We were lucky to catch up with Claudia Coenen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Claudia, thanks for joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

I have always lived my life creatively. As a child and teen, I performed folk music with my family and I also danced and made up my own dances to express my feelings. I continued to dance and perform in New York City and in the country, after I married and started a family. I expressed my creativity in writing and in the celebrations I created for others.

When my husband died suddenly, I immediately went to creative expression as a way to process the deep pain and loss I was feeling. This generated the idea that I could somehow become a creative grief counselor to help others. I went back to school for a Masters degree in Transpersonal Psychology, focusing on creativity and innovation and how to rediscover wholeness after feeling broken by the death of my husband. I obtained an advanced Grief Counseling Certificate and was also certified in Thanatology, the study of death, dying and bereavement.

After working in a Hospice for several years, I started a private practice. I offer compassionate presence and a creative frame to help my clients discover how to process their own grief. My creative ideas have been published in three books and in a deck of prompt cards for grief and difficult life transitions, called The Karuna Cards.

Claudia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was younger, I thought I would have to choose one of the many creative paths I was involved in. The grief work I do now is actually a synthesis of all of them – music, movement, writing, my view of conscious relationships, my parenting, even the experiences I have had as a performer, thinker and traveler. This allows me to connect with the people I work with and to meet them where they are. My own grief experiences have sensitized me to others, and also creates rapport. My dance experience allows me to intuitively pick up on subtle gestures and body expressions in my clients that might exhibit. My lifelong immersion in expression enables me to pick up on a metaphor and offer a way for the client to expand on it, whether it is in a creative reframe, a spontaneous drawing or collage, or imbuing natural objects with symbolism to explore relationships and design the life they want to live now.

My book, Shattered by Grief: Picking up the Pieces to Become WHOLE again, contains some memoir as well as stories of clients I have worked with. It offers a guide towards wholeness along with things to do or think about along the way. The Creative Toolkit for Working with Grief and Bereavement: A Practitioner’s Guide offers an overview of Grief Theory and models throughout the years, including my own concepts of creative counseling. It also contains 30 activity sheets that can be copied to use by the reader.

The concept for my newest book came out of a desire to gather with colleagues, because the pandemic years prevented us from sharing in person. I invited 17 skilled, heart-centered therapists, thanatologists, grief workers, professors, poets and artists to collaborate with me and write chapters for Seasons of Grief: Creative Interventions to Support Bereaved People. As weaver and editor, I wrote the Introduction, a reflection on each season, a chapter on the Multiplicity of Identity after loss and the conclusion.

My presentations and in-service workshops have touched many different people. I have taught classes in Grief Through the Creative Lens, Navigating Pandemic Grief and Vicarious Trauma in the Workplace. I developed Wellness programming for Cystic Fibrosis patients at a hospital in Virginia and have offered talks for breast cancer survivors and other community groups. I’ve been on stage after plays about dying and bereavement to help audiences integrate what they witnessed and to answer questions that have arisen.

My unique view of the possibility of discovering resilience and to consider the gifts contained in tragedy and loss continues to resonate with my clients and audiences.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

After I was widowed for the first time, in 2005, I struggled to find my footing while helping my children launch into the world. I went back to graduate school and started a whole new career, and also started a new committed relationship. Eventually, I remarried. In November, 2022, my second husband died. My studies of thanatology and grief, what I have learned through the years on how to assist a dying person resolve some of the unfinished business of life when facing an unexpected death, helped me help my husband to have a peaceful death. Having been through widowing before, I was able to rely on the creative tools I use with my clients and also to ask for help from my community of colleagues in the field.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I have always believed that every human being is creative. I used to have airmail “arguments” with a great-aunt in France about this. She disagreed, but I insist that creativity is not about a painting you can hang on a wall for everyone to admire nor is it about being famous for it. Each of us has a unique way of viewing our world and our experiences. Creativity is as simple as telling an important story from a different angle or doing something in a new way. Resilience is found in the mindset we apply to the difficult events that happen to us. Expressing ourselves with color, shape, a gesture or sound, making something out of how we feel and then having a conversation or perhaps journaling with it is how we can grow through devastation. Through creative process, we understand more about our relationships and how they shape us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thekarunaproject.com

Image Credits
Headshot: Photo by Juliet LoFaro Books published by Jessica Kingsley Books