Danielle Stobbs

DANIELLE STOBBS (she/her)
The Grievers Garden
Danielle is a self-proclaimed storytelling grief bird - passionately chirping on about grief and loss support and normalizing conversations around grief, death and dying. Danielle works as the Program Lead for grief support services at Edmonton's only free-standing non profit hospice. Her work includes grief group support facilitation for adults and children alike, curriculum development and grief education and literacy.

In 2022, Danielle founded The Grievers Garden (an online and in person support space.) She is trained through the Grief Recovery Institute ® as an advanced Grief Recovery Specialist® and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and philosophy. She has gleaned and explored the worlds of Francis Weller, Dr Alan Wolfest and Thanatologist Cole Imperi to continue learning in the grief sphere.

Danielle’s (com)passion is to practice and teach bearing witness to each others grief, sorrow, joy and love - and bringing grief, death and dying back to the proverbial dinner table. Danielle is a grief advocate, intentionally setting spaces that are brave and inclusive for those needing collective care. In the name of reciprocity, Danielle equally finds both grief and joy in contributing to the grief landscape, by sharing her own personal story with grief.. While this work has more recently been fueled by the end of life journey and then subsequent death of her own father 6 years ago, she has lived experience of walking through multiple losses. Some of these include miscarriage, death by suicide, sudden death, cancer-related death and escaping a physically abusive marriage. Together, she believes that we can bring grief into the light, creating space in our lives to live in the coexistence of joy, grief and the (extra)ordinary.

Danielle holds fast to the principle that she is not the expert in others grief, but is a life long learner of how grief looks for each individual; believing that while grief is a universal experience, it is a deeply profound and unique journey for each griever. She has coined the term ‘uninvited lessons’; lessons she wishes she had not learned the way she has, yet learned nonetheless and have taught her what has become the foundation of her work; "grief is not to be cured but to be cared for."

Danielle comes with a no “fix it” and “no judgment” energy and believes that vulnerability breeds vulnerability, creating an atmosphere of reciprocal empathy. As such, Danielle uses her own story to facilitate empowerment of others in exchanging stories around living with loss, grief, life, and love.

Danielle released the "Grief Care Journal: 52 Weeks of Reflective Care For The Griever” in 2023 with a subsequent release of ‘The Grievers Advent’ for supporting the griever through the holiday season which is available on Amazon and her website.
www.thegrieversgarden.com