Transforming collective healing

Rebecca Churt, a grief and death doula based in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, got her MBA at The MIT Sloan School of Management during Covid and immediately joined a Buddhist monastery.

“I think getting my master’s degree was an exercise in highlighting just how much of the current way of doing things isn’t working, is not meant for what needs to be happening going forward,” Churt explained.

Churt’s own journey into grief work has been shaped by personal experience, including moving from Germany to the United States at a young age. “Grief has kind of been a lifelong companion to me in lots of different forms,” she explained. This early experience introduced her to the nuanced ways grief can manifest. The pandemic deepened her commitment, highlighting the urgent need for collective grief spaces. Then, her time at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and her exploration of the concept of “hospicing modernity” (a thought-provoking guide to facing global pandemics, climate change, and other modern crises as outlined in the book by Vanessa Machada de Oliveira), influenced her to embrace a model of grief work centered around presence, not answers. Her new company, The Grievery, was born.

The Grievery is a communal approach to grief, primarily a virtual space where people can navigate sorrow collectively rather than bearing the burden in isolation. Her philosophy and methods represent a rethinking of this work, aiming to transform individual pain into shared healing. “As a death doula or grief worker, I don’t interject solutions, I don’t interject a potential outcome. The idea is for a community to get there together,” said Churt. “Whether you’re experiencing the loss or you’re in the process of dying, the reality is we don’t do any of it alone. We can’t do it alone.”

The Grievery is mostly virtual to accommodate people’s busy schedules and minimize financial barriers, but there’s also a deeper purpose behind this very intentional choice. Churt spent years holding space at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, among other locations, and shared that “part of the idea behind The Grievery is that we want to remove the sense of someone else having mastery over another person’s experience. That’s very common in traditional therapy sessions, which is really the only other place that people can have time to tend to their grief.” Churt went on to describe a possible power imbalance in those traditional settings where “it’s also more within a setting that tends to pathologize grief, where there’s an intended goal or an objective to help a person get over something.” At The Grievery, there is a set of community guidelines that are reviewed at the beginning of every session— there’s no fixing, there’s no saving, there’s no implied approach to advice giving. “Most often, the way in which people respond is either with a hand on heart or a ‘thank you for sharing,’ and then they go into sharing their own personal experience,” said Churt.

In addition to communal gatherings, The Grievery also offers a specialized program called “The Grievery at Work,” which provides grief support within professional environments. Recognizing the complex, often unacknowledged grief many healthcare workers face, Churt’s team helps integrate grief literacy into workplaces, particularly in healthcare settings where grief training is often absent.

Upcoming offerings include an eight-week workshop exploring the “Gates of Grief,” a framework inspired by Francis Weller’s book, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow.” With five established gates—everything we love we will lose; the places that have not known love; the sorrows of the world; what we expected and did not receive; and ancestral grief—Churt adds a sixth gate, exploring the harms individuals and society have caused, inspired by the work of Rachael Rice.

Through The Grievery, Rebecca Churt not only offers solace to those grieving but is also actively contributing to reimagining grief care itself. Her mission is to build a future where grieving together is normalized, where grief itself becomes a gateway to belonging, wholeness, and communal strength.

For more information, visit https://thegrievery.com