If you are grieving or traumatised, you are in the right place, and you do not have to navigate this alone. This space offers gentle, practical support for individuals, couples, and families living with loss and the impact of trauma, grounded in somatic, relationship-focused approaches. Together, it becomes possible to find steadier ground, one small, compassionate step at a time.
If you are here to support someone you care about, visit ‘Supporting Someone Dealing With Loss or Trauma’.
Supporting Yourself
Professional Support
Nathalie Himmelrich offers personal one-on-one support for individuals, couples, and families dealing with loss and trauma. She also facilitates group seminars and workshops. For professional counselling and coaching, and to read more about her work, check out this page.
When is the right time to get professional support?
It is a very common question grievers and those who’ve experienced trauma ask themselves. There is no right or wrong time to get help, nor is there too soon or too late when it comes to getting help. You have recognised the need for help and that you are ready to find out who could support you best.
Support Emails
This is a free resource.
This particular email has really resonated with me. I have gone back and reread it a dozen times. Thank you for what you do – it’s helpful, even when the recipient, like me, doesn’t think there’s anything out there that can help. This helped.
Lin (newsletter reader)
Podcast
This is a free resource.
(Click for more) How to Deal With Grief and Trauma…
How to Deal With Grief and Trauma is just what the title describes: an inquiry into how we all deal with the losses and traumas that we are facing in life.
The podcast is an independently run, privately funded, produced, and edited podcast.
If you would like to support the grief podcast: How to Deal With Grief and Trauma, please support it with just $3 per month. 🙏🏻
Mini Ezine
for Navigating Grief, Loss, and Trauma
This is a free resource.
✔️ Ideal when you need something short and printable you can return to in early grief.
(Click for more) Nathalie has created several small booklets which you can download for free.
These printable booklets (mini zines) offer gentle practices to anchor you when grief feels overwhelming. Inside, you’ll find grounding tools, breathwork exercises, and somatic prompts to help you reconnect with your body and the present moment. A small companion for big waves.
They can be used individually, shared in therapy, or as part of a personal ritual, as a source of encouragement, introspection, and hope.
The booklets are small in size, ready to fit into your purse (7.5 x 10.5 cm).
- Navigating Early Grief: 6 Gentle Steps to Navigate Early Grief
- Remembering Loved Ones: This is What I Want to Remember
- Support After Trauma: 6 Challenges to Deal With in the Aftermath of Trauma
May We All Heal and Affirmation and Reflection Cards
Creative Healing Cards
✔️ Ideal when you need something short and printable you can return to at any moment dealing with grief or trauma.
(Click for more) Nathalie has created two sets of cards to support dealing with grief and trauma.
- May We All Heal: Creative Healing Cards
- Affirmation and Reflection Cards
Both of those sets of printable cards are thoughtfully designed to support individuals processing grief, loss, and trauma. These cards offer a creative and gentle approach to the healing process, inviting reflection, expression, and connection to find moments of peace amidst difficult times.
Whether used individually, shared in therapy, or as part of a personal ritual, these cards are a source of encouragement, introspection, and hope.
Peer Support
This is a free resource.
✔️ Ideal when you want to meet other people who have experienced what you are currently experiencing.
(Click for more) Peer support is a meaningful way to get in touch with other individuals who have gone through or are going through a similar situation. You can find various groups on Facebook.
If you’re a bereaved parent, we invite you to join our private May We All Heal peer support group on Facebook, a community of bereaved parents and family members who have lost a child. Here we support one another through activities and conversations about various topics. Join here.
Online Support – Helpful Organisations
Below you find a collection of helpful organisations with which Nathalie has worked or collaborated with.
Grieving Parents Support Network
The Grieving Parents Support Network (GPSNetwork) is a platform for you and other bereaved parents and those wanting to support them.
As part of the vision for support and a better understanding of the grieving process of the bereaved, especially bereaved parents, I’ve created the Grieving Parents Support Network as a way for bereaved parents to find the support they need.
The GPSNetwork is a hub where bereaved parents and their supporters can come, read, feel understood, rest, share, get information, get resources, learn, process grief, and find other bereaved parents to connect to.
