Invitation to Grieve · A six-week group program with Avery Collura

Avery Collura  ·  A six-week group program

You've been fitting your grief around everything else. For six weeks, everything else can wait.

Invitation to Grieve is six weeks of grief work in company. Ten to twelve people. Ninety minutes a week in live virtual sessions. Two audio series yours to keep. One other griever checking on you weekly. Me in the room the whole time.

Start the application

A short form, then a conversation with me. No payment until we've talked.

"It might feel not-okay forever,
and that's okay too."

— Avery Collura

This is for you if…

You've done
the alone part.

You've read the books, or listened to the audios, or just white-knuckled it. And alone has taken you about as far as it goes.

—

You're the one everyone calls strong. You handled the phone calls, the paperwork, everyone else's tears. Your turn never came.

—

The friends who showed up at first have gone back to their lives. They love you. They stopped asking.

—

You have okay weeks and then get flattened, and the people around you only seem to believe in one at a time.

—

There's a corner, a song, a date on the calendar that still takes the breath out of you. The body has been keeping the list, even if nobody else can see it.

—

You want to be somewhere it's normal that it isn't over. Where nobody checks their watch when you say a name.

Start the application A short form, then a conversation with me.

And this might not be for you

A group asks you to witness others while you're being witnessed.

This is a group program, not therapy and not crisis care. If your loss is very recent and you're in the rawest part of it, twelve people on a screen may not be the right container yet. Being witnessed might be all you have the strength for, and a group asks you to witness back.

Some grief needs more than company. If months have passed and the grief still runs your days, if you cannot work or eat or leave the house, if the numbness has outstayed everything else, that deserves real clinical treatment from someone trained in it. Going to get it is grief work too. A group can walk beside you while that happens, and it can't do that work itself.

That's part of what the application call is for. If I don't think this is right for you right now, I'll say so, and I'll say what might be. And if the right next step is a therapist, I'll help you look.

Meet Avery Collura

"My husband Dan died in France in June 2023.
It was alcohol-related. An addiction we both struggled with."

That's the sentence I had to learn to say, in that order. Not "I lost him." Not "he passed." Dan died. He had a name. We were both drinking like that.

For a long time after, I didn't have a method. I had a life that wasn't mine to keep, a country I had to leave, and a body I didn't trust. I drank for a while longer. I stopped. I went to work: sobriety, community, embodied practice, somatic and grief training, time in rooms with other people who had lost what couldn't be replaced.

What I keep coming back to is that the rooms were where it moved. I could do a lot alone. The parts that actually shifted, shifted with other people watching me not be okay and not flinching. That's why this program is a group and not another thing you press play on by yourself.

— Avery

Grief Practitioner trained in somatic integration, narrative repair, and meaning-making. Gestalt group facilitator.

Avery Collura signature
The hole in the garden

The framework · short version

The hole
in the garden.

If you've been through the Meet Your Grief audios, this will be familiar ground. If you haven't, here it is in a minute.

The loss hole is the shape of what's gone. It doesn't get smaller. When you step inside, you find it the same size it has always been. That's the truth of the loss, and it doesn't change.

The garden is what's still growing. Connection, laughter, new love, a text from a friend midweek. Not a replacement for what was lost, and not a consolation prize. Life continuing, in the same field. It requires tending.

And the hole is in the garden. They aren't two places you travel between, the bad one first and then, eventually, the good one. One field, both at once. Some days the body turns you toward the loss, some days you choose to turn back toward the living, and neither one cancels the other. The hole never gets smaller. What changes is the landscape around it. The garden grows right up to its edge, and that growing is what lets you live there.

The audios teach you this landscape.
The six weeks are where you learn to live on it.

The loss hole

The shape of what's gone. It doesn't get smaller. Step inside and you find it the same size it has always been.

↕

The garden

What's still growing: connection, laughter, new love. Life continuing, in the same field. It requires tending.

↕

Both at once

One field, not two places. Some days the body moves you, some days you choose. The hole never gets smaller. The landscape around it does.

The shape of the six weeks

The same rhythm, six times.

Every week we meet for ninety minutes, live. Between sessions, the audios are yours, all of them, from day one. Some people listen to everything in one sitting the first weekend. Some take one piece at a time and stretch it across the six weeks. The audio brings the idea. In the room it gets into the body, and on the way back through, the audio has changed.

There's a shape to the six weeks, and the room bends it every time. Roughly:

Week 1

The landscape.

One field, a hole in it, a garden growing to its edge. Where you're standing today.

Week 2

The body.

