Introducing a new training: Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss

You may have noticed that a few weeks ago, I sneaked a new page onto my website: Classes for support networks.

I’m really excited to finally tell you about it and to especially highlight one of my newest course offerings: the Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss training.

I’ve taken quite a few grief trainings. I really struggled with a lot of them, particularly their approach to spirituality. Lots of trainings seemed to ignore spirituality and pregnancy loss altogether – which does not at all reflect how I understand the world, or how many of my clients experience grief. Other trainings assumed that both my client and I were one particular version of one particular religion, which is almost never the case for me. Then, thanks to my birth doula trainer, I found one training I really clicked with: this exact training, Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss (offered through the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death). And thanks to funding from the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture, I was able to take it.

I took it, and I loved it, even though I took forever to actually turn in the homework and get the certificate. I just wanted to work on it more, to re-read the material, to sit in the pools of grief that the training worked with and brought up. It was such a good fit to find that training after so many failed attempts; it felt a bit like coming into a conversation where everyone has so many different experiences / skills / beliefs than you do, but you all care so much about the same things, and you just sit there repeating, “Oh, wow, you too?”, and marvel.

So I was surprised and thrilled when, last year, the Institute asked me to consider becoming a teacher for the course. I have been working on the teacher training for months, and I am so excited to share with you that registration is now open for my first class. (You can see more info about that and other future offerings at my new website page.)

I have a lot of ideas of what I want to do with the class in the future. If you have an idea for me, please let me know; I’d love to bring this training to whomever would find it useful.