Resilient Grieving: Finding Strength & Embracing Life After Loss - by Dr Lucy Hone

COURSE

Resilient Grieving: Finding Strength & Embracing Life After Loss

With Dr Lucy Hone

As a resilience researcher and trainer, it's Dr. Hone's job to be familiar with the range of evidence-based strategies that science shows help people cope with adversity, loss and change. When her 12 year old daugther was tragically killed in a car accident, Lucy was appalled by the passive tone and out-dated advice provided by grief experts. Fortunately, there is a large body of robust scientific evidence that suggests certain ways of thinking and acting can support people through times of adversity. This course is an introduction to those tools. Everyone of them is evidence-based but ultimately practical and road tested for their effectiveness in the context of bereavement. Throughout this course, Lucy will guide you through what she means by resilience, how common resilience is in the face of grief, and some of the common characteristics of resilient people. She will also share the most up to date findings from bereavement research, while debunking a number of long held myths around bereavement. By sharing her own story of loss, and how her academic training in psychology helped her weather tough times, you will learn how you too can cultivate personal resilience and adjust to your loss. You are not alone, we all have to cope with loss, but sadly not enough poeple are taught the ways of thinking and acting that can help them cope. Lucy is dedicated to changing this and hopes that you will join her.

VisualizationPsychologyScienceRecovery & HealingGriefHealth & HappinessAcceptanceRelationshipsMindfulnessLoveResilience

Meet your Teacher

Dr Lucy Hone
Christchurch, New Zealand

Dr. Lucy Hone is a director of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience, a research associate at AUT University, a published academic researcher, best-selling author and blogger for Psychology Today. On Queen’s Birthday weekend in 2014, the sudden death of her 12 year old daughter, Abi, (along with Lucy and Abi’s friends Ella and Sally Summerfield in a tragic road accident) forced Lucy to turn her substantial academic training and professional practice to foster resilience in very personal circumstances. The blog she wrote in the aftermath of Abi’s death attracted international attention and resulted in the best-selling non-fiction title, What Abi Taught Us, Strategies for Resilient Grieving (Allen & Unwin, 2016), now available as Resilient Grieving in the US, UK and NZ. Having been trained by the thought-leaders in the field – Marty Seligman, Chris Peterson, Ed Diener, Barb Fredrickson, Karen Reivich and Angela Duckworth among others – at the University of Pennsylvania, she went on to attain her PhD in public health at AUT University in Auckland. She now assists organisations – from leading law firms to primary schools – to design and implement wellbeing initiatives creating sustained and meaningful change. The widespread respect for Lucy’s work is demonstrated by two large-scale pilot projects she is currently running involving dozens of NZ schools, backed by Ministry of Education funding. A member of the NZAPP Executive Committee, the All Right? advisory board, the conference convenor for Positive Education NZ, and New Zealand’s only representative of the International Positive Education Network (IPEN), Lucy’s research has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Positive Psychology, Social Indicators Research, the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the International Journal of Wellbeing and NZ Journal of Human Resources Management.

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7 Days

6.3k students

4.8 stars

15 min / day

Recovery & Healing

English

Lesson 1

Overview: Most People Are Resilient

Day One introduces Dr. Hone's work in the field of Resilient Grieving and the story of how the field grew from her own tragic loss. From that experience and the years that followed, Dr. Hone designed this course to help you navigate difficult thoughts and emotions.

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Lesson 2

Ordinary Magic - Focusing Our Thoughts

In this lesson, Dr. Hone offers further insight into the concept of resilient grieving. She begins by sharing that these strategies for coping are, curiously enough, extremely ordinary and accessible to everyone. The “ordinary magic” of understanding where to focus our thoughts is elaborated in this session.

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Lesson 3

The Things We Can Change & Those We Need To Accept

Today, Dr. Hone helps you go beyond focusing your thoughts and emotions and into getting a better understanding of the things we can change and what we need to accept. While there might have been a psychological bias toward negative things that were key to the survival of our ancestors, it’s something we need to re-wire for these modern times.

