Making Space For Grief - by Joni Staaf-Stamford

COURSE

Making Space For Grief

With Joni Staaf-Stamford

This course includes five sessions designed to be taken at your own pace. Although Insight Timer presents courses in a day-by-day format, grief does not follow a schedule. Whether you've lost a parent, a child, a spouse, or other loved one, grief can change how you experience yourself, your relationships, and everyday life. Making Space for Grief is a five-session course designed to help you meet grief with greater presence, understanding, and compassion. Rather than trying to fix grief, rush it, or “get over it,” you’ll learn practices for making room for difficult emotions, understanding the unpredictable nature of grief, and staying present with what you feel in manageable ways. Through guided reflection, mindfulness, breathwork, and body-based practices, you’ll explore how loss can affect your sense of identity and learn ways to reconnect with yourself. In the final session, you’ll consider how you might carry the person you lost forward through meaningful activities, places, traditions, or rituals. Although this course contains five sessions, grief is not a five-day process. Remember to take each session at your own pace and return to the practices whenever you need them. The intention is not to leave grief behind, but to learn how to make space for both grief and life.


Meet your Teacher

Joni Staaf-Stamford is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC), and experienced mindfulness and meditation teacher with more than 20 years of experience in mental health and wellness. She holds a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology and has extensive training in mindfulness, yoga, meditation, and trauma-sensitive practices. Her work integrates evidence-informed counseling approaches with mindfulness and body-based practices to help people navigate difficult emotions, life transitions, loss, and change with greater awareness and self-compassion.

read more

5 Days

0 students

No ratings

9 min / day

Healing

English


Lesson 1

Creating Space For Grief

Grief does not need to be fixed, rushed, or pushed away. In this session, you’ll explore giving yourself permission to feel what you feel, releasing expectations about where you “should” be in your grief, and making space for your experience through a gentle guided practice.

read more

Lesson 2

Understanding Your Grief

Grief is rarely predictable or linear. This session explores the many ways grief can show up, from sadness and longing to anger, numbness, confusion, and even moments of joy. You’ll practice noticing and naming what is present without judging it or expecting it to be different.

read more

Lesson 3

Staying With, Not Avoiding

When grief hurts, distraction and avoidance can offer temporary relief. In this session, you’ll learn how to be present with difficult emotions in small, manageable doses while also recognizing when you need space. Breathwork and body-based grounding practices will help you move gently between experiencing grief and finding steadiness.

read more

Lesson 4

Reconnecting With Yourself

Loss can change not only your life, but also your sense of who you are. This session explores identity after loss by considering what has changed, what remains, and what parts of yourself you may want to reconnect with. A guided reflection will help you find points of steadiness without asking you to know who you are becoming.

read more

Lesson 5

Honoring Through Living

Rather than focusing on letting go, this session explores ways to carry your connection with the person you lost into your life. You’ll consider something they loved, such as a place, activity, tradition, or quality, and explore how you might make it part of your own life in a meaningful way. You’ll close with the question, “How can I live in a way that honors what mattered to them?”

read more


Trusted by 36 million people. It's free.

Insight Timer

Get the app