carrying her love up to Lucas in heaven.

A Body Blessing at the Time of Death

This is a ceremony I’d done several times for hospice patients, but it was never more meaningful than when I performed it for my own mother. She died in a hospital, and when it was time for the nursing assistants to prepare her body for retrieval by the funeral home, I insisted on staying in the room and helping them, which would allow me the opportunity to do a ceremony based on the washing of the body.

With a washcloth, I gently wiped her eyes and blessed them for all they had seen in her 89 years of life. I wiped the cloth over her mouth and throat, for remembrance of the words she had spoken, and over her chest, blessing her heart for all the love she’d given and received. Then to the abdomen, blessing her womb for the children she had birthed, and finally washing her legs and feet, blessing them for the many miles they’d walked and for the journey on which they’d carried her.

I then put a wreath of flowers on her head, and offered a final blessing for her soul and the new adventures that awaited her in the afterlife.

Community Grief Ritual

In November 2018, with my colleagues Austyn Wells and Maggie Yenoki, I facilitated a community grief ceremony to support the people and animals who were affected by the wildfires in California (Daniel, 2018a).

Each person was given a four-foot length of ribbon, and in silent meditation (with heart-opening music playing), each person wound their ribbon up into a coil while infusing it with their prayers, their pain, their stories of loss, and their intention for healing. This process is based on Martin Prechtel’s “paddling home” ceremony, where a loved one wraps a length of string around a bead while telling the story of the deceased’s life (the bead/string can then be placed into the coffin or the cremation box (Prechtel, 2015, p. 34). In our ceremony on this day, the ribbons held the story of our losses.

The story-filled ribbons were then carried, in processional, to an altar made from burnt tree branches that I’d collected from the area destroyed by the fire. Each person tied their ribbon onto the branches, allowing their stories and prayers to unfurl onto the altar. Also on the altar were little toy animals to represent the animals that were injured, killed or traumatized by the fire.

After everyone tied their ribbons to the branches, the branches and ribbons were carried outside, in processional, and placed into a tree, where the stories, prayers and pain could be released to the elements, carried to the divine by the sun, wind and rain.

This ceremony can be adapted for communal losses of any kind, not only in response to natural disasters, but for any event that traumatizes a community or a nation, such as a mass shooting, a war or a global pandemic.

Conclusion

Creative ceremonies and rituals offer a breath of fresh air (sometimes literally, as many ceremonies are performed outdoors and include breathwork), that revitalizes stale old practices which have lost their meaning. Incorporating fresh new rituals into one’s spiritual life provides actions one can take to cope with a specific problem, while also shifting one’s perceptions of the problem, creating a new narrative, and providing inspiration for a new vision of the future.

Ritual and ceremony can provide remarkable healing power while creating a link between psychology and theology. Anderson (2010, p. 42) offers this interfaith, cross-cultural summary:

Just as we use playful and poetic language to speak about the mystery of God, we use symbols, gestures, and song to point to the unspeakable in human pain and make public what cannot be seen. Rituals express what cannot be captured in words. They make the invisible visible… What makes human rituals so important, in our lives generally, and so essential for healing is that ritual is a vehicle for liberating us from narratives that confine and for retelling stories that liberate.

Creative ceremonies and rituals help us look our losses in the eye and teach us to view them with reverence rather than bitterness. They also help us to gently and lovingly let go of guilt, blame, anger and the disruptive energies within us that may be keeping us from healing and reconstructing our lives. As Daniel describes, “Ritual gives words to the unspeakable and form to the formless. It brings the non-physical into physical form so we can see it, touch it, feel it and process it, creating a bond between heaven and earth. It turns pain into power (Grief Rituals, 2018b).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Terri Daniel

Author Biography

Terri Daniel, DMin, CT, CCTP is a hospice and hospital-trained spiritual care provider and end-oflife educator certified in death, dying and bereavement by the Association of Death Education and Counseling and in trauma support by the International Association of Trauma Professionals. Terri conducts workshops throughout the U.S. for the dying and the bereaved, and teaches in the interreligious chaplaincy program at the Graduate Theological Union. She is the founder of the Conference on Death and Afterlife Studies and the Ask Doctor Death podcast, and is the author of four books on death, grief and the afterlife. Terri has a BA in Religious Studies from Marylhurst University, an MA in Pastoral Care from Fordham University, and a Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Care and Counseling from the San Francisco Theological Seminary.

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