The Moment I Realized I Wasn’t Meant to Be a Grief Coach

When I started studying to become a certified grief coach, I thought I’d found my life’s purpose. It made perfect sense, I’d endured a loss that reshaped everything about me. I knew the sleepless nights, the quiet triggers, the ache that hides behind a strong face.

I thought: who better to help others through grief than someone who has lived it?

But as I moved deeper into the process, a quiet truth began to settle in: I wasn’t ready. Not because I lacked the heart or the knowledge, but because my own grief was still teaching me. I was still learning how to live beside it.

Coaching asks something sacred of you. It asks you to center someone else’s needs above your own. It asks for presence that’s steady and unshaken. And that’s hard to give when you’re still navigating waves yourself.

One day, it hit me -- maybe my purpose wasn’t to coach people through grief. Maybe it was to speak grief. To write it, to share it, to tell the truth about it boldly and without apology.

That realization didn’t make me a failure. It made me free.

When I started telling my story instead of trying to guide others through theirs, something beautiful happened. People began to reach out (not for coaching) but for connection. They weren’t looking for answers; they were looking for recognition. They saw themselves in my words. They found comfort in the honesty.

That’s when I understood: storytelling is healing work.

To those who’ve walked through loss and now coach others through it -- I honor you. Your strength is sacred. But for those of us still learning to mother our own broken hearts, there’s grace in that too.

We are the storytellers. The ones who turn ache into language, and language into light.

We don’t coach the process. We become it.

I wasn’t meant to coach grief, I was meant to speak it, to give it form, and let others see themselves in the echoes. ~ Kinyatta Gray