Gentle and compassionate grief support
Because it is by turning towards grief & integrating it into our lives that we can go on to live meaningfully and love deeply.
Companioning you in grief, walking with you as you find your way.
If you’ve found your way here, you already know the weight of grief, how some losses alter everything so completely that it feels impossible the world can just keep going.
This is a place where your sorrow is welcome. A place where you can set down the mask of being “okay.” Where grief is not rushed or fixed, but companioned and gently explored.
Together, we make space for your love, your pain, and your becoming. In time, glimmers of meaning can return, and life, though forever changed, can still hold depth, connection, and beauty.
You don’t have to walk this path alone.
About me.
I’m Marie-Claude Goudreau (Marie), a certified death and grief doula and the founder of Empowered Through Grief, a trauma-informed practice devoted to end-of-life and bereavement support.
Through one-on-one sessions, groups, writing circles, and workshops, I’ve supported hundreds of grieving individuals since 2020 through all types of death losses.
My work is rooted in the philosophy of companioning, walking beside you, as you discover your own path through loss. I hold the deep trust that you are the expert of your grief. My role is to create the conditions where grief can be fully expressed, love is honoured, and meaning can slowly emerge. I believe it is by grieving well that we open ourselves again to love and to life.
Widowed in my early 30s, I know intimately how life-changing a loss can be. How it can alter identity, reshape belonging, and ask for a different kind of tending & support. This personal knowing, combined with years of experience companioning others through their own profound losses, grounds the depth and integrity of my work.
Certifications & Trainings
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End-of-life Specialist (death doula)
Trained and certified by the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Toronto, Canada.
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Death & Grief Certification from the Center for Loss and Life Transition
- Grief Companioning Skills Training (30 hours)
- Support Group Facilitator Training (30 hours)
- Supporting Complicated Mourning (30 hours)
Trained & certified by Dr. Alan Wolfelt, one of North America’s most respected bereavement educators and clinicians at the Center for Loss and Life Transitions in Colorado, USA.
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Continuing education & training
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training through LivingWorks
Trauma-informed group facilitation training with Katie Kurtz
Ongoing weekly supervision with Thais Sky, psychotherapist (LMFT) since 2020.
Contact us.
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Services are offered online
In English & French
Mailing address:
P.O. Box 52006, Laval, CP, Fabreville, Qc, H7P 5S1
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empoweredthroughlife@gmail.com
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empoweredthroughlife@gmail.com
Grief support that meets you where you are.
1:1 Grief Support
Are you struggling to find the right kind of support in grief?
Living with a deep loss can impact all facets of your life. Long-term support can help you explore & make sense of the complexities of your loss while slowly assist you in re-engaging with life in a meaningful way.
In grief, we need to tell our story and we need unconditional support as we attempt to put the pieces of our shattered heart (and life) back together in a new way. We need people and spaces that allow us to come just as we are. We might be shattered one day and plead for our person to come back and hopeful the next day, emboldened to carry our lives forward.
The complex nature of grief demands a particular kind of gentle and compassionate support.
I specialize in companioning bereaved individuals through all types of death losses. Here, you’ll explore all of the manifestations of your grief and process the emotions and beliefs that come with loss without judgement or unrealistic expectations. I create a compassionate space where you can learn about the grieving process, redefine your sense of self, be with difficult emotions and find meaning in life again while always bringing your person with you.
Healing together. Find our support groups below.
Sanctuary
Be held, for 12 months, in a space that is specific to partner loss, meant to help you understand and cope with the manifestations of grief & trauma in your life in the after.
The grief landscape of partner loss is vast and this space will allow you the time to begin integrating & processing this major loss alongside others who are living through similar challenges.
Together, we learn and explore trauma recovery, integration & rebuilding in the midst of widowhood.
This program is designed for those who wish to have long-term group support that is also flexible.
This space is co-facilitated by Marie and other guest facilitators which offers a diversity of expertise to the group throughout the year.
Cohort 5 begins this February, save your seat today.
A year-long group for partner loss that supports you in grieving well so that you can live fully, love deeply & rebuild a profoundly meaningful life around this loss
Self-Paced Courses
A Gentle Guide to Early Grief
A self paced course that brings you clarity, stability & offers a sense of direction in the face of overwhelming loss.
When you sign up, you’ll have instant access to 3 Modules helping you:
Manage expectations of yourself in grief
Build in thoughtful self care that is supportive to the overwhelm of early (acute) grief
Help you navigate relationships that can be complicated by loss
Support for the Practitioner working with Bereavement
Grief support for grief practitioners
Because supporting yourself makes you a more effective grief support practitioner
Clients come to you for grief support. You are a sanctuary for their stories of love and profound loss. You hold the space for them with integrity, patience and a deep well of empathy but who’s holding space for you?
