Grief Support Certification Online Course Overview 

Goals 

 1) The primary goal of the Grief Support Certification Online course is that all who attend, gain advanced knowledge and skills to work in more wholistic ways with individuals, and in group settings, with those who have experienced grief.

2) Since basic to this course is the belief that a therapeutic helper can  bring another, only as far along the healing process as the helper has already been, a second goal of this program is the facilitation of personal healing for each participant.

Objectives

The teaching and learning experiences provided in this course allow you to:

1. Increase your knowledge of the theories of loss and grief, and the approaches used to support those who are grieving.
2. Gain the skills to support and counsel individuals and families who are grieving one or multiple losses.
3. Gain the knowledge and skills to offer physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual support to a dying person, and assist in the process of Life Review.
4. Advance your skills at offering wholistic support and counseling to the family caring for a dying member.
5. Advance your ability to offer community support, and to provide information on bereavement to community members.
6. Acquire knowledge and skill in using healing strategies, including therapeutic art, dream processing, guided visualization, energy, and nature work, to help reduce the effects of grief.
7. Advance personal healing and professional growth.
8. Identify, and practice self-care methods.
9. Develop a model for a Grief Support Practice that allows the implementation of wholistic methods of helping and healing.

Course Content

Provided Resources

1. All the Written Materials and Audiovisuals required to successfully master the content in the Units that teach you how to provide effective therapeutic interventions and counseling to grieving people of both genders, in every age groups, regardless of religion or culture.
2. All the Written Materials and Audiovisuals required to successfully complete the one Unit that teaches you how to provide effective emotional and spiritual support and counseling to a dying person and the dying person’s family. 
3. Exercises and Assignments specific to each Unit, that will enrich your abilities to apply the content in each Unit.
4. Feedback from the Course Facilitator on your progress following the submission of the Required Assignments and Review Questions.

Time Frame 

1. Access to the Introduction Unit, the Application, and the Consent, are available immediately upon payment. 
2. Work at your own pace in the submission of Required Assignments and the Review Questions required for completion of each Unit.
3. There is a six month time frame allotted for the completion of all materials required for certification. 

As Life Ended, He Knew He Had Done The Best He Could

 by Jane A. Simington, PhD

Developmental theorist Eric Erickson¹ described our final developmental task as being the need to review our life to determine if the gods are pleased. In doing a life review, we sort through the various aspects of our life and conclude either with believing we have done the best we could, or determining there are things we need to make right within our self or in our relationships.

Some time ago, my husband called me for help with the frightening visions that were being experienced by his dying father. As my father-in-law’s life was drawing to a close he began having visions of uniformed soldiers walking around his bed. Each time he described the experiences, he concluded these were the soldiers killed during WWII battles because of the orders he, as their commander, had given.

My father-in-law described that over the years he had often thought about these men, wondered how their families managed their grief and how they had survived without the son, husband or father who had been killed. He mentioned that he had often pondered what the dying soldiers thoughts were of him. Had they blamed him? Had they cursed him? As he reviewed this time of his life and these circumstances, he indicated that over the years, and especially now as he was examining the various aspects of his life, he thought a lot about some of the choices he felt were required of him during the war years.

Soul Pain, Grief And Transformation

 by Jane A. Simington, PhD

Between tearful sobs, Mary confides the painful story of how her life has become meaningless and of how parenting issues and marital problems have escalated since the suicide death of her teenage son, four years before. Listening to her as she speaks — bent-over, eyes averted, monotone voice — one can conclude that Mary is depressed, the type that results in reaction to a major loss.

Yet as a seasoned therapist, I need to delve deeper, for I have learned that depression is not a true diagnosis; it is a collection of symptoms, all alerting a keen observer to a much greater concern. Her physical appearance, her expressions of billowing emotions, her struggles with mental clarity, her difficulties in relationships and her declarations that life has lost its meaning, all tell me that every aspect of Mary’s being is struggling to reorder a life that had been torn apart.

Mary identifies feelings of guilt and shame.  “How,” she cries “could I not have seen his struggles?” Mary describes a loss of trust in self, in her decisions, in everyone and in everything.