Journeying Through Grief
A Comprehensive Guide for Spiritual Directors and Companions
- 15 self-paced sessions
- Select Presence articles
- Transformative tools for spiritual companions, healers, and caregivers
- Support not only your own well-being, but also those you serve
Grief is a universal experience, yet supporting others through it can feel daunting. Though painful, grief can also be a gateway to profound spiritual transformation.
In these challenging times, many of us are grappling with profound stresses, traumas, and overwhelm. How do we, as spiritual companions, enhance our calm, maintain groundedness, and cope with the weight of it all? How do we heal ourselves while guiding others?
This comprehensive collection of on-demand videos, along with select Presence Journal articles, provides wisdom and tools to transform the way we approach grief, focusing on deep listening, presence, and open-hearted care. This will be a transformative set of resources for spiritual companions, healers, and caregivers to support not only their own well-being but also that of those they serve.
Featuring a cast of experienced spiritual companions and healers from the SDI Community, you’ll receive teachings on active surrender, groundedness, and self-sustenance, vital for navigating both personal and collective grief, and essential for helping others find their own path to healing.
Topics Covered in This Series Include:
Accompanying the Dying: Spiritual Care in Life’s Final Days
Being present for someone in their final days can be both an honor and a challenge. This session is for those offering spiritual care to the dying, helping them deepen their listening presence and navigate the emotional terrain of death. Whether a spiritual companion, family member, or friend, Accompanying the Dying offers tools to provide connection and comfort at life’s threshold.
Working with Individual and Collective Loss:
Supporting others through loss requires deep compassion, active listening, and the ability to hold space for their grief. As spiritual companions, we can provide a safe, non-judgmental presence, offering comfort without trying to fix or change the grieving person’s experience. By simply being present, we help them explore the depth of their emotions, create meaning in their journey, and find their own path to healing. Our role is to walk beside them, allowing the grieving process to unfold naturally while providing gentle guidance and support.
The Sanctuary of Spiritual Companionship
What if sanctuary is not a place but something we create through connection? How can spiritual companionship offer a living sanctuary for the grief-stricken, where questions, transformation, and healing can be met with compassion? Discover how spiritual companionship, when grounded in presence, fosters wholeness through the slow, contemplative practice of deep listening and reflection.
Eco-Spiritual Direction: Companioning in a Time of Collective Grief
Many of us are not only navigating personal grief but also experiencing ecological and cultural loss. Eco-spiritual direction invites the voices of nature—the more-than-human others—into the spiritual companionship process. Learn how to include the songs of the stars, sunsets, and the natural world in your work with your companions and directees, helping them remember their connection to Earth and the greater web of life.
Healing in Stressful Times: Grounding and Poise Through Spiritual Companionship
In today’s world, we are all carrying the weight of accumulated stress, trauma, and grief. How do we sustain ourselves and stay grounded in the worst moments? How do we share these techniques with those we companion? Learn body-centered explorations of healing practices that can be used for both personal transformation and supporting others. Practice active surrender, calming techniques, and maintaining poise even in overwhelming times.
This bundled course offers a rich exploration of spiritual companionship in times of loss and longing. Designed for spiritual companions and anyone navigating grief, it is imbued with wisdom and deeply personal stories. Whether supporting the dying, traversing the transformative power of grief, or reclaiming the holiness of loss, let this collection serve as a resource as you hold space in times of profound sorrow, while keeping the candle of hope, faith, and love burning.
This Bundled Collection includes the following SDI webinars, plus many Presence articles on grief, packaged as a single offering:
Four full sessions. Spiritual companionship – with its deep listening, deep respect for the other and contemplative practice – can revolutionize the way ordinary people process grief around the world.
Four full sessions encouraging connection & community near the end of life
Dr. Jamie Eaddy - Death and Grief Awareness (2024)
In this session, Dr. Jamie Eaddy shares on guiding people through grief and loss, illuminating the paths of possibilities as they move through various transitions.
Mirabai Starr - Mystic Wisdom in Uncertain Times (2021)
In this session, Mirabai Starr shares on Death and Dying, Grief and Grieving: Companioning People on the Threshold
Sarah Cledwyn - From the Depths to the Heights (2021)
In this session, Sarah Cledwyn invites us to get into our body and practice through our fear, witness the world and be the change, hope and dream that we long for.
Rev. Sarah Bowen - Sacred Sendoffs (2022)
Sacred Sendoffs ― Animal loss hurts. Explore transition rituals, navigate messy questions about what happens to animals when they die, and also look at creative memorials for environmental disasters and species extinction that can help heal ecological grief.
