Grief Garden

Support Groups

Grief Tending

I am SO sorry for your loss - and I’m grateful that you have reached out to connect memories with blessings. Here, we’ll do some grief tending.

A Grief Garden is a twice-weekly online trauma-informed support group that I facilitate. I am a certified and trauma-informed compassionate bereavement care grief counselor.

We have closed, time-bound groups (see below) and we have a continuous ongoing group. Drop-ins are always welcome.

What’s special in a Grief Garden?

Groups are intentionally mixed. Grief does not segregate in absolutes, and neither does healing. Loss may include mourning death by suicide, terminal illness, divorce, caregiving burnout, estrangement, transition, and any other complicated grief. Support is embodied, pragmatic, creative, and rooted in Jewish ritual.

Through FromSoil2Soul Grief Garden​ support groups, a “continuum of Jewish grief care” is extended and accessible long after the Shiva and Shloshim (first 30 days), throughout the Unveiling and Celebration of Life, and even beyond — so you don’t have to grieve alone. This way, people are held within the inclusive embrace of ancient practices, rather than stumbling to outsource support, elsewhere.

The Grief Garden provides a conscious, safe haven that is confidential and non-judgmental. Participants explore nourishing soul-care practices — and mindful coping skills while gaining supportive community.

Because grieving relies on social support, and shared vulnerability reduces isolation.

Want to try it out? Fill out this Grief Garden Interest Form to see if we are a good fit.

4-wk Jewish Grief Garden

This Grief Garden Online Group is a 4-week guided circle for anyone navigating loss — recent or long past, acute or quietly enduring. Meeting in a structured, facilitated and closed cohort, we move through grief with steadiness and intention: sharing stories, and leaning into our mourning rather than away from it as we practice embodied regulation.

We tend your grief through Jewish text, the Hebrew calendar, our holiday cycle, and Jewish ritual. This is not therapy, yet it is deeply healing, where sorrow is tended the way a garden is: with rhythm, patience, skill, and care.

Participants meet online for three 60-minute sessions, and an optional in-person session for the fourth. This small, confidential cohort builds grief literacy, nervous system resilience, and meaningful connection with the living world that transforms death into renewal.

Meet online, Fridays, 10-11am PST

Join the Waitlist

For Womxn in Grief

Mixed Loss | 18 sessions, 90 Minutes | Small Cohort

This Grief Garden is for high-functioning women who are the steady ones — the earners, the caretakers, the philanthropists, the ones everyone else leans on - even as you grieve. You manage institutions, families, aging parents, children, and impossible calendars. You show up. You deliver. You keep going.

And yet — grief lives in you, often privately, often without language, often without permission.

This group offers contained, culturally resonant grief tending for womxn. Here, you have permission to be supported before collapse. Permission to grieve without losing your competence. Support is structured and substantive — grounded in trauma-informed practice, nervous system regulation and herbal wellness, Through ritual, text, and embodied skill-building, you metabolize grief rather than compartmentalize it. By doing do, you nourish your relationships with self, and the realm Beyond touch.

Times/Dates TBD with the Group

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  • A Grief Garden (AGG) is a sacred listening space. This is a deep dive into the grief you hold, in a facilitated and trauma-informed container. This is a shared container for collective healing with grief as our teacher—it is not for individual therapy, activism, or venting. You are invited to explore your edges with tenderness and curiosity, we witness you. Together we explore embodied practices, creative rituals, mindful meditations, breathwork, and grief writing prompts. It is a sanctuary for listening and being listened to, holding and being held. Together, we leverage the sheer potency of being seen and heard.

    Designed for people experiencing traumatic grief, ambiguous grief, disenfranchised grief, climate grief - ALL are welcome to find solace in this Grief Garden.  Questions or concerns? Click here to connect by email.

  • Devorah Brous, a certified trauma-informed Compassionate Grief and Bereavement Care Counselor, an herbalist, ritualist, and deep listener leads a Grief Garden online and in-person. For over 25 years she has been creating collective healing rituals for intentional listening to hold people experiencing rupture.

  • Evidence-based research indicates that grief is strongly supported in a social web of care. Some grief calls for the circle. Some grief calls for the unpredictable, after the group is over. Some grief calls for a 1:1.

