The tables are turned as Heather Stang, the regular host of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, is interviewed by guest host Audrey Hughey about the new guided journal for grief, From Grief to Peace, which releases on June 1, 2021. Heather shares how she began journaling about her grief over her Uncle Doug's death in high school and the differences between free journaling and guided writing with prompts. Audrey shares how she processed her emotions over her ex-husband's death in her first thriller/novel, Desecrate the Darkness: A Vigilante Romantic Crime Thriller.
From Grief to Peace is based on the Mindfulness & Grief System developed by Heather. It offers meditation and journaling exercises to initially help bereaved people cope with the pain of loss, and eventually rewrite their post-loss narrative, all while developing healthy lifestyle habits.
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The new book offers a holistic approach to life after loss, weaving in memorial and meaning-making activities with personal reflection and goals to help the reader-writer move forward, which is quite different from moving on. Heather relies on evidence-based approaches, contemporary grief research, and ancient practices rooted in yoga and Buddhism, and holds a master's degree in thanatology, the study of death, dying, and bereavement.
About Heather Stang
Heather Stang, MA, C-IAYT, is the author of Mindfulness & Grief and the guided journal, From Grief To Peace. She is the founder of the Mindfulness & Grief Institute, where she facilitates Awaken Meditation & Journaling for Grief, offers individual sessions, and hosts the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast.
Heather discovered yoga and mindfulness while she was the CEO of a web development company and diagnosed with a stress-related illness. These contemplative practices inspired her to live a life in service to others, and she became a suicide/crisis hotline call specialist in honor of her uncle who died by suicide when Heather was a child.
Heather relied on her mindfulness training to maintain a calm and compassionate attitude both on the job and at home after difficult shifts. Additionally, Heather volunteered as a trainer and call specialist on the New Orleans hotline just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, and she was a research assistant for a NIMH-funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Research Project. This experience inspired her to pursue a Masters in Thanatology (Death, Dying & Bereavement Expert) from Hood College, which she earned in 2010.
Heather is on the Advisory Board for the highly regarded military family survivor organization Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and offers professional training and workshops to organizations including the Association of Death Education and Counseling, Hospice Foundation of America, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. She has contributed chapters to Superhero Grief (2020), Intimacy and Sexuality During Illness and Loss (2020), Techniques of Grief Therapy: Assessment and Intervention (2015), and the forthcoming Handbook of Grief Therapies (2021).
About Guest Host Audrey Hughey
Audrey Hughey is the founder of the Author Transformation Alliance, a community dedicated to uplifting and empowering authors at all stages to reach their vision of success step-by-step with a powerful network of support to guide them. With social media and the current state of the internet, authors no longer need to go it alone or guess their way through the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing.
Writing became Audrey's passion from a young age, her notebooks quickly filling with high fantasy and science fiction short stories. What began as fiction writing evolved to consist mostly of report writing and formal business communication during her fourteen years of active and reserve duty in the United States Army. While pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in Writing, she began contributing regularly to non-fiction magazines and first saw her byline in print in July of 2015.
Since attaining her B.A. in English (Writing) and her M.A. in Ancient and Classical history, she has returned to completing her WIPs alongside serving her fellow writers by educating self-marketing authors on the finer points of leveraging the digital world to reach more readers.
You can often find Audrey at the local coffee shop or Panera as she works on her novel manuscripts of varying genres (fantasy, crime thrillers, horror collections, western-horror, and more) and breathes life into the characters who test the fences of her vibrant imagination. When she's not writing or working with other authors, Audrey is spending time with her two bright children and loving husband or looking for any opportunity to go horseback riding.
