If you’ve experienced a life-changing loss, here’s your invitation to…
Join Our Supportive Community That Will Help You Heal Through Life’s Toughest Moments
THE NATURE OF GRIEF
Seasons for Healing Membership
Seasons for Healing is a monthly membership community of like-hearted people who have all experienced the death of someone they love. It’s designed to help you navigate the landscape of grief so you can lovingly surrender the past to the past & find peace where you are now.
In this kind and supportive community you’ll…
Find compassionate guidance on healing your grief so you can open yourself to new possibilities & honestly say, “I love my life again”
Connect with supportive folks who are learning how to live with loss right beside you so you never feel alone or isolated in your pain
Be encouraged to heal by deepening your connection to nature & finding inspiration from the beauty of the natural world
Discover how to strengthen your connection to your ever evolving self while also building authentic connections within our caring community
Here’s the truth: no one experiences grief the same way. Healing doesn’t follow a linear, predetermined path. That’s why this community is designed to provide ongoing support that meets you where you are, as you are.
If You Feel Sad, Discouraged, Or Overwhelmed
By Grief, Here’s What I Want You To Know:
You’re not broken. You’re not a burden.
Grief is exhausting. Loss is hard. Yes, other people might make you feel this way. But the truth is, a terrible thing has happened to you. It’s not your fault. Whether you can see it right now or not, loss shifts everything in your life. It’s OK to feel the way you do.
You don’t have a limited time to heal.
Healing is not a linear path. You don’t have to try and squeeze your healing into a certain time frame. Especially if you’re thinking, “I thought I’d be better by now.” While there are no shortcuts, there is a path to healing. I can’t wait to help you discover it.
Sad does not equal bad.
Tears do not mean failure. In fact, tears are welcome. Yes, even your ugly cries. Healing comes when you can love yourself no matter what you’re experiencing with your emotions.
You Don’t Need To
Go Down This Path Alone
If you’re healing from the death of a loved one, I created this community for you. Especially if you feel frustrated by the lack of support in your life. Or misunderstood and confused about what grief is & how to heal.
Seasons for Healing is for you if…
Your bookshelves are stacked with every book on grief you could find. You’ve read them all, but still feel like there’s something missing in your healing.
You joined a support group that met for 6-8 weeks only to find that you had more grief after meeting people and having to say goodbye to them after such a short & intense experience.
You’ve tried connecting with people in Facebook groups — only to be overwhelmed & triggered by the flood of other people’s pain and trauma.
You’ve yearned to find connection & community by following certain Instagram accounts — only to feel like those people are distant and out of reach.
If you resonate with even one of these things, know that I’ve been exactly where you are right now.
One of the hardest things about grief is that the whole world will carry on like nothing's wrong while you feel like the sun has been snuffed out.
Meet Your Supportive Guide
Who am I?
My name is Melinda Laus. I’m an experienced counselor and fellow griever. I see grief as a normal & healthy part of being human.
After the sudden unexpected death of my husband when I was 32, I devoted my life to supporting others who have experienced profound loss.
In my own healing, I’ve found that working with grief helps me stay connected to love.
For over a decade, I've provided useful and inspired support to hundreds of individuals (and groups) to help them find healing after loss.
On the morning of Thursday, June 26th, 2003, I received a phone call that changed my life forever…
That morning I was busy caring for my two year old & 20 day old infant sons when I got a call from my husband David’s office.
The voice on the phone told me that David had collapsed. He wasn’t breathing.
My life hasn’t been the same since that morning.
David was a healthy, vibrant, young man who’d taken our two year old for a long bike ride the night before.
How could this be happening?
He was strong and had zero health issues. We later learned that David died from a sudden unexplained cardiac death. While his death still contains elements of mystery, one thing we know for certain, there was no way we could know what was coming.
I went from being a happily married woman to suddenly becoming a young widow with children in a literal heartbeat.
