Overcoming grief with past-life regression and guardian angels: how three women help others overcome loss and live a spiritual and purposeful life
- The International Grief Council was set up by three women who found spiritual awakening through grief
- Lo Anne Mayer, Uma Girish and Daniela Norris help others deal with loss through group and individual therapy
With more than 2.68 million Covid-19-related deaths around the world, the social impact of grief has been massive. The pandemic has forced people to uproot traditions, and forgo funerals and rituals, and separated them from loved ones during celebrations and times of need.
This collective grief is deepened by rules imposed to mitigate the pandemic. Even the work of the International Grief Council, set up to serve the grieving, has been put on hold.
The council was formed when three authors met and found that, despite their varied backgrounds, they had a binding factor: grief.
When one of them, 77-year-old Lo Anne Mayer, a reiki master based in New Jersey, was interviewed by another, author and certified grief guide Uma Girish, on a radio show called Grammar of Grief in the United States, they discovered a common thread: spiritual awakening through loss.
She wrote her first book, Celestial Conversations, shortly afterwards. She also practices and teaches “angel meditation”, a relaxation technique which works on the premise that people can connect with guardian angels and seek their help and protection.
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Girish, 55 and from India, had lost her mother in 2009 and attended a nine-week grief support programme at a local church. She also turned to a mentor in her community, who helped her find answers to questions about mortality and spirituality, and to engage better with her emotions and with the people around her.
Her first book, Understanding Death, was a way to share her transformative journey, and she later wrote the books Losing Amma, Finding Home, and Lessons from Grace: What a Baby Taught Me about Living and Loving.
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Mayer, Girish, and Norris set up the International Grief Council in December 2015.
“We were and continue to be inspired by the opportunity to help the grieving know that they’re not alone. There’s hope,” Mayer says. “The grief someone is going through is not permanent, and if they’re open, can be transformed into a life of purpose.”
The trio presented their first US programmes in 2016 at Morristown, New Jersey, Georgian Court University in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in New York, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In September 2018, the council hosted a retreat near Oxford, in the UK. The women draw from their own experiences to teach others ways to let go of grief. They encourage participants to share their stories and celebrate the loved ones they have lost.
Many studies, including a 2017 review in the journal Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, suggest that community‐based bereavement counselling may have long‐term beneficial effects for those who are grieving.
“I see the virus as a messenger,” Girish says. “Grief and loss continue to be the overarching umbrella, even as we all branch into different expressions of our purpose.”