Know What to Say When Clients Are Grieving
Get eight free, script-ready mindfulness prompts to use when clients feel overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure what to do next. Bring them into individual sessions or support groups.
Practical tools, professional training, and thoughtful guidance for people who support those living with grief.
Explore the Resources →For therapists, counselors, coaches, chaplains, hospice professionals, and grief support facilitators.
Whether you're expanding your training, looking for something useful in your next session, or finding ways to sustain yourself in this work, there's a place to begin.
Explore grief coach training, certification, ethical scope, and practical skills for supporting grieving people.
Find client-ready mindfulness practices, journaling prompts, exercises, worksheets, and ideas for individual sessions and groups.
Explore boundaries, compassion fatigue, mindfulness, professional grief, and ways to sustain yourself while supporting others.
Start with ready-to-use language for supporting grieving clients, or discover an area of your practice you'd like to strengthen.
Get eight free, script-ready mindfulness prompts to use when clients feel overwhelmed, stuck, or unsure what to do next. Bring them into individual sessions or support groups.
Answer five quick questions to receive a personalized video masterclass with Heather Stang and a companion worksheet. Return to your resources whenever you need them.
Understanding grief theory is important. Knowing what to offer when someone is overwhelmed, stuck, or asking what to do next is another skill.
I created the 8-Step Mindfulness & Grief System to help practitioners bring what they know together. It connects contemporary grief theory with mindfulness, conscious relaxation, compassion, journaling, movement, continuing bonds, and meaning-making.
The framework offers structure while leaving room for each person's story, culture, grieving style, and pace. It helps you choose practices intentionally rather than reaching for a technique simply because you know it.
Explore the Mindfulness & Grief System →Your needs may change as you gain experience, work with different clients, and discover new areas of interest.
You might be an experienced therapist looking for more grief-specific tools. You may facilitate bereavement groups and want a stronger framework. Or perhaps you're considering grief coaching and wondering where to begin.
You may also be thinking about your own wellbeing. Supporting people through loss is meaningful work, and it can ask a great deal of you.
How can I better support my clients?
What can I bring into my next session?
How can I care for myself in this work?
Explore the books and conversations behind the Mindfulness & Grief approach, with practices you can explore yourself and insights you can bring into your work.
Living with Grief, Navigating Loss, and From Grief to Peace draw on mindfulness, self-compassion, journaling, and embodied practices. Written for people living with loss, they also offer valuable insights for professionals who support them.
Explore the Books →
Listen and Learn
Listen to conversations and teaching about grief, mindfulness, self-compassion, professional practice, and supporting people through loss. Explore topics that speak to your work and personal practice.
Listen to the Podcast →
I'm a thanatologist, author, and founder of the Mindfulness & Grief Institute. My graduate training in thanatology gave me a foundation in grief theory. My background in yoga therapy and mindfulness taught me to pay close attention to the body, awareness, and compassion.
More than two decades of working with grieving people have taught me that good support requires knowledge, presence, and the ability to respond to the person in front of you. In 2025, I received the Clinical Practice Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling for innovation in grief support.
My work also appears in professional texts on grief therapy, mindfulness, bereavement, and creative approaches to supporting people through loss.
Chapter contribution on mindfulness-based grief therapy.
Contributions on compassion meditation, the relaxation response, and yoga for grief.
Chapter contribution on journaling through grief and beyond.
Explore the resources that fit your work right now, and return whenever you're ready to learn something new.