You carry it.
It doesn’t carry you.
GRIEF COACHING FOR PEOPLE WHO LOST SOMEONE THAT MATTERED
I lost my father at fourteen and my mother at twenty-six. I know what it's like to carry something nobody gave you language for. This is that language.
When Grief Changes the Terrain, You Need a Map.
Grief doesn't just break your heart. It changes the terrain of your life.
It shows up in ordinary places: grocery stores, holidays, old songs, familiar smells, family roles, quiet mornings, and days you thought you were ready for.
Those aren't setbacks. They're just signs that life feels different now.
Clichés, stages, and quick advice often miss the ground you're actually standing on. This work gives you a map built around honesty, language, support, and the life you're trying to live now.
Grief may not go away. But you can learn to carry it differently.
You carry it. It doesn't carry you.
A map makes the future possible.
Grief work isn't five neat steps in a straight line. But there is a shape to it, three things: you find your footing, you name where you are, and you learn to carry it forward. Here's what that actually looks like.
Name Where You Are — Reclaimed
You begin understanding your grief as part of your story, not something to hide, perform, or explain away.
Find Your Footing — Named · Heard
Grief can make ordinary life feel unsafe or foreign. This phase is about steadiness, not performance: naming what happened, and finally being heard without being corrected, rushed, or fixed.
Carry It Forward — Reframed · Reconnected
Meaning and identity start to take shape again. You reconnect with your people, your values, and the life you're building now.
Meet Your Guide
I lost both my parents before the age of 30.
I'm Robert. I lost my father at fourteen and my mother in my mid-twenties. For years I looked fine. I wasn't.
I’m trained as a David Kessler Certified Grief Educator, wrote a book for grieving teens, and built a coaching practice around the work I needed and couldn't find.
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Someone Who Knows the Terrain.
Grief coaching is not about fixing your grief or forcing you through a set of stages. It is a grounded, honest space to understand what changed, build language for what you’re carrying, and begin moving through life with more clarity and steadiness.
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As a David Kessler Certified Grief Educator, I offer forward-focused grief coaching that helps you name what changed, understand where you are, and take the next honest step.
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Carried Forward is also a single-morning workshop for grieving teenagers, hosted by churches, schools, and hospice programs. I bring the curriculum, the workbooks, and the stones. You bring the room.
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The Other Side of This is the book I wrote for the teenager in me who had no language for grief. It's for grieving teens and the adults trying to understand what they may not know how to say.
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Carried Forward is also my podcast about what loss does to identity and what it actually looks like to carry grief forward.
I work with grieving teenagers and the adults who used to be them.
You lost a parent young. You kept moving. You built a life, had kids of your own, and something keeps surfacing at the milestones, the holidays, the quiet Tuesday mornings. The grief never left. You just got good at carrying it without looking at it.
That's who I built this for.
And if you're the teenager right now, trying to figure out who you are when the person who helped you answer that question is gone — you're exactly who the book is for.
Grief takes many shapes. If loss changed your life and you're ready to carry it differently, you're welcome here.
How It Works
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We start by understanding where you are, what happened, what changed, and what feels hardest to carry right now.
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We build language around the shape of your grief: the loss itself, the secondary losses, the identity shifts, the questions, and the ordinary moments that still catch you off guard.
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We begin taking honest next steps toward a life that includes grief without being defined entirely by it.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. Grief coaching is not therapy and I'm not a licensed therapist. Coaching is forward-focused. We're building language, clarity, and momentum. If what you're experiencing requires clinical support, I'll tell you honestly and help you find that.
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Any meaningful loss: a parent, a partner, a sibling, a friend, a marriage, a version of yourself.
Grief isn't ranked. If it changed your life, it counts.
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No. The Carried Forward Framework was built around parent loss because that's my own story. Grief is grief. If you've lost a partner, a sibling, a close friend, or are carrying a loss that's changed who you are, this work applies. The only requirement is that it mattered to you.
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Not at all. Faith integration is something I offer because it's part of my own story. It's completely optional. Many clients have no faith context and we never go near it. You're welcome here either way.
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Absolutely, and many clients do. Coaching and therapy complement each other well.
Coaching tends to focus on forward movement and integration; therapy tends to focus on processing and healing. They're different lanes.
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I can’t promise a timeline. What I can promise is that after working together, you’ll have more language for what you’re carrying, more steadiness for hard days, and a clearer map for the life you’re building now.
YOU MIGHT BE ASKING
“Is grief coaching right for me?”
Let’s find out together.
Most people who reach out aren’t sure what they need yet. That’s okay. This free intro call is a low-pressure conversation to talk about where you are, what you’re carrying, and whether this kind of support makes sense.