welcome

At Elephants In Rooms, we facilitate meaningful conversations about grief, trauma, difficult life transitions, and all of life’s messiness. We offer one-to-one therapy, drawing on different approaches. Our resource page contains videos and information on topics around grief. If you need urgent support or are in crisis, please click here. For training that helps you learn how to support people with grief, visit Grief Guides.

Why are we Elephants In Rooms?

In our work with the bereaved, as well as in training, we’ve heard so many stories of people deep in grief, who went unacknowledged by those around them, and how much that hurt and made them feel alone with their pain.

Grief is the ultimate elephant in the room – it will affect us all, and yet we are still not good at talking about it. Our mission is to change that, by talking about the elephant, and equipping as many people as possible with the skills needed to have meaningful conversations about grief.

Because when we can talk about what we’ve lost, we can start to celebrate what we had. And both we, and they, deserve that.

When Martin created the Understanding Your Bereavement Online service for Cruse Bereavement Support, which is a facilitated online support session for the bereaved, Terry Kettering’s poem was read out at the start of each session. The facilitators encouraged those attending to share the name of the person who had died. This usually led to stories being shared, both funny and sad, and the conversation opening up in the breakout room.

Sometimes people think that if they don’t mention the name of the person who has died, that will make sure that the grieving person won’t get upset or triggered in some way. But the opposite is true.

Always ask their name. Use it. Ask for stories. We need to talk about the people we love.

Talk about the elephant in the room.