Grief Guide Certification
Become the lantern that helps people walk through their darkest moments
We are hitting that age where death is becoming more obvious. Our parents. Divorce. Our earth.
No one is ok with death. It’s scary. It requires courage. Grief sucks but it’s a fact of life. Having spaces where we engage with ritual, art, and community transforms grief from something that breaks us, into something we build with.
And is needed now more than ever.
Grief Guide Certification
Transitions are inflection points in our lives. We can break or we can build. They are powerful times of alchemy that if navigated well lead us to higher levels of consciousness and purpose. If navigated poorly we can spiral into addiction, dissociation, disease, and even death. As a collective we are in a time of great transition and it can be felt everywhere.
Now more than ever people who have learned through their own lives to hold the field and alchemize their pain into beauty are those that are most needed to guide others in doing the same. This training equips you with the confidence, community, and skills needed to do that for individuals and within your community.
Winter to Spring
Dec. 21
Winter Solstice
March 20 2027
Spring Equinox
This program equips you with the embodied skillset to guide grief in one to one and communal settings.
BY THE END OF THIS PROGRAM YOU WILL BE ABLE TO
Have your own business
for people in active grief using ritual, art, and witnessing as pillars.
Build community spaces
for modern ritual practices that help people move better with their grief
Hold yourself in all passings
with more presence and peace in times of transition and loss - deeply embodying the medicine you serve
Pathways You Can Follow Upon
Completion of the Program
Become a Grief Guide
One-on-one support for people moving through loss, helping them navigate the emotional, relational, and existential terrain of grief.
Become a Grief Circle Facilitator
Hold small group circles where people can share stories, rituals, memories, and experiences of loss in a structured and supportive space.
Become a Grief & Transition Doula
Support people through major endings beyond death: divorce, breakup, illness, identity shifts, career changes, relocation, or the end of a life chapter.
Become a Grief Ritualist / Ceremonialist
Create personalized rituals for endings and remembrance: death ceremonies, memorials, anniversaries, letting-go rituals, and rites of passage.
Become a Grief Educator & Workshop Facilitator
Teach workshops for individuals, communities, workplaces, or caregivers about grief, death, impermanence, and how to accompany someone through loss.
Why is it the right time to become a grief guide
The grief support market is expanding fast
The grief support market is expanding fast — projected to grow from $3.67 billion in 2025 to $5.83 billion by 2030 at nearly 10% annually - but the field is dominated by clinical counseling and telehealth models that treat grief as a private, individual condition to be managed.
That leaves a wide-open niche
That leaves a wide-open niche: grief as a collective, embodied, and creative process rather than a symptom.
By weaving art, ritual, and community
By weaving art, ritual, and community into the practice, we meet a need the counseling-and-app model structurally can't - the human hunger to mourn together, to move it through the body, and to mark loss with meaning.
This is our competitive advantage
This is our competitive advantage: not another service delivering support to isolated individuals, but a living container where grief becomes shared, creative, and transformative. As the market floods with virtual platforms and personalized care, the durable differentiator is exactly what can't be digitized - presence, embodiment, and ceremony held in community.
Is this training for you?
A professionally oriented training for people who feel called to hold grief with more presence, courage, and care.
Therapists, doulas & counselors
Therapists, doulas, and counselors who want to expand their practice.
People shaped by their own grief
Anyone who has gone through grief and want to serve others in their journey.
Those looking for another way
Those who can’t stomach what’s on the market - either too woo, or too clinical - and want to be the change they want to see.
You know the importance of having a guide
You’ve experienced the transformative power of grief first hand. Maybe you had support, maybe you needed support and didn’t have it - but you know that having a lantern, a guide in this dark time is essential - and you’re ready to step into that role.
Why this is different
We weave the ancient and the modern in a way that makes it accessible to a wider circle of people
We understand the power of art to alchemize grief into renewal and rebirth
We work on a somatic level - less talking, more becoming.
You’ve experienced the transformative power of grief first hand. Maybe you had support, maybe you needed support and didn’t have it but you know that having a lantern, a guide in this dark time is essential and you’re ready to step into that role.
The Journey
Holding Yourself in Your Transitions
- You dive more deeply into your personal journey to integrate anything that may still be alive so you can truly embody the work. Through this integration you become aware of your unique path in how to serve the medicine of transition guiding.
- OUTCOME: The golden thread you extract from your personal journey will serve you in developing your niche and practice in transition work.
Transition Guiding in 1:1 Settings
- You will explore best practices in creating a brave, ritual, space for transition in 1:1 contexts. You will learn rituals, creative, and witnessing practices to help people get unstuck in their journey. You will put these skills to work doing practice guiding sessions with your fellow cohort members and receiving feedback.
- OUTCOME: Able to lead impactful 1:1 sessions for people in transition
Communal Transition
- You will learn how to design and facilitate collective rituals for transitional times - how to keep the space energetically clear, and integrate afterwards. You will be invited to practice by designing a ritual to host in your community that is an expression of your unique wisdom.
- OUTCOME: Able to lead collective ritualized containers for moments of transition
Transitions are inflection points in our lives. We can break or we can build. They are powerful times of alchemy that if navigated well lead us to higher levels of consciousness and purpose. If navigated poorly we can spiral into addiction, dissociation, disease, and even death. As a collective we are in a time of great transition and it can be felt everywhere.
Now more than ever people who have learned through their own lives to hold the field and alchemize their pain into beauty are those that are most needed to guide others in doing the same. This training equips you with the confidence, community, and skills needed to do that for individuals and within your community.
How much
“Only when we truly understand death can we truly understand life.”
-Gabrielle Bonneville
Who it’s for
People who have navigated what felt like insurmountable moments of death and rebirth in their lives and now wish to hold space for others to cross those thresholds in a good way. This is a professionally oriented course for those wishing to support others in their community. It is not a place to process a fresh transition - though you will have space to process transitions you have experienced with deeper presence.
Types of transitions you will learn to work with:
The grief of losing a loved one
Navigating heartbreak and relationship transitions
Identity transitions - becoming a parent, changing your career etc
By the end of this
program you will be able to:
Hold yourself with more presence and peace in times of uncertainty, loss, and change - deeply embodying the medicine you serve
Lead 1:1 sessions for people in a threshold moment using ritual, art, and witnessing as pillars.
Hold community spaces for modern ritual practices and initiations that help people move better through transition
Your Facilitators
Gabrielle de Bonneville
FounderGabrielle is a somatic movement practitioner, death doula, and founder of the Academy of Living & Dying with over 15 years of experience facilitating transformational retreats and residencies worldwide. As co-founder of Momentom Collective, she helped support more than 1,000 artists, and she created THE SOMANA METHOD™ to integrate movement, breath, posture, and nervous system regulation for emotional and physical vitality. Through her academy, she guides individuals and families through end-of-life care, grief, and major transitions with presence and dignity.
Co-FounderAlexandra Alden
Alexandra is a ritualist, placeholder, and musician whose artist name is Electric Indigo. She has been on the path of grief, transition, rebirth and art as alchemy her entire life. She is a Scoprio stellium - enough said. She has undergone deep personal initiation on the path of transitions and spent years studying rituals and practices to better hold that for herself and others. She holds the Grief Dance as an integration of her work across ceremonial spaces, ecstatic dances, and deep inner work. It is her offering to the collective to help better relate to the shadow and in doing so live with more full spectrum aliveness.