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Lesson 4

Other People Matter

Day 4 of this course on Resilient Grieving discusses the important concept of relationships and how much other people truly matter. Bereavement, like other things in life, need to be shared. Whether it’s sharing our grief, listening to our stories, or just simply being there - having these supportive relationships are crucial to the grieving process.

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Lesson 5

Coping With Anxiety & Fear

Today, the focus is on coping with anxiety and the sense of vulnerability that often accompanies grief. When people go through loss, they often fear that they won’t be able to carry on. Understanding the source of these fears helps us get a handle on what actually drives these anxieties. In this session, Dr. Hone helps us learn the skills to accomplish this.

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Lesson 6

Post-Traumatic Growth

In this session, Dr. Hone discusses the concept of post-traumatic growth. Humans usually have varying responses to extreme adversity. More often than not, following traumatic experiences, people fall into depression and post-traumatic stress. But after a while, people are innately able to cope - undergoing post-traumatic growth. This session elaborates on the concept of PTG and how it’s within reach of everyone.

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Lesson 7

Loving Acceptance

In this final lesson, Dr. Hone talks about how grief is a byproduct of love and how the fact that they're gone, doesn't mean that we should stop loving them or thinking about them. Understanding that love never has to die is a major advance in the modern outlook on grief. This crucial perspective of loving acceptance is the crux of the last in this seven-day course.

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4.8 (492)

Recent Reviews

Jessica

August 25, 2025

Excellent points to ponder. Loss and grief can be so confusing, and I really feel like this helped me sort out my feelings, as well as providing hope that life will go on, and can still be good.

LJ

June 2, 2025

I recommended this course to anyone working through or with grief or trauma. The lessons provide practical and easy to apply tools. It reinforced that power is in my lane and although loss is inevitable, suffering is optional.

annmarie

March 29, 2025

I’ve listened to this on repeat after the sudden death of my daughter in a car accident. It helped me find rest

Laura

January 10, 2025

A very good course. I am now also reading your book. Thank you.

Marnie

August 13, 2024

Thank you so much. This has been very helpful. I recommend this to anyone grieving regardless of circumstance : death, divorce, etc..

jerrie

May 29, 2024

Very helpful! The session really helped me with the death of my sister and her husband. I especially like the last lesson it made me feel good to think that it was OK for me to keep loving her😘

Colleen

April 12, 2024

Really helpful. Thankyou.

Senga

August 18, 2023

I highly recommend Dr Lucy's course. Very comforting and helpful. 💖🙏🕊🦋🙏

Laura

August 16, 2023

Very helpful. Thank you 🙏🏻💜

Liz

August 9, 2023

Great course… helpful information… secondary losses… appropriate description.

Jackie

August 6, 2023

Helpful🙏

Marilyn

July 15, 2023

Five months ago, I lost my mother, my beloved husband, and my aunt within a month of each other. I have been struggling with grief. Your course offers the most helpful professional and personal insights I have found. Thank you so much!

Lisa

July 14, 2023

Early days still in my grief journey but found this course uplifting and gave me back some hope that I can get through this. Thank you

T

July 2, 2023

😩

Elizabeth

June 22, 2023

I lost my mother during the height of the covid lockdowns and sadly was unable to farewell her in person as I live on the other side of the world. Add to this a seriously dysfunctional family dynamic which meant instead of helping me grieve, they made it worse. I found this course to be a lifesaver to help me emerge on the other side of the darkness stronger than before. Thanks so much Lucy for giving so freely of both your personal and professional expertise in resilient grieving.

Melanie

June 8, 2023

Thank you

LoriAnne

May 22, 2023

Thank you, Dr Lucy Hone, for sharing your grief journey & helping us through our grieving process. Your research, tools, tips & wisdom are much appreciated & will continue to be helpful in the weeks, months & years to come. Mauriora (be well)! Blessed & so very grateful to you! 🙏😇💞🌟💐

Antonio

May 10, 2023

Helpful and has me thinking.

Tammy

April 25, 2023

Exceptional, unique and empowering way of approaching grief.

David

April 25, 2023

I really appreciated this Workshop Thank you

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