Tending Grief: A community space to hold, process, and heal

Grief has a powerful way of unsettling us—shaking emotions to the surface, shaping how we experience our world. We invite you to join us on the third Tuesday of each month for a supportive space to gather in community. Together, we will honor the many forms of loss that may arise, whether that is:

• The death of a loved one
• Divorce or end of a significant relationship
• Living with a chronic illness
• Loss of a job, role, or meaningful activity that shaped your identity
• Releasing a vision or dream you’ve held
• Sorry for suffering in the wider world
• Something else entirely

This group offers space to witness, share, and gently tend to grief in all its forms.

Details

• Who: Adults ages 18 and up of all identities and backgrounds
• When: Tuesday, December 15 from 6-7:30pm
• Where: Kalamazoo Therapy Group, 1901 Parkview Avenue
• Cost: Pay what you can from $20-60
• Facilitated by: Kelsey Nimmo, LMFT, LPC
• Seats available: 8 (therefore registration is required for this event)

To register…

Please complete the form below. We’ll set up a secure client portal for you using your date of birth where you can complete registration. Please note that your seat is not reserved for this event until you have completed the documents in your client portal.

What happens in the group

Each month, we will gather for 90 minutes in a small, supportive circle of people who know the raw, tender, and oftentimes illuminating experience of grief. Together, we will create a sacred and confidential container where grief can be expressed, and safely held.

Whatever you are grieving—whether a person, event, identity, or experience—this group offers uninterrupted room to honor your loss and gently tend to the changes unfolding within you.

In each gathering, we will…

• Enter a quiet, still space for contemplation and breathwork.
• Begin with a reading related to grief, which may include psychoeducation, poetry, creative narrative, or something else.
• Hold a container for open sharing, without response, from those who wish to speak. Sometimes bearing witness to grief can be healing in itself-there is never pressure to share aloud.
• At times engage in a narrative or art therapy activity to support grief processing and healing.
• If time allows, open to a group discussion on themes that arise, with the intention of connecting in the raw experience of grief, rather than dissecting the content of the grief.
• Close with an optional water-and-fire ceremony for releasing. Ritual can be a powerful way of tending grief, but participation is always optional, and may also be done privately, in your own way.

This group might be for you if…

• You are living with a significant loss—whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a chronic illness, the loss of a job or role that shaped your identity, releasing a dream you’ve held, sorrow for suffering in the wider world, or something else deeply personal.
• You feel overwhelmed, with emotions just beneath the surface, and long for space to let them arise.
• You have been grieving on your own and seek the support of community. Grief can feel profoundly lonely—even though it is part of our shared human experience.

What you’ll walk away with…

• A clearer understanding and appreciation of grief’s tender yet powerful transformative nature.
• A sense of community and connection through shared human experience.
• Insight into the many faces and phases of grief: as deep sorrow, overwhelming anger, raw expansion and openness, flat listlessness, beautiful awe, or something uniquely your own.

About the facilitator

Kelsey Nimmo is a Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Sex Therapist, and tender of grief. She has spent years experiencing, studying, and learning how to hold and honor the deeply transformative power of grief within herself and her clients.

Kelsey believes that to create and hold space for grief (big and small) is one of the most important things we can do in seeking wholeness and healing within ourselves. She wishes that we, as many other cultures, prioritized a ritual to honor the transitions we are experiencing—each of which bring forward a face of grief if we allow it.

While we often think of grief as a narrow list of life events, Kelsey believes that grief arises in us on a daily basis, is cumulative, and if untended, eats away at our soul. She has a deep respect and reverence for the many expressions of grief and is looking forward to holding space with other humans who are on their journeys to finding more healing and wholeness.