Grief practitioners carry a lot. We sit with loss day after day. We companion people through devastation, love, rupture, trauma, and meaning-making. And often, we do that while our own grief, personal, professional, cumulative, goes largely unacknowledged.
I offer grief support sessions for grief coaches, grief companions, and others who hold space for grief and understand that tending to their own grief is part of practicing this work responsibly and well.
These sessions are a dedicated space to tend to the grief that arises because of the work:
grief stirred by client stories
grief that accumulates through repeated exposure to loss
grief connected to your own lived experiences that this work inevitably touches
grief that comes from holding responsibility, intimacy, and emotional labor over time
This is not supervision and not business mentorship.
It is grief support for grief practitioners: a space where, you are held with the same care you offer others.
In our sessions, we focus on:
tending to the emotional impact of grief work
recognizing signs of cumulative or complicated practitioner grief
integrating personal grief without letting it bleed into client care
sustaining yourself in this work with honesty, integrity, and compassion
This is a space where your grief is given a voice.
It is a place where you’re accompanied, so that the work you offer others remains sustainable over time.
Grief Coaching Code of Ethics
15 Essential Principles for Responsible & Sustainable Non-Clinical Grief Work
This downloadable 17 page guide is designed for those who feel the calling to serve bereaved people in a responsible & ethical way.
Because the Coaching Industry is an unregulated field, it is necessary to uphold a strong code of ethics that protects you, your clients & your business.
It is my intention that this guide continues to be a reference to you as you build & run your own ethical, responsible and sustainable grief coaching practice.
This work matters deeply.
Your commitment to holding this work with integrity and care is both beautiful and needed.
Podcast Interviews
Pieces to Wellness Podcast
Listen as we have a real and honest conversation around grief, loss & how to show up for ourselves and others in the midst of suffering.
What Clients Are Saying
“What I most want to express is gratitude for all that I have learned through this process. I have gratitude for you, your commitment to my healing, and for holding a safe space for me to have genuine, truthful conversations about the grief of not only watching my beloved die, but a part of myself as well. You have continuously held the belief for me that he will never leave me even in my moments of sadness and fear. The tools presented have given me the opportunity to delve into what are the roots of my anxiety and how I actively avoid it. With the awareness, as tough as it may be, comes healing. No longer do I awake crying because I awoke. I do not feel the desperation I once did.
The work is just that—it is a commitment to practice, to put forth the effort, to embrace change despite the discomfort that may come. I now find there are areas of my life that I find joy and peace. I am finding what makes me authentic and relevant for who I am now, because the loss of the love of my life has irrevocably changed and molded me into another being. Thank you”,
— Mary B.
“Thank you for helping me see that I do have a true vision of myself through the eyes of my brother. And that it's so important I take time to tap into his vision of me, because it helps me align with my true self while shedding the stories that have been projected onto me throughout my whole life, due to external wounding that was not my own. I am thankful for the safe space you have provided through this work. It is getting me more in touch with myself every day”.
— Anita F.
“I started working with M-C two years into my grief journey. I had read all the books, done all the therapy, but my life still didn’t feel like “me," which left me unhappy and unsatisfied with most aspects of my life.
I joined M-C’s Empowered Through Grief program, hoping to gain something new that I had not found elsewhere. And I did! She has helped me first to realize that I have been living in victim mode for two years without even noticing it, and second, to help me consciously step out of that mindset and into a life of gratitude.
This has been transformational for me, and the program overall has helped me look at my healing journey through a new lens. I am the creator of my life, and creating a life that aligns with this new “me” post-loss is something that has brought me total clarity and purpose. All the opposition and uncertainty has disappeared, and I owe much of it to the work I did with M-C”.
— Jennifer C.
“Just want to say thank you Marie. You are such a skilled facilitator. The space, shaped by your expertise, experience and emotional intelligence is the perfect forum for sharing. The world is a better place because of your work.”
— Susie W. on her experience in Sisterhood in Grief (cohort 1)
“Thank you Marie-Claude for creating such a beautiful and sacred space. I have learned so much. You are such a bright and beautiful guiding light for us on this earthly plane and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing so openly your love and loss of A, for doing the hard work of processing all of the strategies and knowledge you have gathered surrounding grief and so lovingly share this information with other women. Your hard work, empathy, kindness and care make the grief path just a wee bit easier to navigate. Your work is a calling”.
— Maureen on her experience in Sisterhood in Grief (2nd cohort)