As a Certified Grief Educator, Chaplain, and Advanced Grief Counselor, I support individuals, families, and professional caregivers as they navigate life after loss. My work is rooted in compassionate presence, practical education, and creating space where grief can be expressed without judgment or timelines.

1:1 Grief Support and Education

I offer individual grief sessions designed to:

• Witness and validate the reality of your loss

• Help you understand the emotional, physical, and spiritual impact of grief

• Address guilt, complicated emotions, and unresolved wounds

• Support integration of love and loss into daily life

• Explore meaning-making after significant change

My approach is not about fixing grief. It is about helping you feel safe enough to face it and supported enough to live alongside it.

Grief Support Groups

I facilitate grief groups that:

• Provide a safe, structured space for shared stories

• Focus on the Six Needs of the Grieving

• Encourage expression without comparison or advice-giving

• Support community connection and ongoing integration

Groups may include general grief support or focused themes such as:

• Loss of a parent

• Spousal or partner loss

• Complicated grief

• Workplace grief

• Grief in caregivers and healthcare professionals

Faith-Sensitive and Culturally Responsive Grief Care

As a hospital chaplain with extensive interfaith experience, I:

• Meet people within their own spiritual or non-spiritual framework

• Support those wrestling with faith after loss

• Help individuals explore signs, continued bonds, meaning, and doubt

• Honor cultural traditions and personal belief systems

I do not impose belief. I create space for your belief.

Complicated and Specific Losses

I provide education and support around:

• Death by suicide

• Addiction-related deaths

• Traumatic or sudden loss

• Anticipatory grief

• Disenfranchised grief

• Chronic illness and layered loss

My work includes helping individuals release the burden of guilt, challenge distorted grief narratives, and understand the difference between helplessness and responsibility.

Workshops and Professional Training

I provide grief education for:

• Healthcare teams

• Churches and faith communities

• Corporations

• Nonprofits

• Women’s organizations

• Community groups

Topics include:

• Supporting grieving families

• Grief and mental health

• Workplace grief and retention

• Cultural humility in grief care

• Supporting nurses and caregivers

• The connection between grief and chronic illness

Public Education and Resources

I am the host of the Permission to Breathe Podcast, where I provide reflective grief education for a global audience. I am also the author of multiple books on grief, including:

• Collateral Beauty: A Black Woman’s Metamorphosis of Grief, Self Love and Healing

• Let the Church Grieve

• The Grief Inside the Ache

• The Heartprint of a Black Woman

Through writing, speaking, and media, I help normalize grief as a human experience rather than a problem to solve.

My Approach

• Grief is not linear.

• There is no timeline.

• You are not broken.

• Your grief makes sense.

• Healing does not require forgetting.

I am a spiritual practitioner, grief advocate and educator, author, and host of the Permission to Breathe Podcast. I help individuals and communities grieve fully so they can live fully.

Widow to widow, one-to-one online support.  Especially for those of us with no belief in an afterlife.  One-to-one online support for job loss for all genders.

An essay, “One Widow’s Toolkit,” is available for $7 US, which includes postage to a US address. I share a brief, friendly description of how I navigate my grief, with the hope that you find some ideas that make your unique grief journey just a bit easier. I shared it at a senior center, where it received good reviews. Contact me by email if you would like to order a copy.

I offer one-on-one peer mentoring sessions via video for those who are widowed.

Hi, I’m Tanya- welcome to the club nobody wants to join.

As a 9/11 widow living happily ‘even’ after, I totally get the enormity of the widowed experience. I am here to support you while offering hope that you can get through the devastation of grief, one breath at a time.

While your grief journey and timeline will be unique to you, as your widow mentor I will meet you wherever you are and help guide you through your darkest days with compassion and connection.

The journey through widowhood can be so deeply painful and disorienting, but it can also be transformative- in a good way. I would be honored to work with you, so let’s schedule a call. Please visit tanyavtepper.com for more information.

Online Groups Grief Support

In Person Groups Grief Support

Individual meetings Grief Support

Dementia Care (consulting, training, coaching and engagement)

End of Life Care (doula, palliative care home visits)