This is the place for you.
About Good Grief Network
Using a 10-Step approach inspired by the Alcoholics Anonymous model, we run peer-to-peer support groups that help folks recognize, feel, and process their heavy emotions, so that these feelings may be transformed into meaningful action.
Our Mission
Good Grief Network creates spaces where we gather in community, process the painful feelings and realities of our time, and orient our lives toward meaningful action.
ROOT
We help individuals be with and care for themselves and others as tumult grows.
RISE
We invest in relational actions, to help folks build strong and emergent communities of mutual care.
PRUNE
We work to dissect and deconstruct cultural messages so that we can see reality as it really is.
BLOOM
We practice opening to ideas and trying on perspectives we haven’t considered before.
Our Impact
50+
Programs
facilitated
⎯⎯
GGN has run over 50 official and affiliate
10-Step programs worldwide
1,000+
people reached
⎯⎯
In fewer than 4 years, our 10-Step Program has reached over 1,000 people on five continents
200+
FACILITATION
PACKAGES
⎯⎯
We’ve sold over 200 Facilitation Packages to people in 15 countries who are interested in running the 10-Steps in their own communities
94% Of program participants
⎯⎯
Say that our 10-Step Program helped them feel feel empowered to take action in their lives
96% Of program participants
⎯⎯
Say that our 10-Step Program helped them feel less alone and more connected to other people
95% Of program participants
⎯⎯
Say that our 10-Step Program helped them think in new and nuanced ways about our systemic problems
Organizational Values
At Good Grief Network, we strive to carry out our work in line with specific values that we believe are essential to the heart-centered revolution.
Interdependence
Our work is rooted in the understanding that humans depend on each other and our natural world for inspiration, support, and survival. By gathering individuals and collectively building cohesive, decentralized, and innovative communities, we become more resilient and more connected with the more-than-human world around us.
Accessibility
We offer low-cost peer-to-peer support groups because we believe that all persons have a right to affordable and inclusive emotional support services.
Compassion
Understanding that everyone reaches this work from a different place, we welcome ourselves and others to show up authentically wherever it is that we are on our journey, with whatever we perceive as our imperfections. When necessary, we call in mindful conversations and practice active listening and forgiveness.
Courage
It can feel scary to begin processing the traumas of our time and to step into our true selves. Through radical honesty and deep vulnerability, we show up and lean into difficult conversations, trusting that our community is strong enough to continually co-create brave and empowering spaces.
Intersectionality
Grief and despair live at each intersection of the planetary crises and systemic injustices being perpetuated by the dominant culture. We begin dismantling these destructive and oppressive systems by examining our privilege and decolonizing our hearts, minds, and habits.
Adaptability
We recognize that during this dynamic and unpredictable time on Earth, there is no one “right” way to face the challenges ahead. We practice flexibility and creativity that emphasizes nuanced and open-ended approaches to frameworks of change.
Discernment
Whether we are making organizational decisions, engaged in conversation, or absorbing news about the state of our world, we practice open-mindedness, curiosity, and critical thinking in order to sharpen our perceptions and make appropriate judgments.
Emergence
We believe that nuanced solutions become available when the individuals within our community interact as a wider whole. We gather people together in large and small groups because we trust in the alchemy of our shared conversations to bring about the liberated world of our dreams.
Meet the Team
LaUra Schmidt
Founding Director
LaUra (she/her) has been studying personal resilience strategies for nearly a decade. She is trained in nonviolent civil disobedience, and is a Climate Reality Leadership Corps member & mentor.
Aimee Lewis Reau
Cofounder &
Facilitation Strategist
Aimee (she/her) is a FLOW Facilitator (Fierce Lover Of Words/Wisdom/Why). She is an edgy & reverent contemplative, healer and yoga/intuitive movement instructor. To keep her sanity, Aimee dances because as Alice Walker said: “Hard times require furious dancing.” She also DJs under the name eXis10shAL.
Sarah
Jornsay-Silverberg
Executive Director
Sarah JS (she/her) is a writer, lawyer, deep thinker, and big feeler.
Since childhood, Sarah has observed the grace and suffering in the world and wondered, what is mine to do? She has spent a lifetime trying to answer that question by focusing her attention on international human rights law, climate justice activism, therapeutic introspection, and community resilience-building.
Dean LaCoe
Director of Outreach
Despite age, experience and an ivy league education, Dean (he/him) is often slow to catch on. He read about and saw signs of climate destruction over the decades. Only when 5,000 nearby homes in Sonoma County, CA suddenly turned to ash and smoke, did he have an awakening.
LaUra Schmidt
Founding Director
LaUra (she/her) has been studying personal resilience strategies for nearly a decade. She is trained in nonviolent civil disobedience, and is a Climate Reality Leadership Corps member & mentor.
While a bit of a nomad, she hails from Michigan, and graduated from Central Michigan University with a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies. Her MS in Environmental Humanities was earned from the University of Utah.