Learning to read what it's already telling you. It knew before you did.

Week 3

The door.

First the knock. Then choosing when to let it in. Then choosing how often it stays, and finding out the thing at the door is company.

Week 4

The tending.

What's draining you. What's helping more than it has any right to. The tending you don't do, the kind that happens while you rest.

Week 5

The rhythm.

Moving between loss and living, both present the whole time. You can't fail this.

Week 6

Continuing.

The program ends. You keep the field.

You share when you decide to. A lot of the work is private noticing, done in company. I'll ask where is that living in your body far more often than I'll ask you to explain anything out loud.

What you get

What's in the six weeks.

→

Six live group sessions

Ninety minutes each, live and virtual. Ten to twelve people, never more.

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The full Meet Your Grief audio series

The $47 series is included, the spine of the six weeks. About 45 minutes the first time through, yours forever after. Listen all in one day, or one piece at a time.

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The Science of Grief audio series

Also included, also yours to keep. The $97 series on what grief is doing in your body and brain: the exhaustion, the fog, why you keep looking for them. Some things get easier to carry once you know the mechanics.

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A grief buddy

One other person from the group, paired with you. You meet once a week between sessions. A call, a walk, twenty minutes is enough. Someone who knows exactly which week you're in, because they're in it too. I'll teach you both how to sit in that seat. That practice is called companioning, and almost nobody gets taught it.

→

A private hour with me

One 1:1 session, scheduled whenever you need it most: week one, week six, or whichever week hits hardest.

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A note from me between sessions

Sometimes written, sometimes a short audio. It asks nothing of you.

Start the application

What it costs, and why it costs that

$1,200

When I run this again, it will be closer to $1,800.

I've done this work for years, one person at a time, and both audio series came out of it. I haven't held it with twelve people in the room at once. That's what this first group is, and the people in it shape the program just by being there and telling me what's working.

So the first group pays less than the ones after it. There's no countdown timer coming and nothing expires at midnight. $1,200 is what the first run costs while I'm still learning where the chairs go.

If paying in parts would help, say so on the call. We'll sort it.

You might be wondering…

What people ask
before they apply.

The same questions come up before every group.

"I don't want to cry in front of strangers."+
You might. Crying in front of strangers is awful right up until someone else goes first. The group learns fast that tears aren't an emergency, and it treats them that way: people stay put, let you have it, and keep going when you're ready. Passing on a share, any week, is built into how the room runs.
"What if my grief is too much for the group? Or not enough?"+
I hear both, sometimes from the same person. There's no hierarchy of loss in this room. No grief too heavy, none too small, no minimum time served. The application call exists partly for this: it's me checking the container fits you. You're not auditioning.
"I'm not a group person."+
Most people who end up in this group aren't group people. It's ninety minutes, it's structured, and every share is volunteered. What the group adds is other people in the room while you notice what you notice. That's a different thing than noticing alone, and I couldn't get it any other way. I tried.
"What if I miss a week?"+
Tell me. Your grief buddy keeps you tethered, I'll catch you up on what the room worked with, and the audios are yours regardless. Life doesn't pause because you enrolled in something. If you're going to miss two, let's talk before the program starts.
"Why do I have to apply?"+
Because twelve people for six weeks is a different animal than pressing play on an audio. I want to know the group can hold you, and you deserve to know it can. The form takes about ten minutes. The call is twenty to thirty. Some calls end with "not yet." That's a real answer, and it comes with what I'd try first instead.
"Is this therapy?"+
No. I'm a grief practitioner and somatic coach, not a therapist. This works well alongside therapy and doesn't replace it. It isn't crisis care, and the application process is partly how I make sure everyone in the room is somewhere a group can actually meet them.
Avery Collura

How joining works

Three steps. The first one takes ten minutes.

1

The application.

A short application (apply here). It asks about your loss, where you are with it, and what you're hoping a group gives you that alone hasn't. You pick your call time in the same place.

2

A conversation with me.

Twenty to thirty minutes, free, unscripted. We're both checking fit. You can ask me anything, including the hard versions.

3

The group forms.

The first cohort starts once it's full. Applicants hear the date first, and nothing is paid until you've said yes to a real date with real people in it.

Start the application

Close

Six weeks won't finish anything.

It isn't supposed to. What the six weeks do is teach your body the landscape and put other people on it with you. When the container closes, the rhythm keeps going, and you're not the only one out walking it.

You were never meant to grieve alone.
Grief showed up without an invitation. It always does.
This one's for you.

— Avery

Start the application
Avery Collura