Kelly Howard, Grief Coach

Healing Charlotte Podcast

In this episode, we sit down with Kelly Howard. She calls herself a "multi-faceted healer," combining Massage Bodywork, Grief Coaching, Women's Circles, and Yoga Retreats. She's been a Massage Therapist for 6 years and came into the profession as she saw her then husband suffer from pain as well as her younger brother when he was in a medically-induced coma. She believes her work around grief is her dharma as she also began this work after the loss of her brother and her husband. Kelly believes strongly in this work as it's a universal truth that levels us. She notes how we've all experienced grief; dreams/desires, relationships, jobs, stages of life.

"Loss is the only guarantee in the human experience."

Kelly's talks about her Healing Circles for Women that include intuitive movement, a topic to explore such as resiliency and fear, guided meditation, and a group share that is intended to hold space and listen. Her Yoga Retreats are for small groups and are full of adventure, life coaching, yoga, meditation, and culture. With her business partner, Carrie Wren, of Explore and Expand Retreats, they want to challenge our way of thinking and believing while exploring the world.

"By leaning in and recognizing and giving it {grief} a name, we can more easily walk with it. And when we can more easily walk with it, I've found in my own experience and with the experience of my clients, that you can more easily lean into those joyful experiences and joyful moments and recognize the little pieces of beauty and bliss."

As mentioned before, Kelly believes her life's work is Grief Coaching. Her own experience of losing loved ones has given her the knowledge to help put support structures in place for her clients. It is her hope that her clients feel stronger, more capable, more resilient, and acutely aware of joyful moments while moving through the process. Kelly calls out an important aspect of grief work; there is no endgame. She is passionate in giving others support who have lost a loved one as a way to honor her late husband's legacy. She recommends beginning grief work at 6 weeks past the event and on.

"You are going to move through it and it's going to shift and change and be different from day to day and different year to year."

Kelly has been inspired in this work by her own travels as well as "The Grief Recovery Handbook" by John James & Russell Friedman, "The Smell of Rain on Dust" by Martin Prechtel, and "The Courage to Grieve" by Judy Tatelbaum. In the Charlotte community, she is inspired by Jillian Longsworth, co-owner of Noda Yoga. She loves what she is doing for the veteran community as well as the Charlotte community as a whole. She appreciates the variety of her Yoga offerings as well as her mission to serve "everyBODY."