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.
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.
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