Grief Encounters:
A Healing Weekend of
Personal Stories

Nancy Howard Cobb

Feb 5-7, 2010

Register Online

We are all going to die, just as we are all going to
grieve. So why not start from a place of acceptance,
rather than denial, and weave these intimate ties that bind us as human beings? The power of personal stories, when told and when taken in, can be transformative. Sharing these “life” stories help us to feel less alone and more a part of an extended family.  Loss permeates every aspect of our world. Learning to live with and move through grief, in addition to being more willing to talk about it, helps us to heal more fully in the wake of the inevitable passages we all experience. When people open themselves to the nurturing potential of this work, even long after a loss has occurred, peace and grace often fill the void in tender, unexpected ways.

Mourning is an integral and inevitable part of the life cycle, but too often we feel pressured to get past grief quickly, rather than move through it naturally, as this workshop will demonstrate.  Cobb has found a way to infuse this too often taboo subject with light, and even humor, through her own stories and the stories of others.  By opening the larger conversation in the safety of a communal environment, she helps individuals and groups access the healing energy of the collective by using a down to earth approach—with a focus on opening and connecting, rather than on closure— ultimately making the subject one to explore rather than to avoid. 

“An eloquent book. Cobb’s insistence that death be confronted without the veil of denial is made possible, and even more starkly compelling, by the grace and wit of her writing.”
— Kay Redfield Jamison,
author of An Unquiet Mind

Nancy Howard Cobb—author of In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living, now in its eighth printing and featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show after September 11, 2001—has spoken about grief, mourning, and living with dying in hospices, medical schools, womnen’s groups, professor grand rounds, bookstores, and end of life conferences across the country. She has interviewed a variety of people in print and on radio; among them Jane Goodall, Jonas Salk, Chuck Yeager, Studs Terkel, and Shelby Foote for the tenth anniversary of the Discovery Channel and in her first book, How They Met: Jay and Mavis Leno, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, Carly Simon and Jim Hart, Carol and Walter Matthau. As the host of two public radio programs, Cobb interviewed a cross section of writers and poets including Arthur Miller, Annie Dillard, Maurice Sendak, William Styron, Billy Collins, Richard Wilbur, Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, and Galway Kinnell. A former actor, Cobb is also the author of The Kids’ Letter Writer Book illustrated by Laura Cornell.