Tending the Tenders: Grief Support for Therapists & Wellness Practitioners

Tending the Tenders: Grief Support
for Therapists & Wellness Practitioners

Next group will be in the fall of 2023 and it may possibly be in person.

Reach out to me to be on the waitlist. Thanks.

Do you feel like you need more support after these three years of so much stress and change?

Are you overwhelmed by your own personal grief or the grief of living in a world that continues to change so rapidly? Are you stressed about how the world seems to be collapsing right now?

Do you have more and more clients that are struggling with just daily survival and need more support in helping them?

Are you burned out beyond burnout?

Are you wondering how to deal with this collective grief? Or are you wanting more support with working with ancestral grief?

Do you wonder how you can keep going and tend to your own joy and life force energy?

Well, I am right there with you.

Co-hearts, I invite you to take a breath with me…

Our jobs are really hard right now as we continue to hold space for so many while we are right there in it too.

Thanks for being on the front lines as we both hold others while holding ourselves and our families/communities right now. There is so much grief-I would say we are dealing with complex and compounded grief at this point, especially with climate change, and the fact that it really seems that the world systems are falling apart.

I have created this group specifically for you–the ones that are holding us all together.

And I will be honest, I created this group with myself in mind and heart.

I woke up early at 4:19am during the beginning of the pandemic. I had so much anxiety that I couldn’t go back to sleep. So for two hours I ruminated about everything that was weighing heavy on my heart as well as the hearts of my clients. Eventually I went back to sleep, but later that day I thought-I know I am not the only one that needs support right now.

So this group has a dual purpose because I want to be able to reach more people with better grief support. So I came up with this brilliant idea for other therapists: to create a space for your grief be witnessed and held while simultaneously learning how be a better grief supporter.

Here are the deets!

We will gather for six weeks on Wednesdays 5:30-6:45pm (MST).
Dates: Fall of 2023.
We will drop in briefly with a body-centered practice, then we’ll check in personally and professionally and then I’ll teach about grief.
I want to be intentional about keeping our time to an hour and 15 minutes yet allow a bit of wiggle room at the end if we need to stay longer. AND I know like you, I am busy–so I want to honor your time AND I want you to get what you need.
Our fifth session will be an online grief ritual.
There will be no extra videos that you must watch in order to be in the group. And there won’t be any homework either, other than possibly creating your own befriending grief practice outside of the group in your own way and on your own time.
You’ll receive a huge bonus-my DIY Online Grief Relief Course (a value of $297) that I created at the end of 2019. You’re welcome to watch the course at your own pace or not watch it at all. It’s a gift for you to have even more support at this time and to learn in more details about how I work with grief.

$ 369

Weekly Support Group for 6 weeks
Online DIY Grief Support Program (8 Modules)
Create Community: Be Witnessed and Held in Your Grief
Grief Psycho-Education Tools
Invitation to Private Facebook Group
Online Grief Ritual

Yes please!

This group is for you if...

You need grief support and can't find the time.You don't know how to grieve yourself so you find it hard to work with your client's grief. You need more grief tools or you're afraid to grieve. And you learn best by experience rather than reading.

This group is not:

A supervision group even though I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Colorado. And it's not a therapy group either.

This group is informed by my own experience of navigating devastating and life changing trauma. My partner crashed his mountain bike and broke his neck with the result being quadriplegia.

So I know what it’s like to live with ambiguous loss or losses that have no end. I know what it’s like to have so much grief.

This group will be informed by my dive into grief and will use the wisdom of my grief mentors that I found along the way.

These include: Sobonfu Somé and the Dagara practices of grief ritual, Francis Weller and his five gates of grief, Alan Wolfelt’s companioning tenets and more.

The world we live in and the systems that held it all in place are collapsing right now so we need more grief tools now more than ever.

New material is being added each time. Recently we also discuss how to be with collective grief as well as how to work with Ancestral grief.

This group will also be tailor made to what’s happening in the moment based on what your needs are and what you’d like to learn about grief and how to hold it.

Who am I and what’s got my back with this program? —-I’m Beth, your full hearted hostess with the mostest … I’m a MA in Transpersonal Psychology with a Focus in Art Therapy from The Naropa University (2000). I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor and Art Therapist. I’m a Creative Grief Support Practitioner. I’m also a caregiver to my partner Michael and can put on my unofficial CNA or nurses hat and care for him if I need to. I’ve done my own apprenticeship to grief and came out the other side ready and passionate to help others navigate and befriend grief. I use out of the box ways to help you come right side up again in grief. I’m a full hearted human who is doing her best to remain hopeful and keep fighting this good fight. I’m raised Lutheran and come from a long line of ministers from Norway, Sweden and German roots. I now pray to the elements while I dance with my toes in the dirt here on the Arapahoe land I inhabit in Boulder, Colorado. And I try to become a better white bodied accomplice every damn day.

Frequently asked questions:

Can I get a refund? No, so please make sure you can commit to this process before you hit the buy now button. If you need to chat about whether this is right for you, please reach out and ask for that.
Will you record the sessions so I if I can’t make it, I can rewatch later? Yes, but I’m only recording the psycho-educational part. We may decide as a group to record the witnessing part, but I want to make that a group decision.
How many therapists are gonna be in the group? At this point, I would be happy to have a small group of 4 but could also hold it at the capacity of eight participants.

Okay co-hearts-thanks for all that you’re doing to hold us together at this time.

And please join me if you feel called, we can’t do this alone, especially now.

Grieve well, be well~

Beth Erlander, Grief Friend who’s holding the back of your tender heart.

Beth offers a beautiful balance of wisdom, insight and support. She brings her authentic self to facilitate a group that makes all feel welcome. I gained tools and strategies that not only helped soothe me as a provider of care but also gems I can pass along to those I serve through my work. Beth is such a blessing!

Beth has embraced her calling to care for the grieving. As a colleague, I am grateful she provided an opportunity for us to support each other amid the added challenges of 2020. I hope many more Tenders will benefit from her Tending in years to come.

Beth’s grief group “Tending the Tenders” was valuable on so many levels. It allowed me to find pathways into my own unrecognized grief as well as to deepen and better understand the grieving process from many perspectives. Beth’s presence is gentle and wise, she walks the walk and is making an important contribution to support the Tenders in a world that more and more needs attunement to the grieving process. This class has helped me personally and professionally. I heartfully recommend it.