Interview: Eryn Elder

In today’s interview we’re talking to Eryn Elder, creator of the grief and loss coaching business Roots & Wings.

Eryn is a grief specialist, advocate, and author who transitioned to working in the grief space after her own deeply affecting personal child loss. She exemplifies the idea of taking grief and channeling it into something powerful, building up her knowledge and certifications in the grief space while building her coaching business that now helps others navigate grief. Eryn is also local to Colorado and has started running events with other grief practitioners in the area, including a recent rage room event.

Today she shares about creating Root & Wings as well as her own story with grief, and advice for anyone who’s early in their own grief journey.

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1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi, I’m Eryn Elder, a grief support specialist for adults grieving any type of loss. I’ve always been in the helping professions. In 2014, my first-born child, Evelyn, did not wake up from her nap at daycare, and she died with no known cause (SUIDS). This, understandably, shifted my path and life goals and is why I am here today.

Now, in 2025, my organization, Roots and Wings Grief and Loss Coaching, focuses on 1:1 grief support for adults grieving any type of loss; group grief support; trainings; workshops; and public speaking engagements. In April of this year, I released my book, Blooming Through Loss: Tending to Grief with the BloomPath™. Part personal narrative and best practices in grief support, the book takes the reader on a journey of understanding the BloomPath™ and its six internal and seven external Blooms that grief has a touchpoint with and within an individual. The book includes reflective exercises and a narrative, approachable voice, so that it is accessible for someone who is grieving or someone who is supporting a griever. 

My passion for this work is inspired by my daughter Evelyn’s memory and with my hope that we continue to develop and share more grief education and create intentional grief-aware communities.

I love learning, skiing, spending time with friends and family, working on the NYT word puzzles, and writing.

2. What loss or losses first started your journey with grief?

When my aunt/Godmother died by suicide, I was in fourth grade. I remember looking around wanting to engage in hard conversations about death, life, truth, and the mystery of life that I now was exposed to from her loss. Since then, I have been curious about what it would take to develop a more grief aware culture. Then, in 2014, my first-born daughter, Evelyn, did not wake up from her nap at daycare and died with no-known cause. 

The loss of my daughter broke me, both in challenging and beautiful ways, and it drew me back to my passion of helping others and developing frameworks that create more awareness about grief in our society and support for those who are navigating the profound experience of grief. 

3. What was that time like for you?

Immediately after and the few months after the loss of Evelyn, I grappled with guilt, depression, and despair. As I was doing so, I opened myself up to new insights from spirituality, science, self-understanding, art, music, and more. I cried everyday for a year. I took a leave of absence from my job, and then I decided to move into a different career path. I struggled with isolation, and I also became more kind, compassionate, and understanding and met many amazing individuals who came into my life at various touchpoints on my grief journey. 

I learned to feel the spectrum of sorrow and joy. I call this the grief paradox.

4. What first drew you into the grief community? Was there anything that stands out as a watershed moment in your grieving process?

I can trace this back to fourth grade when my aunt died. I’ve always been curious about people, the systems they are situated within, and their healing journeys. Fast forward, now, a key moment for me was connecting the dots between my career in coaching and starting to recognize how coaching can be a powerful support modality for grief support. 

I was on a walk in my neighborhood, inspired by nature among trees and mountainous views, when this download came to me. At that moment, everything crystalized in terms of how I could bring my skills, passions, and strengths into a new career world of grief support.

5. You started your own endeavor, Roots and Wings Grief and Loss Coaching. Tell us a little bit about it - and what made you want to create it, and how has it changed your relationship with grief?

When Evelyn died, I had been supporting school leaders across the state of Colorado with their implementation of behavioral health supports. After about 8 months, I returned to CU Boulder where, eventually, I, along with a team, developed a coaching program. Recognizing the power of research- and evidence-based coaching approaches, I left CU and began working on my business to blend coaching with grief support for adults. Along with my coaching credentials and Master’s of Arts in Education Foundations, Policy, and Practice, I earned various grief support specializations. 

Always a learner and developer of frameworks, programs, and people, I combined my passions to start my own grief support business: Roots and Wings Grief and Loss Coaching LLC. 

