GRIEF is shaping our world and our workplaces.
We all carry it and make decisions inside of it.
And most of us don't yet have the language, training, or support structures to respond in ways that actually help.
I bring grief literacy, clinical depth, and grounded facilitation to organizations and training programs that are ready for a culture-enhancing, change oriented process that improves how we relate and work together.
Grief is a condition of being alive, one that finds every person in every room, regardless of title or role. When we make grief visible instead of routing around it, it stops being only a problem to manage and becomes something that can deepen connection, clarify care, and change how we show up for one another.
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Grief is a condition of being alive, one that finds every person in every room, regardless of title or role. When we make grief visible instead of routing around it, it stops being only a problem to manage and becomes something that can deepen connection, clarify care, and change how we show up for one another.Â
Where business is valued.
Grief is tended.
And nothing gets managed around.
WHY THIS MATTERS AND FOR WHOM
Grief shows up differently depending on where you sit in an organization. The impact and the responsibility does too. Here’s how this work lands from three different vantage points.
THE BUSINESS CASE
For HR leaders, ERG coordinators, and organizational buyers
Grief is already affecting performance, retention, and culture—whether it's being named or not.
lost annually to unsupported grief in U.S. workplaces
Grief Recovery Institute / CDC
employees is grieving at any given time
Grief Recovery Institute
report significant productivity drops
Workplace Options, 2025
consider leaving
National Council for Palliative Care
The average U.S. bereavement leave is 3–5 days. Research suggests employees need closer to 20. The gap is where your engagement, retention, and culture are either strengthened—or quietly eroded.
THE CLINICAL CASE
For clinical directors, treatment teams, and behavioral health organizations
Unprocessed clinician grief shortens careers
A clinician absorbing unacknowledged grief becomes less attunedto ther own needs, limits and capacity. And most clinicians are carrying it quietly, without language or support.
Grief runs through almost every clinical population
Eating disorders, trauma, chronic illness, addiction, identity—grief is a thread in most of what clinicians treat. Practitioners without a grief framework are working without a map—often relying on instinct, over-functioning, or avoidance.
Moral injury has grief at its core
The exhaustion clinicians carry isn't only burnout—it's accumulated, unprocessed loss. Naming it as grief changes what becomes possible in how organizations respond.
Therapeutic alliance depends on clinician capacity
The relational capacity of the clinician is one of the strongest predictors of treatment outcome. Grief-informed practice builds that capacity. This isn't extra—it's foundational to the work.
THE CASE FOR CLINICAL TRAINING
For healthcare organizations, graduate programs, and CE aggregators
Most of what clinicians have learned about grief comes from outdated models
Organizations have a responsibility to train for what their staff is actually encountering. Most are asking clinicians to hold grief without ever teaching them how. Grief-informed training isn't a specialty add-on—it's foundational clinical education.
Training builds shared language across teams
When clinical teams share a grief framework, supervision deepens, peer consultation improves, and staff feel less isolated in difficult work. It changes how teams think, speak, and support one another.
CEUs make it fundable
NASW-approved continuing education hours mean grief-informed training can come out of professional development budgets—making the investment easier to justify—and actually implement.
"I appreciate the normative framing and expanding grief beyond loss through death and the listing of various types of grief and normalizing individual responses."— Training participant, Oregon Campuses United for Suicide Prevention (OCUSP) training
THE CASE FOR GRIEF-INFORMED CULTURE
A grief policy isn't a grief-informed culture
You can have a bereavement policy and an EAP and still have a culture that quietly communicates:
get through it and come back.The difference between a policy and a culture is capacity — whether the people inside your organization know how to hold what employees are carrying. One is paperwork. The other is a skill set.
Psychological safety is tested most when someone is carrying loss
When a grieving employee returns to work and their manager goes silent — not out of cruelty, but out of not knowing what to say — the message lands anyway:
your grief has no place here.That moment matters. It shapes whether someone feels safe enough to stay, to speak, to remain connected to their work and their team. And it often costs you trust long before it costs you their resignation.
Grief-informed practice is what psychological safety looks like when it's actually tested.
ERG leaders carry this work — often without support
Employee Resource Groups are frequently the first place grieving employees turn. ERG leaders hold the emotional weight of their communities, facilitate spaces for loss and transition, and navigate grief that intersects with identity, systemic injustice, and collective trauma.
Most have never received formal training for any of it. This work builds the language and frameworks ERG leaders need to hold what their communities bring — and to sustain themselves in the process.
