When my love Brian died, I immediately felt the uncontrollable urge to write and speak about my loss. Storytelling became my go-to grief processing tool.

And this was what helped me survive, especially in the early days.

But even as I wrote and spoke and shared, I still felt so, deeply vulnerable. Like I was always just one trigger away from feeling like I couldn’t move.

I had a sneaking suspicion that my body and nervous system held the key to this deeper layer of integration that I was yearning for.

I remember thinking that I was doing a good job processing my loss and now it was time to process my trauma. As if they were two, neat, discreet aspects of Brian’s death.

And so, I did some research, found a somatic trauma therapist, and began to work with her.

But there was a really big problem. She didn’t understand grief.

I would bring experiences to her that had triggered me and I could tell that she was judging me because she wasn’t working from a grief-literate lens. She herself continually said things in our sessions that made me feel entirely misunderstood and alone in my experience of young widowhood, which triggered me even more. I never felt safe with her. And so, it didn’t matter that she knew somatic work, because she didn’t know grief work.

And here’s the thing…

I hear versions of this same story over and over again from my fellow survivors of traumatic loss. We try to access embodied trauma healing and we end up experiencing more harm because of rampant grief-illiteracy.

And maybe the worst part…

Many trauma therapists, including the one I worked with, claim that they are trained to work with grief.

On my quest for a grief-literate somatic guide, I found that there were excellent grief-specific therapists and coaches who weren’t incorporating a ton of somatic work. And that there were great somatic workers who didn’t have a full, nuanced understanding or lived experience with traumatic grief.

And so, I set out to find a way to merge the two.

Your Group Facilitator:

Mira Simone is a registered mental health occupational therapist in Ontario, Canada with a decade of experience leading groups and providing 1:1 support. When Mira’s husband Brian died in 2019, she turned to writing, publishing essays and growing a community of grievers on instagram by sharing her story. Facilitating groups still felt like a passion, but like so many widows, her old life just didn’t seem to fit anymore, in the way it once did. So, in 2022, Mira founded New Moon Mira and began running group programs within the grief space. Studying and working with somatic and nervous system regulating practices has been life-changing for Mira, after experiencing profound trauma around Brian’s death. After incorporating various somatic practices into her other grief groups, Mira decided to run a program with somatic work at its core. And thus, RECLAIM was born.

Your Guest Program Contributor:

Cindy Doire is a registered psychotherapist (qualifying), a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher (E-RYT 500), a somatic coach, and an award-winning singer/songwriter. Cindy also has lived experience with deep grief, as her father passed away suddenly when she was 13-years-old. As a therapist, teacher, artist, and coach, Cindy embraces how different every day and moment is, and allows sessions to flow from the here-and-now. Cindy teaches that the body’s response to trauma is rooted in its ability to heal and protect itself from danger. She empowers her students and clients through equipping them with the understanding that when we experience trauma symptoms, we are not broken. In fact, our bodies are responding precisely as they were designed to. Through understanding this process, Cindy helps individuals change the way that they respond to stress moving forward. 

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