When you feel and are supported with alignment, you can ride the waves of conflicting emotions, challenges, and various hardships with more compassion. This is what made me want to create my organization. I wanted to be sure that people have access to coaching as a modality for their grief support and to live in their own alignment while holding space for their grief and loss. I would never have understood this without the coupling of my career in coaching and my personal grief and loss experience. I investigated various grief support research, theories, modalities, etc., and I could not find something that was distinctly coaching. Having benefited from coaching myself, I wanted to find a way for people to have access to grief coaching support.

Responsive, intentional, strengths-based, and grounded in personal experience, theory, and research, I have developed a coaching approach that includes the BloomPath™, which helps people identify and navigate the support they want and need within six internal touchpoints and seven external touchpoints with grief. This helps provide scaffolding in a space where people are often feeling overwhelmed, under or over stimulated, and/or seeking support but not sure what they want and need.

Through the creation of Roots and Wings Grief and Loss Coaching, my relationship with grief has changed by both making my awareness of my own grief more present, and yet, feeling more grounded in my response to my own grief. I have found more ways to integrate my grief and live in my strengths and purpose as a direct result of my grief, which continues to show up in different ways. Regardless of how it now shows up, I am gentler and more compassionate with myself and others.

6. What’s been most surprising to you about grief in general?

How it opens us up to a new way of living and new life that can be deeply meaningful and filled with contentment amidst the sorrow. Engaging the process of grief is no easy feat. It reveals our weaknesses and strengths; our fears and doubts; our relationships and who we are and who we want to be. 

This is a lot to hold in junction with the pure heartache of a loss. So, the most surprising thing to me in grief is all that it holds, and sadly, the disenfranchisement of that in society. Additionally, the paradox of the experience of it all, and, for me personally, the deep emotional pain I experienced, are what have surprised me on my own journey.

7. How do you feel you're different now from the person you were before your loss?

Prior to Evelyn’s death, I was the stereotypical overachiever: graduated Summa Cum Laude, earned multiple awards in my career, and laid out clear, goal-oriented, multi-year plans. This is what I centered my world around: my success. 

Now, my world centers around my family, creativity, passions, wellness, spirituality, and truth. Grief truly has unraveled the gift of freedom to me in a way that I would never have expected. I am much more patient, compassionate, and reflective. I get to engage with curiosity, now, in a life-giving way instead of previously where I simply checked boxes for success. 

8. What advice do you have for someone new to the grief world? 

Everyone’s path is different, and our culture is not the most adaptable or understanding to and for grievers and their unique needs; on the other hand, there are many, many people who want to help you and you are not alone. With that, you are loved more than you can imagine; you deserve care and time for self-understanding and engaging the grief process; and you will embark on your own grief journey that will bring you into the grief paradox, holding both the sadness and the joy; the guilt and the compassion; the love and the frustration and/or your own various emotional and cognitive responses, which may be messy, confusing, and meaningful. 

It is okay to engage your journey in a way that makes the most sense to you and be adaptive and responsive to the new you, your own becoming. Grief unravels us into our authenticity, so use the support resources and the scaffolding available to you; honor your truth and purpose; give yourself time and be okay with your own timeline; you can be okay and you cannot be okay, and either or anything in between is just fine; and finally, hold yourself with loving kindness and belief that you can live a good life.

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Thanks so much to Eryn for participating! You can find out more about Roots and Wings Grief and Loss Coaching at her website or on social at @griefandlossguide. If you are local to Colorado, keep an eye out for her events

Good Grief

Where Gifting Meets Grief

Sometimes in the wake of loss, people don’t know what to say or do for the bereaved. That’s where Good Grief, an e-commerce store connecting people to grief-focused care packages, comes in.

The organization, started by two sisters, describes their mission as trying to “make life suck a little less.” They created the organization after finding that there weren’t any options on the market for empathetic gifts that felt genuine and not trite. They describe wanting to confront life’s terrible situations head-on, even making space for joy where it makes sense.

Their website features a section specific to loss, which has a curated selection of boxes specifically for grief associated with the loss of a loved one. Options range from a dark-humored “Damn You, Universe!” package to a self-care inspired “The Art of Grieving” package to more audience-specific packages for widows and teens and more. Providing pre-curated options is a great way for people to support their loved ones through seasons of loss.

Beyond loss-related grief, they also offer options for other life struggles from infertility to cancer to job loss and beyond. This month for Suicide Prevention Awareness, they also have a “Reasons to Stay Alive” box.

If you’re interested in checking out their offerings or building your own box, visit www.shopgoodgrief.com.▪️

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If you or someone you know is interested in being featured on Grief Collective, please reach out via email at hello@griefcollective.com.