When an employee is grieving, your culture either shows up — or it doesn't
When an organization misses a grieving employee — through silence, through premature expectations to return, through a policy that ends at the same time as the funeral — the gap between stated values and lived experience becomes visceral and personal.
Employees don't just notice it. They remember it. And they make decisions from there.
There's no neutral when someone is grieving.
"I am now officially obsessed with Hilary and will be reading everything she's ever written." — Training Participant
Deep listening is named everywhere and taught to very few
The leadership literature asks managers to tune into the emotional and psychological lives of their people.
What it rarely offers is a framework for what that actually looks like when someone is grieving.
So most managers do what they can:
they go quiet,
or they reach for referrals that often go unused.
Not because they don’t care but because they were never taught how to hold it.
Most organizations tell managers to lead with empathy. Let's make sure they know what to do when grief is in the room.
A grief policy isn’t a grief-informed culture
You can have a bereavement policy and an EAP and still have a culture that quietly communicates:
get through it and come back.
The difference between a policy and a culture is capacity—
whether the people inside your organization know how to hold what employees are carrying.
One is paperwork.
The other is a skill set.
When an employee is grieving, your culture either shows up (or it doesn’t)
When an organization misses a grieving employee through silence, premature expectations to return, or through a policy that ends at the same time as the funeral.
The gap between stated values and lived experience becomes visceral and personal.
Employees don’t just notice it.
They remember it.
And they make decisions from there.
There’s no neutral when someone is grieving.
Most organizations respond to loss with good intentions and inadequate tools.Â
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TALKS AND WORKSHOPS
When Grief Enters the Room
Helping teams build the language, steadiness, and relational capacity to respond when loss shows up at work.
Best for: HR and People teams, managers, ERG leaders, all-staff professional development, caregiver and mental health groups
Beyond Bereavement Leave
Moving from policy to practice so leaders know how to support grieving employees before trust, belonging, and connection quietly erode.
Best for: Leadership teams, HR leaders, managers, culture teams, employee experience and retention initiatives
What Clinicians Carry
Naming the grief, moral injury, and accumulated loss practitioners absorb—and building shared language for sustaining clinical presence.
Best for: Healthcare organizations, behavioral health teams, treatment centers, clinical directors, supervision and consultation groups
Tending Grief in Clinical Practice
A clinical training for practitioners who are already doing grief work and need a clearer framework for their clients, their teams, and themselves.
Best for: Graduate programs, CE audiences, residential programs, clinical teams, healthcare organizations, and training institutes
ENGAGEMENT OPTIONS
Most organizations don't need another inspiring conversation that leaves people asking: "Okay… but what do we actually do now?" They need capacity building through practice, reflection, and support over time. These are the most common ways we work together.
Talks + Workshops
A grounded starting point for organizations ready to build more capacity around grief, burnout, and care.
May include:
- 60–90 minute keynote or workshop
- Customized for your audience
- Live Q&A or discussion
- Virtual or in-person
Sometimes one conversation changes what people are finally able to name.
Training + Integration
For organizations that want their people to leave knowing how to respond differently when grief is actually in the room.
May include:
- Multi-session trainings
- Leadership or manager support
- Clinical consultation
- Integration guidance
This is where lasting organizational shifts often begin.
Organizational Consultation
Ongoing support for organizations working to better hold grief, moral injury, burnout, and the realities people carry.
May include:
- Leadership consultation
- Staff and team trainings
- Culture and communication support
- Longer-term planning
Designed collaboratively for your organization.
Feedback from participants....
Start the conversation →
Thank you for reaching out. I read every request personally and will be in touch within a few days.
Know an organization that needs this? I'd love a warm introduction. Reach out directly at [email protected].
ABOUT HILARY
Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC is a licensed therapist, educator, and organizational consultant whose work sits at the intersection of grief, body, and culture. She brings over 25 years of clinical experience to this work alongside deep training in grief literacy and is a grief ritual facilitator trained by Francis Weller, whose map of the five gates of grief informs her approach. Â
Hilary is co-founder of the Center for Body Trust, a clinical education and community organization known for its work in body-based healing, relational care, and systems-informed practice. She has trained clinicians, built transformational curriculums, led groups, and facilitated grief rituals in community settings and has spent years studying what it means to hold grief with skill, rather than manage it with efficiency.
Her organizational grief work is built on the same clinical foundation. She brings grief literacy not grief performance. Frameworks people can actually use. Language that changes what becomes possible in teams, supervision, and care.
 She is based in Portland, Oregon, and works with organizations and clinical training programs internationally.
