Hi there Reader,

Are you also heartbroken as you witness the wildfires, the ongoing genocides, the mass destruction — the impact on land and people and loved ones and strangers and animals?

The heartbreak you feel — the heartbreak we feel together — is grief. Climate grief. And I want to say clearly: this grief is meant to break our hearts open. Witnessing this is meant to move us. The heartbreak is meant to shape our actions to build a more just world.

But because we have so little capacity to be with our grief — because we are so inundated with information and catastrophe, all the time — there is very little space to actually feel it. And there hasn't been much cultural competence around tending this type of loss. Not really.

That's part of why I'm running the Shaping Grief Integration Group.

A few things you can do right now to tend your climate grief:

• Start by naming it. Call what's happening in your heart climate grief. Speak about the grief you feel for this planet, for the losses happening around you. Let yourself feel the resonance in your throat. (If you can express your grief while in nature, it's benefit is amplified)
• Find voices that hold both grief and hope. I've been moved by Dr. Jane Goodall's final words on Netflix — if you haven't watched, please do. Her book The Book of Hope speaks specifically to the resilience of nature in the face of mass destruction.
• And find community. Grief shared is grief metabolized. Connect to local mutual aid networks. Ask for help and give what you can.

If you're looking for that community — that's exactly what Shaping Grief is for.

Here's a closer look at what the 8 sessions actually hold.

We'll move through layers of grief together — building from the personal outward, and back again:

1. We begin with Personal Grief Portals — entering the waters together, making first contact with our personal grief narratives through story and imagery. Noticing our relationship to death, and beliefs about loss, change and transformation.
2. From there we move into Structural Grief — what slips through the cracks of flawed systems, the grief specific to care work that is intersectional, compounded, ongoing and often invisible.
3. Session 3 explores Relational Grief — and our relationship to grieving as individuals and professionals, and deepens the processing of tending the loss we witness daily in our work.
4. Session 4 goes into the roots: Ancestral & Intergenerational Grief — what has been passed through our lineage, and how we want to shape our lives knowing these roots.
5. Then we zoom all the way out: Session 5 is Existential & Climate Grief — the planet, the future, the loss of land and tradition and connection to elders. The grief that has no single name and no clean edge. The grief we started this email with.
6. Session 6 brings us back into the body: Body Grief — aging, disability, neurodivergence, mental health. The parts of ourselves that have been marginalized or exiled, invited back with care.
7. Session 7 explores Agency in Griefwork — compassion fatigue, vicarious loss, burnout, and what sustainability in care work actually looks like when we stop bypassing our own grief.
8. And Session 8 is our Closing — endings, transitions, closure and making meaning. In this session we will honor the collective processing we have done together and orient to the present & future.

This group challenges the assumption that there's a "right way" to grieve — naming the ways we've internalized ableism, colonization, and the pathologizing of natural grief expression, and reclaiming practices that affirm our ancestry, values and lived experience.

A note on fit: this group is not the best space for someone in acute grief, mental health crisis, psychosis, or navigating acute depression or anxiety. It offers a paced, intentional dive into dark waters, and requires an ecosystem of outside support. If you're in acute grief or crisis processing the recent death of a loved one, you'll find additional resources linked on the group page.

If what's described here feels like it's speaking to something in you — I'd love for you to join us.

Applications close August 1. Cohort is capped at 12, with only 4 Community Care spots available.

Forward this email to whomever came to mind as you read about Shaping Grief. Thanks a million. 🩵

With care,

Dani

Dani Sullivan, LCSW (they/them)

Licensed Therapist, Coach & Author

Founder and CEO, Intentions Therapy​

PS: you can reply directly if you have questions — or just want to say hi :) I'm a real human behind this email!