Camp Erin

Connecting Kids with Grief Support: Camp Erin

Camp Erin is a national network of free grief camps for children and teens who have experienced the death of someone important in their lives. Camp Erin combines grief support and education with fun, camp-style programming. Whether day camp or overnight, these camps offer a safe, nurturing environment led by bereavement professionals and trained volunteers.

Since its launch, Camp Erin has become one of the largest programs of its kind in the U.S. and Canada. The goal is to help youth and their caregivers move through grief—not by denying the pain—but by learning coping tools, honoring their loved ones, and finding connection with others going through something similar.

What makes Camp Erin unique

• Peer support + professional guidance
  Camp Erin brings together bereavement professionals along with volunteers so that children, teens, and families have access to both emotional safety and expert support. It’s not therapy in the clinical sense, but it does teach coping skills and gives space to explore grief in healthy ways.

• Balancing healing and joy
  Many grief-support programs focus only on the sadness, which is absolutely important. Camp Erin also emphasizes joy, play, connection, and the kinds of activities kids love—arts and crafts, games, hikes, campfires, etc.—while allowing space to remember and honor the person they lost. This helps reinforce that grief is part of life, not all of it.

• No cost to families
  One barrier to grief support is cost. Camp Erin is free for participants. All youth camp-ers attend at no cost to their families. That’s a major factor in accessibility.

• Large scale and local reach
  With over 32 locations in the U.S. and Canada, many camp sessions yearly, and tens of thousands of youth impacted since its founding, Camp Erin combines scale with local community partnerships. This means that people can often find a Camp Erin nearby.

The Camp Erin experience

For those who attend a Camp Erin session, they’ll experience a safe and supportive environment with others who have also experienced loss. Campers can expect structured groups, sharing, remembrance ceremonies, expressive art, as well as many of the “usual” camp activities—games, crafts, outdoor adventure—that help normalize and allow campers to feel joy and connection. The camp especially aims to equip youth and families with tangible tools to manage grief—learning that grief is unique to each person, that they are not alone, and ways to remember their loved one meaningfully.

Since 2002, Camp Erin has supported over 37,000 children and teens, helping them feel heard and understood at a uniquely challenging time in their lives.

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer for Camp Erin, you can find more information here. ▪️

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If you or someone you know is interested in being featured on Grief Collective, please reach out via email at hello@griefcollective.com.

What is a death doula?

Photo: Jacob Owens

In situations where people are approaching the end of their life, it can feel overwhelming for the individual as well as the family. There may be treatments to navigate, legacy planning to carry out, memorial arrangements to organize—the list goes on. And on top of this, they’re balancing the emotional load of confronting their own / their loved one’s mortality. At this critical and difficult time in life, death doulas can provide support.

Death doulas (also known as end-of-life doulas) are non-medical professionals trained to help people through the end-of-life / dying process. This can look different depending on the individual’s needs and the doula’s skills; it can include any number of the following:

• Advanced planning for the dying person’s last wishes (helping get will & directives in order)

• Memorial planning (funeral arrangements, coordinating with family)

• Legacy projects / planning (helping the dying person on artifacts that will help people memorialize / remember them)

• Sitting with the dying person (keeping them company, playing their favorite music, helping ease their worries)

• Supporting the family or other caregivers (preparing snacks, having conversations about grief and the dying process)

Doulas are unique in that they can help foster a transition to death that honors the dying person’s autonomy and wishes in a way that is not always seen or guaranteed in a traditional medical setting. It opens up a conversation about what dying can look like—that there is room to reinvent the standard, and that there can be power and beauty in it. Clients can specify their own do’s and don’t’s in detail—people they do or don’t want to see, the type of music or scents they want present, the types of interventions they will allow, and more. While doulas work with family members as well, at the end of the day they are client advocates, working to ensure that their client has the best experience they can—whether in-home, in-hospice, or in a medical facility.

Doula support has been around for a long time, but there was a spike in popularity in 2021 with the publication of a New York Times article, which introduced the concept to many people who went on to become doulas or seek out doula support. It is still a growing industry, with a handful of top organizations offering training. Today doulas are not typically covered by insurance and are paid for by the dying individual or their family (some also offer scholarships or a sliding scale), but as the world and industry evolves, this may change.