As I journeyed through grief, I came to know that grief is not my enemy. Grief connects us to our deepest experiences of love and that continues to be true for me today, 19 years later.
The day David died, I felt completely unprepared for grief.
But I learned that I’d actually been experiencing grief throughout my life. I just didn’t know what to call it because I was never taught about the complexities of grief before losing David.
This began a lifelong quest to make meaning out of my own losses. Now, supporting people through loss is what I’m called to do. This is why I created the Seasons for Healing membership.
If you need wise, steady companionship on your own healing journey, I would be honored to walk alongside you.
“Grief invites us into a deeper communion and understanding of love. Healing after loss is a solitary journey best taken in compassionate community. The beauty of nature provides solace and inspiration for our healing journey.”
Here’s How The Membership Is
Designed To Support Your Healing
When you experience the death of someone you love, the mix of pain and emotion can overwhelm the best of us — no matter how strong, consciously aware, or otherwise prepared we think we might be.
That’s why the Seasons for Healing membership offers you many ways to participate & receive support on your personal healing journey.
Here’s a look at the support you’ll get inside the membership:
Weekly Reflections
Each week, you’ll receive a lesson connected to an element in nature. We’ll work with each element as a metaphor for grief as well as a source of inspiration for healing. Each lesson is designed to offer you meaningful, depth-oriented guidance on grief and healing. You’ll receive journal prompts, nature photography prompts and words of wisdom from poets and healers.
Private & Supportive Community
Seasons For Healing gives you access to an exclusive online community where you can post your questions, journal entries and nature photos from our weekly prompts. This online community is not on a social media platform so you can avoid all of the advertising and discomfort of social media while you’re in the group.
Coaching & Support
Each month you’ll also receive a 90-minute virtual group coaching session where I’ll guide us through more connection & conversation as well as meditations and useful information about life after loss.
You can participate in any & all of these offerings each week/month. There are no homework assignments or requirements for your participation. You get to decide and discern for yourself what is meaningful and helpful for you within this community.
And I promise you this:
Inside the community, you’ll find comfort not lectures, experience not diagnoses, and loving support from people who understand your pain because they’re living through it too.
If You Can Say Yes To At Least One Of The Following, Here’s Your Personal Invitation To Join This Healing Community
You tried a 6-8 week support group after your loss, but felt like you were asked to “hurry up and heal.” It felt wrong that the group ended right when you started feeling comfortable in a new community.
You cannot stomach the “toxic positivity” so many well-meaning friends and relatives offered in your lowest moments. I’ll never ask you to “look for the silver lining” or “focus on gratitude” in your loss.
You’ve found relief and support in therapy or medication, but still feel like something is missing or incomplete in your healing journey.
Even though you go to some pretty hardcore fitness bootcamps or train for marathons, the pain of your grief always comes back when the runner’s high wears off.
It seems like you’ve read every book on grief ever written. Sometimes you wonder if you know more about it than your therapist or doctor. And yet, no matter how much you learn, the overwhelming waves of grief always find their way back to you.
You’re getting every dollar's worth out of your AirPods by listening to grief podcasts on your walks, trips to the grocery stores, and house cleaning sessions. You even wish you could hang out with those witty hosts who talk expertly about grief.
Don’t Miss Out!
I only open the doors to the Seasons for Healing membership twice a year.
When you enroll in the membership, you’ll get immediate access to:
A Supportive & Caring Community
Access to a private community (not on Facebook) where you can connect with others who are also experiencing loss. This will be a safe place to share your thoughts, experiences, writings, and photography.
Personal Coaching & Support
Monthly coaching & support calls with me. This is where we’ll share our struggles and our triumphs – big and small. I promise to create a safe space where you can openly share all the feelings you’ve been shoving down.
Weekly Reflections & Healing Prompts
You’ll receive weekly reflections that include guidance about grief, writing prompts, photography prompts, and meditations that help you connect with nature as a source of healing.
Here’s My Promise To You
I want you to live a healthy and contented life. A life where you can more comfortably experience all your big and contradictory feelings. I see a future for you where you can feel grief & joy on the same day, in the same hour.
But also a future where you’re not trying to get back to normal. Where you’re not wondering, “why am I not better yet?” I see a future for you where you can lovingly surrender the past to the past, and peacefully embrace where you are now.
This is what the Seasons for Healing membership is designed to support. If you join today, and don’t experience a deeper understanding of grief after 2 months in the community, I will happily return your entire investment in the membership – no questions asked.
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Everything included in your membership can be found in a nifty tool called Mighty Networks.
That's where you'll get your weekly reflections, share what's on your heart, meet your fellow grievers, and register for coaching calls.
Don't worry if you've been turned off by grief groups on Facebook before.
This isn't like that at all. It’s 100% private and not connected to a public facing profile.
My intention is to create a safe space for you to experience deep healing – without being triggered by other people's trauma.
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Paying for your Seasons For Healing membership is super easy and it's a month-to-month membership. And yes, you can cancel it at anytime. I only want you to be a member of the Seasons For Healing membership for as long as you're benefiting from the community. As soon as that stops being true, you can cancel your own account.
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This is one of the things I'm super excited about. It's also one of the reasons we're using Mighty Networks for the community. You can access the Seasons for Healing membership anywhere – on your phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
There's a video you'll see inside the community that has instructions on how to use the Mighty Networks app. It's super straightforward, I promise. And I’m not “techie” at all.
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This is a really important question and I'm glad you asked it. Seasons For Healing is designed to help you heal from a life-changing loss by connecting with the power and beauty of nature and community. But it is by no means a replacement for 1:1 therapy or medication.
If something like therapy or medication is currently helping you heal, I will be the first to encourage you to continue on that path. You don’t have to choose one over the other.
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If you have questions about whether this community is right for you, I'd love to connect with you before you enroll.
You can reach me directly at: melinda@thenatureofgrief.com
From there, we can figure out the best time to connect.
You Might Be Wondering…
The loss of someone you love can upend your life in a single moment. Your future plans vanish.
And still, life continues on. Outside, the world is as it always was. But inside, you can feel a chasm of pain, sadness, and loneliness.
What I want you to know more than anything else is that you don’t have to go through this alone. We’re here to support you through your darkest days.
Just So We’re On The Same Page, The Seasons For Healing Membership Is Not…
A 6-8 Week Support Group – These types of groups can be wonderful resources in the acute stages of a loss. But all too often, the group ends right when you start to feel safe and comfortable. That’s why Seasons for Healing is an ongoing community that will never ask you to hurry up and heal.
A Place For Toxic Positivity – I promise you’ll never hear meaningless platitudes like “Everything happens for a reason!” or “Something wonderful will come out of this!” Nope. There’s never going to be something wonderful that comes out of losing someone you love. Instead, you’ll find authentic support and deep healing.
A Replacement For Therapy or Medication – Seasons for Healing is designed to support your personal healing journey. It’s not meant to take the place of other forms of help. If something like therapy or medication is currently helping you heal, you’ll be encouraged to continue on that path. You don’t have to choose one over the other.
The Membership Won’t Be
A Good Fit For You If…
You don’t want a community
You feel like you already know everything about grief
You have rigid answers regarding faith and how everything happens for a reason
You don’t consider yourself spiritual or someone seeking meaning after your loss
You know you have the right way & feel it’s your mission to tell others how they should heal
That said…
If you are open to new ways of learning and knowing, and if you are accepting of others no matter who they are or what they believe — this group is for you.
If you are struggling with uncertainty, open to new ways of learning and knowing, and willing to listen and accept others wherever they’re at — without trying to change them or fix them — this group is for you.
If you ask questions instead of having all the answers, if you offer acceptance instead of judgment, if you are able to listen to others without wanting to fix them or heal them, and if you want nature and writing to be part of your own healing journey — this group is for you.
