EMBER Work with me Kindling About
Grief Work
Tending: Accompaniment at the Gates of Grief Grief and the Body: Holding What We Carry Tending Together: A Grief Ritual Gathering Bring Grief Training to Your Organization

Hi, I'm Hilary Kinavey (she/her).

I'm a therapist, facilitator, and educator whose work lives at the intersection of grief, the body, and what it means to build something sustainable in a culture that profits from our exhaustion. For 25 years I've been asking the same question in different forms: what does it cost us when we can't tell the whole truth of our experience — and what becomes possible when we finally can?

That question is the through-line of everything I do.

My path:

I came to this work through the body. For over two decades I practiced as a licensed professional counselor, accompanying people through the places where body image, trauma, identity, and culture collide. That work led me to co-found the Center for Body Trust with Dana Sturtevant — one of the first organizations in the country to center weight-inclusive, liberation-oriented care at a clinical and organizational level.

Through CBT I trained thousands of providers, co-authored Reclaiming Body Trust: A Path to Healing & Liberation (Penguin Random House, 2022), and learned firsthand what it takes to build something meaningful over the long haul — and what it costs when the container isn't strong enough to hold the people inside it.

Grief entered my work not as a detour but as a deepening. I trained with Francis Weller as a grief ritual facilitator and began co-facilitating grief courses and gatherings with Carmen Cool. What I discovered — and what I now bring to organizations — is that grief is not a problem to be managed. It is a fundamental human experience that shapes how we work, how we lead, and whether people stay. Organizations that hold grief well keep their people. Most organizations don't know how.

EMBER grew from all of this. I created it for therapists, coaches, and dietitians who are trying to build practices that hold them — financially, structurally, emotionally — without disappearing into them. So many helping professionals were never taught how to build businesses that reflect their ethics and still pay the bills. EMBER is the antidote: strategy and emotional integrity, side by side.

Everything I teach is rooted in social justice, emotional honesty, and a belief that building anything — a business, a team, a life — requires us to honor what has been lost and imagine what's possible.

 

 

If you're an organizational leader-

You may have landed here because someone on your team is struggling, because you've lost people you didn't expect to lose, or because you're starting to wonder if the way your organization holds — or doesn't hold — grief is part of the problem.

You're probably right.

I offer speaking, training, and consultation for clinical organizations, healthcare systems, nonprofits, and ERGs ready to build genuine grief literacy into their culture. This isn't a workshop about coping skills. It's about structural change and the kind of leadership that makes people feel safe enough to stay.

→ Learn more about grief literacy speaking and training

What sustains me.

  •  My family - partner and two sons, My pets- Arrow, Stripers and Fluffers are so often the glue of family life.

  • My friends and the practice of friendship.

  • Irreverence, laughing, wit. Boundaries. Trusting my yeses and nos.

  • Cooking, baking, eating and cookbooks.

  • My corner of the world, very fortunately, is near a tiny lake where I witness an ecosystem doing what it knows to do. I love cosmology (though I understand very little) and the night sky. 

  • I love seeking words to describe experiences. The people I work with and support. My entrepreneurial life. I also love Astiana tomatoes, a new recipe, family in the kitchen & getting out of dodge. 

  • Making things with others has been the center of my life.

A few more things you should know about me...

  • I am not "type A". Even though, I work with my own perfectionism, expectations and obligations that I have inherited over many generations of striving ancestors. My work will not look perfect or be perfectly consistent. I will deliver, however, everything I say I will. Occasionally you will notice that there will be typos, mistakes, etc. I promise you that this is a sign of my evolving self, not that I do not care.

  • I swear often. If you don’t like that this may not be a supportive or fun program for you.

  • I feel feelings. I react to injustice and I name systemic harms and violence. I am not a blank slate.

  • I am a seasoned supporter, mentor, leader and advocate. You will also feel this in our work together.

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