Grief Recovery Method
The Grief Recovery Method is a highly effective program recognising that grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss. It has helped many tens of thousands of people around the world.
www.griefrecoverymethod.com
They have generously offered the following ebooks as a free download: Guide to Loss – 61 tips on the experience of grief and how to help people through it, and Debunking the 5 Stages of Grief
Compassionate Friends
The Compassionate Friends provides highly personal comfort, hope, and support to every family experiencing the death of a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, or a grandchild, and helps others better assist the grieving family. US-based, international online groups.
www.compassionatefriends.org
The Compassionate Friends also runs a number of private Facebook groups.
Sweet Grace Ministries
Sweet Grace Ministries seeks to offer support, hope, and empathy to families enduring stillbirth, infant death, miscarriage, and ectopic pregnancy. Providing resources, support groups, photography, gowns, events, and more to families in PA and throughout the United States.
As part of our mission to support grieving parents, we offer our grief resource books at a reduced price to Sweet Grace Ministries to add to their comfort baskets. For more information, click here.
sweetgraceministries.com
Music
✔️ Ideal when you love the power of music to regulate yourself.
There is no doubt: Music is mood-altering. You can use music to make you feel better, or some music will remind you and pull you back into dark places. Decide what it is you need and want.
What is your favourite music to listen to when you’re feeling down?
Many songwriters put their painful experience of losing a child into a song. Here are just a few. If you know of any others, please let us know: send a message.
Support Books for Grief and Trauma
Below you find just a few of Nathalie’s favourite support books.
You can find the complete Grief & Trauma Reading List here.
When Grief is Raw
Best when your loss is very recent.
- Grieving Parents: Surviving Loss as a Couple by Nathalie Himmelrich
- Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories from Grieving Parents by Nathalie Himmelrich
- Navigating the Unknown: An Immediate Guide When Experiencing the Loss of Your Baby by Amie Lands
Grief & Healing
For those wanting to understand grief in the body and mind.
- It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine
- The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing – A Psychology Guide to Physical Health and Coping by Mary-Frances O’Connor
- The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O’Connor
Trauma & Healing
Best for those who benefit from somatic self-practices.
Creative Healing
Ideal when you are the creative type who prefers to use their hands rather than talk about it.
- May We All Heal: Playbook For Creative Healing After Loss by Nathalie Himmelrich
Grieving Mothers
If you like to read personal stories from other bereaved mothers.
- Surviving My First Year of Child Loss: Personal Stories from Grieving Parents by Nathalie Himmelrich
- Sunshine After the Storm by Alexa H Bigwarfe
- Invisible Mothers: When Love Doesn’t Die by Emily R Long
- You Are Not Alone: Love Letters From Loss Mom to Loss Mom by Emily R Long
Loss of a Mother
For those who have lost their mother.
- Motherless Mothers: How Losing a Mother Shapes the Parent You Become by Hope Edelman
- Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss by Hope Edelman
- Letters from Motherless Daughters: Words of Courage, Grief, and Healing by Hope Edelman
Grieving Fathers
For fathers who have lost their baby or child.
- A Guide for Fathers: When a Baby Dies by Tim Nelson
- From Father to Father: Letters From Loss Dad to Loss Dad by Emily R Long
- Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back by Kelly Farley and David DiCola
- The Griefcase: A Man’s Guide to Healing and Moving Forward in Grief by R Glenn Kelly
Loss of a Father
For those who have lost their father.
- The Fatherless Daughter Project: Understanding Our Losses and Reclaiming Our Lives by Denna Babul and Karin Luise
Children’s Books
For grieving children.
- Always My Twin by Valerie R. Samuels
- I Miss You: A First Look at Death, Pat Thomas
- When Children Grieve from A to Z: Coloring Through Grief and the Alphabet by Ginny Limer
Spiritual, Religious, Inspirational
Best for those craving spiritual support.
- A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
Memoirs
Personal stories by bereaved.
- An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken
- Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love by Anna Whiston-Donaldson
Links on this page are affiliate links – all proceeds go to the Grieving Parents Support Association (GPSA) in order to donate our resource books for parents in need. Read more about our Affiliate Disclosure here.