Spiritual companionship offers what Bayo describes in this single session as “a dynamic sanctuary”– a relationship both accepting and questioning, where being “undone” can lead to greater wholeness.
Victoria Loorz - Eco-Spiritual Direction in Times of Eco-Crisis (2022)
As more and more people are affected by the chaos of climate crisis, experience climate grief, and see that how we treat the natural world mirrors the way we treat other people, the call for spiritual practitioners who can midwife people back into relationship with the rest of the world is greater than ever. Single session.
Frank writes, “We are a death denying society. We don’t talk about death or if we do, we use other terms, “passing away,” “transitioning,” etc. We just don’t want to talk about it.bAnd even those of us who may be comfortable talking about dying and death find in these times that it is difficult—too real, too grim.” This single session includes a practical piece around living wills, power of attorney, end of life care partnership, advanced directives.
May Their Memory Be for a Blessing by Rabbi Chaya Gusfield
March 2008 – Issue 14-1
Spiritual Transformation through Transcending Loss by Richard Boileau
September 2010 – Issue 16-3
Ignatian Spirituality - Companionship in Loss by Mary Robin Craig
September 2013 – Issue 19-3
Spiritual Direction as Grief Work by Nicholas Collura
September 2020 – Issue 26-3
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
—Rabindranath Tagore
Full Outline of Included Sessions
- Death and Dying, Grief and Grieving: Companioning People on the Threshold (Mirabai Starr)
- Relationships | Body | Mind | Spirit | Everyone has their own arc of grief (Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Jenn Hepton and Taqwa Surapati)
- Humility | Authenticity | Awareness | How to Be Present (Lindsey Whissel Fenton, Alesia Alexander and Eric Massanari)
- Caring for Caregivers | Trauma | Community Grief (Lindsey Whissel Fention, Jackie Hook and Grace Cheptu)
- Approaching the Threshold (Eric Massanari and Taqwa Surapati)
- A Practice of Presence (Eric Massanari and Miles Reimer)
- Humility in the Face of Mystery (Ryusho Jeffus and Eric Massanari)
- Alone and Together (Carole Trepanier and Eric Massanari)
- Death and Grief Awareness (Dr. Jamie Eaddy)
- Death and Dying in the Time of COVID (Frank Williams)
- Sacred Sendoffs (Rev. Sarah Bowen)
- Ecospiritual Direction in a Time of Eco-Crisis: The Call of the Wild (Victoria Loorz)
- From the Depths to the Heights (Sarah Cledwyn)
- Spiritual Companionship as Sanctuary (Bayo Akomolafe)
- The Role of Spiritual Companions in the Care and Repair of the World (Roshi Joan Halifax)
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Self-Paced Course - All Sessions Available Immediately
Who is This Course For?
Anyone with an interest in Ignatian Spirituality will find nourishment, challenge, and enjoyment in this series! You do not need to be a spiritual director or companion, or a teacher of the Spiritual Exercises, to benefit from this resonant offering, which is suitable for both beginners and advanced practitioners.
The Benefits of an SDI Course
Reputable
SDI is the largest and oldest network of spiritual companions in the world. For 30 years we have been creating and curating educational offerings for spiritual companions across religious traditions, and we have our finger on the pulse of the spiritual companionship movement in the US and beyond.
Faculty
Our instructors are the best in the field. Our courses include some of the most renowned and sought-after spiritual teachers in the field of spiritual companionship.
Affordable
We are committed to making our courses widely available and accessible. We are keeping the course tuition low and have a generous number of scholarships to give out. We strongly encourage any for whom the cost is a challenge to apply for a scholarship.
Convenient
Watch the lessons when you can, complete the course at your own pace. Our online learning platform is easy to use, and once you purchase you'll find the entire Course and lessons available under your profile. Our Membership Services team is easy to contact and readily available to assist you with questions.
Experiential
Life learning, not book learning. Experiential, contemplative, spiritual. We want to open a gateway to understanding and connection. We’d rather companion you to an insight than impress you with a list of facts. Because most of our audience are spiritual directors and companions – including chaplains, life coaches and others who offer spiritual care -, we focus on the practical and care-giving side of the equation.
Welcoming
This introductory level course is open to all! There are no prerequisites and no required readings. Each session includes self-contained video content, and often accompanied by workbooks and worksheets you can print and fill out on your own. It's easy to experiment and try out some of the techniques taught in the course.
Credits
28 CEU credits available upon completing all sessions.
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