(The information provided on The Grief Recovery Method® has been copied and transferred, by permission, from the Grief Recovery Institute's promotional materials.)

All of us have experienced grief throughout our lives, as a result of many changes and losses. But we are not necessarily well prepared to really handle, manage or recover from the emotional impact which result from these changes and losses.

Just as our grief is universal, the ineffective ways of dealing with it are also pretty universal. 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 were asked to paint a room, but were only given a hammer and a screwdriver, we cannot accomplish the task of recovering from grief with inappropriate tools. If given a paint brush, paint and a drop cloth, we could indeed paint a room. Given the proper emotional tools, we can also achieve recovery from our grief. That’s what The Grief Recovery Method® (GRM) provides – the appropriate emotional tools for doing this work.

Through a defined step-by-step process, The Grief Recovery Method® 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 the introduction of 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 judgement 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 The Grief Recovery Method® process is completed for one loss, it can be used over and over again, to address other past losses, and to help more quickly address new losses.