If you are interested in working with a death doula, there are directories available online (a well-known organization is INELDA) or you can search in your area. There are also several programs for becoming a doula available online. If you have any questions, reach out in the comments!

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Have you ever worked with a death doula? What was your experience?

Share more below!

Grief Stories

Today, we’re excited to be featuring another grief mission, Grief Stories, a website featuring videos of people sharing their stories with grief, all in the hope of driving more connection and community for those grieving. They have a robust set of resources on their site as well, and they have a podcast you can check out if you’re more of the listener type! Read on below to learn more about Grief Stories and their background and mission.

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Sharing Stories for Hope and Healing in Grief

Humans have been telling stories throughout time. We tell stories to teach lessons and share information, and to entertain. Stories are powerful, they can elicit a full range of emotion, and they can be a vehicle for healing in grief.

Two filmmakers recognized the power of stories to help the bereaved find hope and healing, and they recruited a social worker to support their efforts to create a free virtual resource that would offer information and comfort for those who are adjusting to a loss. Grief Stories was born, offering a library of short videos, blog posts, and a podcast designed to offer stories to aid in healing grief.

Sean Danby lost his vibrant, young wife Suzy to cancer. He was doing all the right things to grieve. He went to therapy, he joined a grief group, he was feeling and talking about his feelings. Still, at three in the morning when he was awake and alone with his grief, there was nowhere to turn. Surfing the internet brought him to a lot of sites with written information about the experience of grief, but in the wee hours, he didn’t want to read. When he shared this dilemma with his friend Rob Quartly, Rob suggested that there was an alternative. As filmmakers, they could make some films for Sean to watch that would help him feel less alone in the middle of the night.

The first films they made involved Sean’s family and Suzy’s care team. From there, the idea blossomed into the rich resource that it is now. The team at Grief Stories invites guests to share their stories of hope and healing in grief by creating short videos where real people talk about their experience of loss and what has helped them through it. With more than five hundred videos now, the library keeps growing, and the team is committed to increasing diversity and inclusion across a wide range of grief experiences.

You’ll also find a series of blog posts by people who work in the field of grief, with guest posts by those with lived experience. Mindful of the fact that sometimes in grief we have a shorter attention span, these posts are kept to around five hundred words, and focus on information intended to let people know they are not alone.

The Grief Stories podcast, hosted by registered social worker Maureen Pollard, is a series of interviews with a wide range of guests. There are three main podcast types. In the first, Maureen speaks with people about their experience of loss, and what is helping them adjust. In the second type, Maureen speaks with people who work in the field of grief about the key information they wish everyone knew about grief. In the third type of podcast, Maureen interviews artists about the power of creating art for exploring and expressing feelings as you move through the experience of grief.

There is a resource page, with links to organizations and information that the bereaved may find helpful, and a page with information about using the expressive arts as coping tools. You’ll find a page about creating visual art, using music and therapeutic writing for healing in grief.

As the project has evolved, it has become clear that sharing our stories helps everyone. Those who participate in the project by sharing their stories on film, in a blog post or as a podcast guest consistently report that they find this experience well supported and cathartic. They feel seen and heard in their experience and that is powerful. It also feels good to know that their story could help someone else feel less alone. Those who visit the website also report that when they are in the depths of their grief, they find it helpful to listen to stories they can relate to that offer hope for healing. Sharing stories helps everyone heal. ▪️

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Thank you to Marueen Pollard and the Grief Stories team for contributing. You can find out more about Grief Stories at their website, on social media at @grief_stories , and by subscribing to Grief Stories wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you or someone you know is interested in being featured on Grief Collective, please reach out via email at hello@griefcollective.com.

Dan Levy on the quiet, unexpected moments of grief

Photo: Dillon Kydd

Dan Levy, a writer and actor known for acting in and creating the show Schitt’s Creek, has recently shifted gears from comedy into the grief world with his creation of the movie Good Grief. He recently joined the We Can Do Hard Things podcast to share about his grief experiences and the perspectives that shaped this recent creation.

In the movie, he describes grief “like swimming in clothes and I can’t take them off,” but in the podcast he shares the surprising feeling of delayed grief after the loss of his grandmother until a quiet, poignant moment in the snow. It does a beautiful job of summarizing the unexpected feelings that come along with loss. All feelings fit.

“It’s not about resolution. It’s about loving your way through it.”

You can listen to the full episode below - the grief portion begins at 10:17.

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The full transcript of the podcast episode can be found here.