    In Grief Garden sessions, we gather with others who carry grief and loss in their bones—naming the ache, noticing what helps, and setting down what doesn’t. This requires patience, deep listening to others, and the ability to respect a group process as we witness each other. This is not therapy. Through ritual, reflection, and reciprocal witnessing, we trace a map toward solace and increased grief literacy.  

    And, sometimes grief needs space to evolve long after the support group is over. You are invited to drop-in whenever you need support. Sliding-scale sessions are available twice weekly.

  • Click to join a waitlist above for a specific group, or join the ongoing drop-in Grief Garden meets twice weekly: 

    Wednesdays 🪴 at 7pm-8:30pm PST. (register here)

    Monday Mournings 🪴at 8:30-9am PST (Pre-Register through ikar)

  • There is no set time frame for joining a grief support group, as grief is a personal experience with no defined timeline. While there are folks who join us just after Shiva, the first week of communal mourning, some grief support organizations recommend waiting 6 weeks to 6 months after a loss before joining a group, as this allows individuals the chance to address practical matters and begin processing their grief. 

    Ultimately, the best time to join AGG is when you feel ready to share your experiences and connect with others also experiencing overwhelm and a tangled web of emotions while navigating through the landscape of grief. 

    Fill out the Grief Garden Intake Form to help us both to see if this online space can be the present and thoughtful container you seek, or whether something else might be a better fit.

  • The participants are mostly Jew-ish, but not exclusively. All are welcome. The group is varied, intentional, and connected to religious and/or spiritual practices. Ages range from people in their 20’s and upward into their 80s. The orientation is warm, supportive, and rooted in Jewish mysticism.

  • Grief Garden’s are not focused specifically around cause of grief, or any identity-based qualifier. Participants come to talk about loss, to feel seen and heard. They speak to their specific loss(es), to listen, and to support others. Although there are important differences between types of loss (e.g. traumatic loss of a child; a sibling; a parent; loss related to a terminal illness; sudden and unexpected loss; anticipated loss, climate grief having lost a home etc) to grow common ground, we work with the feelings, dreams, and expressions of loss rather than the differences that set each of us apart.

  • I am unable to accept insurance.

    Thanks to a designated and anonymous grant in support of this community-care offering, the FromSoil2Soul Grief Garden is free for Ikar members through June 2026. All others, please make a sliding-scale contribution ($36-$72) per session for Wednesday’s 90-minute Grief Garden. Your contribution supports people that are facing financial hardship. Nobody is EVER turned away for lack of funds.

    Here is the payment link - I also accept all major credit cards, zelle, paypal, and venmo.

  • Everyone Belongs. A Grief Garden is inclusive of all kinds of people sharing personal grief. Participants are invited to share access needs. To keep the community safe, please join us with your screen on.

    • Be present. Practice patience and generosity.

    • Share with brevity and without assumptions. 

    • Refrain from crosstalk, and advice-giving. 

    • Listen to understand, not respond.

    • Follow prompts intentionally.

    • Speak solely from the "I." We are experts of our own lived experience.

    • What’s said here stays here. What’s learned here leaves here—with consent. This space is confidential.

  • First, please fill out this Grief Garden Interest Form to see if are a good fit: https://forms.gle/zRTU8jExRknt2KtE6.

    Second, choose a closed-session or a rolling group to join. The drop-in group gathers twice weekly online and you are warmly invited but must register first:

    1) "Monday Mournings" (8:30-9am), register through Ikar to join a Grief Garden:

    2) Here is the link to join a Grief Garden on Wednesday evenings, 7-8:30pm.

    Third, click this sliding-scale payment link to keep this offering sustainable ($36-$72), nobody is EVER turned away for lack of funds.

    Questions or concerns? Book a 1:1 call: www.cal.com/devorah-brous

  • Click join A Grief Garden in WhatsApp chat for collective support, reminders, poetry and song

  • During 1:1s, we move at the pace of trust, with a wide enough net to catch both ancestral ache and daily overwhelm. Sometimes the grief speaks of unresolved threads or other life transitions woven into the loss.

    For 1:1 grief support, or to refer a friend to FromSoil2Soul, please click here: https://forms.gle/zRTU8jExRknt2KtE6