10 Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate
“Rarely, if ever, are an of us healed in isolation.
Healing is an act of communion.”
—bell hooks
Are you struggling to cope during such tumultuous and unprecedented times?
Are you overwhelmed with feelings like grief, rage, fear, helplessness, hopelessness?
Are you feeling stuck, burnt out, disconnected, or demoralized by the polycrisis and the systems in which we live?
Are you struggling to conenct with others and feel lonely or isolated with your knowledge of the state of the world?
Do you want to build emotional intelligence and resilience?
Do you want to experience a supportive, brave community where you can lean into the troubles of today and rediscover meaning and joy?
Are you ready to re-invest your time and energy in service of healing, growth, and conenction?
Do you want to help cocreate just and livable futures?
This group is for you.
“This was hands-down the most helpful resource I’ve experienced to navigate climate anxiety.”
—Heather H.D., 2022 Participant
“I didn’t think a Zoom program could affect me so much. The level of vulberability and honesty of facilitators and participants was off the charts.”
—S.T., 2023 Participant
10-Step Circle For Everyone
Join GGN FLOW Facilitators Ali Hall & Kristan Childs for the 10-week journey of connection, healing, and rediscovering your meaning & joy.
Ten Wednesdays from 5pm-7pm Pacific Time (U.S.) from January – March 2025. Starting on 22 January 2025.
Sliding scale payment & scholarships available.
10-Step Circle for Everyone
Join GGN FLOW Facilitators Indira Abby Heijnen and Zeinab Benchakroun for the 10-week journey for everyone.
Ten Thursdays from 12-2pm Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) from January – April 2025. Starting on 30 January 2025.
Sliding scale payment & scholarships available.
Stay tuned for more 10-Step Circles
Coming soon
Dates and times to follow
Sliding scale payment & scholarship available.
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Click Here to Register
I’ve come to see that any solutions to the myriad of problems facing us, if they are to be meaningful, will come from those of us who have been brave enough to take the time and energy to feel these scary and disorienting feelings.
– LaUra Schmidt, Good Grief Network Founder
Read the book as your work the steps:
10-Step Program
Ten weeks. Ten meetings.
Small groups. Heart-centered process work. Together.
Good Grief Network provides social and emotional peer support to people who feel overwhelmed about the state of the world.
Our unique 10-Step Program helps individuals process their overwhelming feelings, deconstruct and reimagine cultural narratives, build community, reconnect with joy and meaning, and reinvest their energies into meaningful efforts.
Using embodiment exercises, journaling, and group sharing, we create brave and emergent spaces that serve as practice grounds where people can practice new ways of being with ourselves and each other during chaotic times.
Our unique 10-Step meetings also provide fertile ground for emergent and innovative visioning. As we connect with community, share vulnerability, and process our heavy emotions, we are able to envision new paradigms, access our unique gifts, and reorient our lives toward action at a time when action is essential.
We offer a number of partial and full scholarships for each 10-Step program and offer sliding scale payments between $350-$750 USD with the option of payment plans.
Click the links about to learn more about the specific 10-step offerings.
I think the connection aspect of the group and non-judgmental space that is held in the group for people to openly say how they feel and be able to learn and grow from other perspectives is an incredibly useful tool. I am so glad to have found this group!
The 10-Steps left me with a greater understanding of myself as well as questions I will continue to work with. I also gained an understanding of the intersection between personal and planetary resilience and a sense of hope that this community can create the new paradigm.
Good Grief Network has helped me metabolize a build-up of climate grief that was leading to burn out and downshifting. Participating in the Good Grief Network is helping me continue my climate activism with more balance, resilience, and presence.
Tell me more about the process
Created by LaUra Schmidt and Aimee Lewis Reau, the 10-Step Program is a peer-to-peer support group where people come together for 10 weeks to reduce feelings of isolation, process our heavy and painful feelings about the state of the world, practice being in community, and (re-)discovering meaning and joy in tumultuous times. Each group is facilitated by GGN-trained facilitators; this is not a therapy program.
We prioritize an intimate group experience, capping each group at 15 participants, including the 2-person facilitation team.
This 10-week program is process-based, meaning that the weekly meetings are initial introductions to each of the 10 steps. The real work happens when you begin to integrate these lessons into your daily life.
