Support and guidance for healing and growth through grief.
You are not alone.
Meet Maggie Kuhn, Grief Guide & Ritual Tender
I am a certified Grief Educator and Holistic Life Coach as well as a trained Ritual Tender and group facilitator devoted to supporting people through the evolving, often unpredictable terrain of loss. Grounded in my own profound experiences and years of compassionate guidance, I help clients discover healing, hope, and meaning—meeting grief wherever and however it arises and allowing it to unfold in its own time.
I am a wife, daughter, sister, friend and mom, and I know the pain and shock of sudden, tragic death of a child, as well as the sorrow that comes with the death of a parent, of a sibling, of a close friend.
Grief and the call to healing do not just pertain to physical death, however. Any end of a dream can activate grief. Whether it is a personal dream that ends or alters--such as a relationship, a career, a way of life, one's health--or it is societal--such as despair over environmental destruction, loss of community or the deterioration of social constructs--grief can be heavy, even debilitating. It is isolating and disorienting. It can often feel like a labyrinth in which one has gotten lost.
Grief itself is not a problem to be fixed, however. It is a profound expression of love—for what we’ve lost, for what mattered deeply, and for what shaped us. If approached intentionally, it can also be a gateway to becoming a deeper, more soulful and potent human.
The key, I have learned, is to have a guide.
It would be my honor to walk beside you.
The Role of Ritual in Grief and Healing
We are not meant to grieve alone. There is power and healing in shared sacred ritual.
Ritual is essential in grief and healing because it creates a sacred container where sorrow can be fully expressed, witnessed, and metabolized in community. Grief finds its deepest healing when communally honored rather than privately endured, and ritual provides the structure to do so with reverence and intentionality.
This structure was once more evident and inherent in times gone by, when we lived in community and elders kept the traditions that birthed us through times both joy-filled and devastating. As a Ritual Tender, I incorporate rhythm, symbol, song and guided exercises, weaving a rich, interactive experience. Together, through shared presence and participation, ritual helps restore our connection to the ancestors, the land, ourselves and one another—allowing grief to flow and ultimately to be transformed.
People sometimes comment, "Why would I want to wallow in my grief?!" The point of a Grief Ritual is not to wallow, but to express, acknowledge, move, release and integrate grief. This is why an experienced, attuned, mature Grief Tender is required to guide the process. My teacher Francis Weller talks about the importance of "keeping grief warm"--so it can continue to move--versus letting it grow cold and solidified within, becoming a block. Ritual helps us keep our grief warm and moving.
A skillfully designed, facilitated and tended Ritual creates a container large enough and potent enough to hold disparate personal griefs as well as communal sorrows, and follows an arc that guides participants through several key phases. Click below to read more about the arc of Grief Rituals that I design and about a recent Ritual I led.
I offer Ritual Tending to groups large and small and in relation to any topic or situation, personal or collective. Rituals can be done in person or virtually. I custom-design each ritual to meet the moment, the size of the group, the time available and the healing intention. A Ritual is a powerful adjunct to a retreat, workshop, seminar, or other gathering, or it can stand on its own as a reason to gather.
Rising Like a Fierce Phoenix
A bit more about me
My expertise does not come from something I learned in a seminar or a text book; it is first-hand and hard-won, forged in the fires of grief.
While I had experienced other forms of grief in my life, including the death of my eldest sister when I was a young child, divorce and unexpected career shifts, it was the physical death of my middle son, Michael, in a car crash in 2020 that utterly shattered me. In the midst of this devastation, however, I made a powerful decision: I would choose healing. While I would never have chosen to experience this heartbreak, I could choose to let it break me open rather than simply break me.
A persistent whisper from my soul told me that there was gold to be mined here and that if I rushed past this in a quest to just get myself out of pain--by busying myself with work or other distractions, spiritual bypassing and numbing activities--the relief would not last and perhaps the most important lessons of my life would go unclaimed, buried beneath the rubble of a pain I had refused to fully face. I chose to live the life examined. I chose to dive in and through.
Years of study and healing work ensued. I built my own Grief Healing Team around me, because I intuitively knew I needed guidance and support. I had certainly experienced many other forms of loss and grief in my life up to that point. But this one was bigger than me. And, as grief often does, it activated all previously unhealed sorrows. I leaned heavily on my Grief Healing Team--and still do, when needed--to keep myself moving through. Along the way I had to recommit again and again, re-choose healing again and again, because grief is not a straight ascendant path. It is often a gnarled knot of darkness, fear, confusion, insecurity and overwhelm that can double back on itself. But as Rumi stated, "The wound is the place where the light enters you." If we can learn to walk towards and through the grief, healing is possible. The light does enter. Transformation, happiness and joyful living can follow.
My grief moved from something that threatened to consume me to a force that could awaken me. In allowing myself to be present with the searing pain, I discovered the astonishing resilience of my soul and gained greater trust in the Divine.
Several years after Michael's crossing of the veil came the passing of my father, who died at age 92. His death was the opposite of Michael’s—peaceful, expected, and filled with loving goodbyes. I was able to hold his hand, speak my gratitude, and witness his final breath. This experience healed a part of me that longed for a chance to say goodbye to Michael and, even earlier, my sister Mary Beth when I was six. I realized that every loss has its own unique shape and texture—and it’s never too late to find grace and healing within them.
Throughout these heartbreaks, a quiet truth began to emerge: my calling is to support others in grief. My 30-plus years of experience in communications and group facilitation seamlessly merged with this purpose. With certifications from David Kessler’s Grief Educator program, training in Francis Weller’s grief ritual tending, certification as a Holistic Life Coach and as a hands-on energy healer as well as spiritual guidance from author and spiritual teacher Miranda Macpherson, I’ve found a way to blend professional skill, experience, compassion, and spiritual insight for those in mourning.
I have walked through the fire and emerged alchemized and ablaze with a desire to give back by guiding others.
One lesson of the many healing lessons I carry in my heart, it’s that grief work is holistic. When we work on healing one grief, we often heal other grief we’ve carried. We can heal the past, the present, and even the future. Grief can become a gateway to discovering a more resilient, spiritually connected self.
Today, I guide individuals and groups through the labyrinth of grief, offering them both the practical tools and the soulful presence that was so crucial in my own journey. Each of us holds the capacity for extraordinary healing, and by strengthening and using our tools, we deepen that capacity even further. Grief can break us—yet it can also break us open, leading us to a life of renewed purpose and, yes, even joy.
Whether you're grieving a person, a relationship, a dream, or a part of yourself... or carrying sorrow for the wider world—the destruction of our environment, the loss of wild places, the suffering of others, the disconnection in our culture—your grief is welcome here.
In 1:1 sessions, group sessions or a Ritual, I offer to you a space where all forms of grief are honored. Where your sorrow can be witnessed, not fixed. Where you are not expected to move on, but are gently supported as you move through., allowing your healing to unfold in its own rhythm.
You don’t have to walk this path alone. Take my hand. Let's mine this gold of your soul together.
