What You’ll Learn

Part One: Being

In the first half of the program, the focus is on personal growth and transformation.

You’ll deepen your understanding of grief to include fear of future loss, and understand how that fear shapes your approach to social change.

Each module will provide tools to process emotions, manage stress, and build resilience, empowering you to transform your grief into meaningful action while staying grounded and preventing burnout.

  • You’ll start by redefining grief—understanding how it affects you and identifying the emotions tied to it. This module teaches you to channel your anger and disarm your rage, turning suffering into a source of insight and strength. With mindfulness and self-awareness, you’ll begin to see how grief can be transformed into purpose.

  • Self-love can feel impossible in times of crisis, but this module helps you learn what it means to forgive yourself and others. You’ll explore how forgiveness differs from pardoning and take a deep dive into your own personal and social inventory. Through mindfulness, you’ll discover that forgiveness, even when it feels unforgivable, is key to healing and social change.

  • By embracing failure and understanding it as a path to liberation, you’ll break free from perfectionism. You’ll explore concepts like the Noble Eightfold Path and learn the difference between powerlessness and helplessness. Through guided reflection, you’ll create a personal oath to yourself, using grief as a tool for liberation..

  • Spend a week at a summer retreat, where you’ll put everything you’ve learned into practice. This is a time for reflection, healing, and building deep connections with your cohort. Through group work and mindfulness practices, you’ll leave feeling more grounded and ready for the next step in your journey.

Part Two: Becoming

In the second half of the program, the focus shifts from personal transformation to social transformation. You’ll deepen your mindfulness practice while gaining new tools to support your activism. By the end of the year, you’ll be ready to lead with clarity, awareness, empathy, accountability, and resilience.

  • Learn how to bring compassion, boundaries, wisdom, accountability, and responsibility into your activism. This module helps you transform your leadership approach, ensuring that your activism is sustainable and grounded in empathy. You’ll learn how to create real, lasting change in your community by first transforming yourself.

  • In this module, you’ll explore your capacity for self-determination and chart your personal timeline of transformation. You’ll re-imagine your role as a change agent and build a more solid foundation for your activism, rooted in the lessons you’ve learned through Grief Alchemy™

  • This final module culminates in “The Alchemist’s Pledge”—a commitment to leading with presence rather than just action. You’ll learn the art of witnessing, guiding others with empathy and influence, and leaving behind the pressure to “do” in favor of simply “being.”

  • Your journey culminates in a hands-on capstone project. Using the principles of Grief Alchemy™, you’ll design a one-week program to mentor and guide others in your community. This capstone is your chance to apply everything you’ve learned, creating a ripple effect of transformation.

  • At the end of Year Two, you will emerge as a Certified Grief Alchemist.

    This certification signifies your mastery in transforming personal grief into empowered, sustainable activism. As a Certified Grief Alchemist™, you’ll be equipped to lead with empathy, guide others through their own transformative journeys, and bring a unique, grief-informed perspective to social change. You’ll have the knowledge, tools, and confidence to inspire healing and resilience in your community, leaving a lasting impact on the world around you.