While in the meetings, we share our experiences, wisdom, and passions with each other. We co-create a brave container to practice being vulnerable with an attention to our nervous systems. We express our emotions, explore new ways of thinking and seeing the predicament, and open to creative responses that become available once we process our feelings and connect with others. We build resilient community by learning how to see people again and co-envisioning life-sustaining paradigms for the future.
GGN’s 10-Step Program has been mentioned/covered by CBS, NBC, MSN, RollingStone, Outside Magazine, Time Magazine, CNN, CBC, Yale Climate Connections, NPR, Reuters, Daily Beast, Medscape, Deutsche Welle (DW), USA Today, Grist, LA Times, The Guardian, Washington Post and The Weather Channel.
To read more about each step, view our piece: “Tools for the Awakening“
What is required of you?
Attendance. Please try to attend all 10 meetings. We know this is a big commitment, and this program honors your time with a big offering of resources and support in return; the process works best when you show up!
*Of course, we understand that emergencies and urgent needs arise. We just want you to think about whether you can make this program a priority for these weeks, and if not, allow us to offer the space to someone else who needs these support services at this time.
An open heart and open mind. We are sitting with people from different places and inviting different worldviews and experiences into the circle, and we ask that you respect these differences in perspective, whether or not you fully understand or agree with them.
Authenticity. The process works best if you show up, both physically and emotionally. Showing up requires that the willingness to be vulnerable. Can you share from a place of honesty and integrity? We will do our best to take care and create a container that can hold it all.
Patience. Patience with yourself and everyone else in the group is essential to participation. We’ll be talking about a lot of difficult topics, so we must each try to recognize that we’re all at different stage of this journey, and all doing our best to make sense of uncharted territory.
Attention to your mental health. Because this isn’t a therapy group, we need to know that you’re taking care of yourself. Do you have a supportive partner or friend to check in with after the meetings? Do you have a therapist or healer? Do you know how to find a therapist if you need one?
Integrity. You can arrive as your full self for us. Be authentic, be kind, and please be you.
Who are the facilitators?
All Good Grief Network facilitators have participated in a 36-hour live online training with GGN’s founders, Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt. Our facilitators are trained to holding space, cultivating emergent processes, manage tension, cultivate emotional intelligence and body awareness, and have participated in an in-depth study of each of the 10-Steps.
What happens at the meetings?
We open every meeting with an introduction, group check-in and short grounding exercise.
We dive into the step of the week and allow space for personal sharing. Each person is invited, though not required, to share what’s on their heart and what the step brings up in them. There will be space for each person to share at least once. Group sharing is not a discussion; we avoid cross talk, and instead, share a part of our journey, and witness others share parts of theirs.
Each session ends with a check-out, closing and a short poem.
Meetings are two hours long.
When and how do we meet?
We meet for at the same time for 10 consecutive weeks on Zoom. Your facilitators will send you a weekly reminder email with a Zoom link.
How much should I pay for the program?
Please consider the following questions before deciding the offering that is appropriate for you:
- In this program, we will help you reframe the global predicament, teach a variety of emotional regulation tools, and offer access to a live intimate, supportive community for 10 weeks. What are these offerings worth to you?
- Each 10-Step meeting is led by a team of two GGN-trained facilitators, who are available to support you throughout your 10-week journey. What is the value of our team’s time, energy, and leadership?
- What is the “hourly rate” that your culture has assigned to your time? Please consider a minimum fee that is equal to 20 hours at your average hourly rate.
- What offering covers a meaningful investment into this 10-week journey and is also within your means to pay?
GGN’s suggested offering offers three tiers of payment options, as well as scholarships and work exchanges. To sign up, please scroll up to find the group you’d like to join and click on the link for that group that says ***Click here to participate***
What is our refund policy?
We are unable to offer refunds for GGN’s 10-Step program. We offer a small group experience, which means that if you book a space in our group, you have secured a very limited spot. If for some reason you are no longer able to attend a group that has already begun to work the steps, we are unable to fill that spot with someone else who may have benefitted from this critical healing work. It is important to us that you are intentional with your sign up and join us only if you are prepared to join our entire 10-week journey.