LaUra grew to understand the importance of place through spending some time living and playing in North Carolina & the bayous of Louisiana (directly after the BP oil spill). Inspiration finds her in natural landscapes and honest, open-hearted dialogue.
Aimee Lewis Reau
Cofounder &
Facilitation Strategist
Aimee (she/her) is a FLOW Facilitator (Fierce Lover Of Words/Wisdom/Why). She is an edgy & reverent contemplative, healer and yoga/intuitive movement instructor. To keep her sanity, Aimee dances because as Alice Walker said: “Hard times require furious dancing.” She also DJs under the name eXis10shAL.
Aimee received her Bachelor’s degree in English, Poetry, and Religion from Central Michigan University before obtaining her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College & State University.
Sarah
Jornsay-Silverberg
Executive Director
Sarah JS (she/her) is a writer, lawyer, deep thinker, and big feeler.
Since childhood, Sarah has observed the grace and suffering in the world and wondered, what is mine to do? She has spent a lifetime trying to answer that question by focusing her attention on international human rights law, climate justice activism, therapeutic introspection, and community resilience-building.
She found Good Grief Network as a 10-Step participant, while searching for ways to navigate the heavy emotions she feels while attempting to live in joy and service during the Anthropocene.
She currently spends her days balancing work, rest, play, and reverence for the high desert of eastern California. She lives as a white settler on the ancestral lands of the Kawaiisu people.
Dean LaCoe
Director of Outreach
Despite age, experience and an ivy league education, Dean (he/him) is often slow to catch on. He read about and saw signs of climate destruction over the decades. Only when 5,000 nearby homes in Sonoma County, CA suddenly turned to ash and smoke, did he have an awakening.
Actually, first he had a panic attack.
So, he contacted the Good Grief Network looking for some “stress relief tips and tricks.” Instead, in the 10 steps, he found a supportive network of friends from around the world, a transformative vision, and an enjoyable new role helping others.
I’ve come to see that any solutions to the myriad of problems facing us, if they are to be meaningful, will come from those of us who have been brave enough to take the time and energy to feel these scary and disorienting feelings.
– LaUra Schmidt, Good Grief Network, Founding Director
Meet Our Current Facilitators
All Good Grief Network facilitation positions are filled by people who have participated in GGN’s Facilitation Training Program, a 30-hour, live online training with GGN’s cofounders, which trains facilitators in holding space, cultivating emotional intelligence and body awareness, supporting emergent processes and managing tension. Each facilitator has participated in at least one 10-Step Program and an in-depth study of the 10-Steps.
Kristan Klingelhofer
Kristan (she/her) is a mother, a writer, and a teacher. She currently teaches connection-based parenting classes and facilitates for Good Grief.
Sarah Birch
Sarah (she/her) is a mother of two young girls, a family girl, and long-time climate change professional, turned Resilience Health Coach (coaching eco-conscious individuals to better health and wellness in stressful times).
Teddy Kellam
Teddy (she/her) is a mother of three hilarious teenagers, as well as a writer, demographic analyst, therapist-in-training and caregiver for her mother.
Kristan Klingelhofer
Kristan (she/her) is a mother, a writer, and a teacher. She currently teaches connection-based parenting classes and facilitates for Good Grief. What she loves most is to be with her family in the natural world – whether backpacking in the High Sierras, collecting seaweed or spring nettles, or just watching the night sky. As a mother of three teenagers, she has spent many late-night hours contemplating how to parent well into the climate crisis. She sought out Good Grief because she needed a safe and supportive place to explore her deep sadness about the earth and her anxiety about the future. Since then, she has discovered the powerful relationship between grief, gratitude, joy, and empowerment. She feels honored to be part of the Good Grief community.
Sarah Birch
Sarah (she/her) is a mother of two young girls, a family girl, and long-time climate change professional, turned Resilience Health Coach (coaching eco-conscious individuals to better health and wellness in stressful times). She loves being in water and the ocean, playing and learning in her emerging learner vegetable garden, dreaming up healthy recipes and having fun with her kids on many rambles in forests and mountains around Cape Town.
She has spent many years deeply worried about the future, but equally spent some time in a state of denial about the rapidity of the changes going on in the world. With two small girls to think about, emotions were all over the place and difficult to process! Good Grief Network and the 10-Step Programme have been pivotal in her life in creating space to process, in improving her coping mechanisms, and finding community to lean on. She is thrilled to have the ability to hold space for others in similar predicaments as a facilitator for Good Grief Network.
Teddy Kellam
Teddy (she/her) is a mother of three hilarious teenagers, as well as a writer, demographic analyst, therapist-in-training and caregiver for her mother. Thanks to the Good Grief Network, she now identifies as an emotional warrior – a compassionate person determined to hold space for vulnerability and messy feelings as a path to freedom. Teddy has an MA in Education and has trained in Medicine Wheel practices, emotionally-healthy parenting, yoga and hospice grief companioning. She loves having a husband, who makes her crack up when she’s angry, hiking on Vancouver Island with her dog, and cuddling her kids, who enthusiastically call her on her “stuff” while demanding back scratches.