Breanne Cook

My approach

My approach is rooted in grief tending, shaped by creativity, and held with care. It honours what's been lost - while gently supporting what's trying to emerge.

It's not about moving on, but moving forward alongside your grief.

I support people to explore, express, and tend their grief, while also reconnecting with who they are becoming. This is future-facing work, but not in a rushed, goal-driven way. It's coaching with depth, soul, and connection.

This is Grief in Focus.

A grief coaching journey that's creative, spiritual, grounded, and rooted in honouring what's been - while making room for what's next.

Grief in Focus

A creative, soulful framework for living with grief.

Grief in Focus is the heart of how I work - a gentle, creative, and grounded way to support people living with grief that doesn't follow a timeline or fit in a box.

It's not a step-by-step programme. It's not about stages. It's a five-pillar framework that supports the ongoing process of living with, tending to, and growing alongside grief.

Whether you're months or years into your grief - whether your loss was sudden, expected, unspoken or complex - Grief in Focus meets you exactly where you are.

It brings together:

These five pillars offer depth, rhythm, and creative support - helping you move forward with your grief, not away from it.

SEE - Witnessing What's Really There

This is where we begin. You name the loss - not just the person, but the roles, routines, meaning, and identity that went with them. We use photography, visual metaphor, and reflection to bring your grief into focus, so it can be held with care.

Why this matters: You can't integrate what you haven't acknowledged. Seeing your grief clearly is the foundation for everything that follows.


FEEL - Making Space for What Hurts

Grief doesn't always look like tears. It might show up as numbness, fatigue, silence or disconnection. This pillar is about emotional presence - feeling what's here without forcing it, and without being overwhelmed by it.

We use journaling, somatic awareness, and gentle creative prompts to invite emotional honesty.

Why this matters: Emotion that's met with care can move. You develop emotional literacy and begin to feel safe in your own inner world again.


TEND - Building Care and Stability

Grief often strips us of routine, rest, and self-care. This pillar focuses on regulation, resourcing, and rhythm. We explore what helps you feel anchored - from boundary-setting and support, to daily rituals of emotional tending.

Why this matters: Tending your grief is not indulgent - it's essential. You move from survival mode into spaciousness and support.


HONOUR - Deepening Connection to What's Been Lost

This pillar helps you stay connected to what mattered. We create rituals, memory practices, visual altars and reflection exercises to support the ongoing relationship with what you've lost - whether it's a person, identity, future or phase of life.

Why this matters: Honouring transforms memory into meaning. You carry your grief forward with intention, not silence.


REIMAGINE - Becoming Who You Are Now

This final pillar supports the work of becoming. Not by leaving your grief behind - but by integrating it into your values, your creativity, and your next steps. We explore what still matters, what wants to emerge, and how to grow a life around your loss.

Why this matters: Grief changes you. This work helps you honour that change and move forward.

Grief in Focus offers a space to honour your grief - and embrace life.

This work isn't about closure. It's not about pushing through. It's about staying in relationship with what was lost - and creating space for what's trying to grow now.

Whether we work together through 1:1 coaching, a creative group programme, or my photography-based course, these five pillars hold everything we do.

You don't need to move on. But you can move forward - gently, creatively, and in your own time.

Click on a section to learn more about the philosophies and methodologies that guide my work.

Francis Weller describes grief as something we must make space for rather than push away. His Five Gates of Grief framework helps us see that grief isn't just about death-it includes many losses that shape our lives. The five gates are:

This framework acknowledges that grief is everywhere, not just in death. In my work, I help people explore all of their losses-not just the ones most recognised in society -and find ways to honour them. Weller also emphasises that grief is communal; we are not meant to carry it alone. That's why having a space to share and be witnessed is so important.

Martin Prechtel describes grief and love as two sides of the same coin. He calls grief "praise"-a way of honouring what we have lost. In his teachings, grief isn't something to get over, but an act of devotion.

This perspective shifts grief from being a problem to solve into something that needs to be expressed fully. In many cultures, grief is shared through rituals, storytelling, and acts of remembrance. In modern Western culture, we've lost many of these traditions, and grief often feels lonely. Prechtel's work reminds us that grief needs to be witnessed, held, and expressed-not hidden away.

In my work, I help people find ways to engage with their grief, whether through creative expression, rituals, or personal reflection.

Appreciative coaching focuses on strengths, values, and possibilities rather than just problems. It means recognising that even in grief, you still have resources within you.

