We were lucky to catch up with Rae Karim recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rae thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?
One of my very first clients was an older lady who experienced the loss of her dad. They were very close and his death was unexpected. When she first began sessions with me, she was very transparent in letting me know she had not allowed herself to feel or express her emotions.
She went into go mode and stayed as busy as she could. When feelings and emotions would arise, she’d ignore them and keep moving.
For the first few sessions, she told me the story of her upbringing, stories about her dad and their relationship. She also let me know the circumstances surrounding his death.
By the third session, we had come to a point of her
trusting me enough to ask more in depth questions about her feelings and emotions around her father’s death. She was still a bit hesitant but moment by moment, session by session, we worked through what she was feeling, why she felt it and how she could express it.
By the 5th or 6th session, I didn’t even have to ask. On her own, she let me know that she cried…that she allowed herself to feel it all and let it out through tears. She also had some joyous moments in her grief expression, which is what Good Grief Now!™️ is about – bringing awareness to the good in grief…that we can still live full lives even in the midst of our grief journey and grief stories.
We had a couple more sessions to go and my client’s daughter text me and said ‘Rae, I don’t know what you said or did with my mom, but she’s a completely different person…a better person.”
The fact that my client trusted me enough to open up about what she wasn’t able to do and trusted me enough to help her navigate, gave her permission to show up differently in her world with her family, her faith and her friendships.
To this day, she still thanks me!
Rae, 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?
Good Grief Now!™️ exists because when my mother passed in 2017, which happened 16 days after my grandfather (her dad) passed, the resources for grief support felt mundane to me. I didn’t want to be in a space of tears and sadness all the time and I also didn’t want that for the people around me who had also experienced loss, especially of close relatives.
So I decided to have a gathering…a party of sorts.
I know it sounds odd and strange – how in the world do party and grief go together? Well, in the eyes of society and culture, they probably shouldn’t but I made it happen for about 3 or 4 months. We had a dj, food, activities and speakers. There were also moments to talk about what we were grieving, but overall it was about engaging and enjoying life in spite of loss and we did just that. And I do just that. Good Grief Now! ™️ does that – brings awareness to grief and the ways we can navigate grief, so that we still live life fully in spite of loss.
During the pandemic I found out about grief coaching. It was a whole new world that I was curious to learn more about. Not only did I learn more, but I decided to enroll in a grief coaching certification program and became a certified grief coach. I kept the name Good Grief Now!™️ and decided to support people in a more intimate way as a grief coach. I offer this support in a myriad of ways to groups, churches, organizations, schools and so on. I also host community events, facilitate workshops and grief support trainings and I have grief support products such as books and a candle line called Grief Stinks®.
I am most proud of the fact that the majority of my clients come from referrals. I don’t do a lot of social media marketing but people find me and clients refer me and therapists refer their clients to me. It not only makes me proud, but very, very grateful!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
What has helped build my reputation is that I am personable. I relate to people where they are along their journey. I am not pushy or forceful in my approach, though I do go against the grain at times, in effort to offer a different perspective and way of going about the grief process. I am always successful with clients when I do this. And the way I go about it, is practical so that they can utilize the tools in any situation where grief shows up.
I also give people space and grace to breathe and grieve…if they need to cry, cuss or scream, I allow them the opportunity to release, without judgment. There’s enough of that in their world anyway…
I also allow my clients to can reach me outside of sessions, because life happens and the support is still available .
I know first hand that grief is a lifelong journey and I want to walk alongside people for as long as they will allow me to, which is probably why I have clients to return when loss shows up again.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Yes, yes, yes! A lesson I had to unlearn was that therapists are my competition. When I was in a local entrepreneur’s cohort called MORTAR (based out of Cincinnati), I remember being in class, writing down therapists on the line that asked about competition.
I fully believed though I have two psychology degrees, a certification in grief coaching, and credentials in the school of life, it would be hard to gain clientele because I’m not a therapist. While I was excited to venture out into the mental health world, I was also a bit nervous about it for that reason.
Oh em gee was I wrong. I have had therapists tell me people like me are needed because I have a niched market. I also have therapists who refer their clients to me and who I have worked with on different projects. To that end, therapists are not my competition. We are collaborators.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.goodgriefnow.org
- Instagram: raekarim AND goodgriefnow
- Linkedin: Rae Karim
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