Appreciative coaching helps shift the focus from just what has been lost to also acknowledging what remains. This might include:

This approach encourages curiosity and self-compassion, rather than pressure to fix anything. My role is to help people see what's already within them and use that to navigate their grief in a way that feels right for them.

ACT is a psychological approach that helps people accept difficult emotions instead of fighting them. The core idea is that pain is part of life, but suffering comes from struggling against it.

In grief, we often feel conflicted-part of us wants to hold on, while another part knows we have to keep living. ACT helps us make space for grief without it controlling our lives.

Some key ideas from ACT that I use in my work:

David Kessler expanded on the traditional five stages of grief by adding a sixth stage: Finding Meaning. He emphasises that grief doesn't just have to be about surviving loss-it can also be about integrating it into our lives in a way that brings meaning and connection.

Finding meaning in grief isn't about toxic positivity, finding silver linings or pretending everything happens for a reason. Instead, it's about:

Resilience isn't about getting over grief-it's about adapting and carrying it in a way that allows life to continue with meaning.

Some of the key ideas I draw from resilience work include:

Specific Grief models, frameworks and theories

Many psychologists, researchers, and practitioners have developed frameworks to help us understand grief-how it affects us, how we process it, and how we might find a way forward.

No framework is a perfect fit for everyone and none of the theories offer step-by-step instructions on how to manage, but they can provide useful insights into how grief works and why it feels the way it does. Highlighting some universal experiences in grief also helps us to realise that we are not alone.

Click on each section to learn more.

The models and frameworks I draw upon to inform my work include:

Sigmund Freud was one of the first to explore grief in psychological terms. In his 1917 work Mourning and Melancholia, he suggested that grieving is a process of detachment-gradually withdrawing emotional energy from the person who has died and reinvesting it elsewhere.

Freud believed that if this process was interrupted, grief could turn into melancholia (what we might now call complicated grief or depression). His work formed the basis for later theories, but it has also been challenged-many modern grief models focus on continuing bonds rather than detachment.

While some people do naturally distance themselves from grief over time, for many, maintaining a connection with the person who has died (through memories, rituals, or personal reflection) is a healthier way of processing loss.

John Bowlby, known for his work on attachment theory, believed that grief is deeply tied to our earliest relationships.

His theory suggests that:

Bowlby's work explains why grief can feel like physical pain and why the loss of a loved one can shake our entire sense of self. His research also helps us understand why different people grieve differently-our attachment styles influence how we cope with loss.

Murray Parkes expanded on Bowlby's work and developed his own framework for understanding grief. He identified four phases of mourning:

  1. Shock and Numbness - Feeling detached, or emotionally overwhelmed.
  2. Yearning and Searching - Intense longing for the person who has died, seeking their presence in some way.
  3. Disorganisation and Despair - Feeling lost, confused, struggling to make sense of life without the person who has died.
  4. Reorganisation and Recovery - Gradually adjusting to life and finding new ways to engage with the world.

Therese Rando developed a structured model that outlines six key processes in grieving:

  1. Recognise the loss - Acknowledging that the loss has happened.
  2. React to the separation - Allowing emotions like sadness, anger, or guilt to surface.
  3. Recollect and re-experience - Remembering the person and processing both good and painful memories.
  4. Relinquish attachments to the way things used to be - Accepting that life has changed.
  5. Readjust - Beginning to engage with life again in a new way.
  6. Reinvest - Finding meaning, purpose, and new ways to move forward.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross originally developed the Five Stages of Grief to describe how people process terminal illness. Over time, it was applied to grief more broadly. The stages are:

  1. Denial - Shock, disbelief, or emotional numbness.
  2. Anger - Frustration, resentment, or questioning why the loss happened.
  3. Bargaining - Trying to make sense of the loss or prevent further suffering.
  4. Depression - Deep sadness, isolation, or withdrawal.
  5. Acceptance - Learning to live with the loss.

This model is often misunderstood as a linear process, but in reality, people move in and out of these stages in different ways.

William Worden proposed that grieving is an active process with four key tasks:

  1. Accept the reality of the loss - Facing the fact that the loss has happened.
  2. Process the pain of grief - Allowing space for all emotions, without suppressing them.
  3. Adjust to a world without what was lost - Practically and emotionally adapting to the change.
  4. Find a way to maintain a connection while moving forward - Keeping a meaningful bond with what was lost.

The Dual Process Model suggests that grieving isn't a straight path but a back-and-forth movement between two states:

This model challenges the idea that we should move on from grief. Instead, it suggests that: