A pair of local organizations have combined resources to bring formal grief support to the Pikes Peak region, acting on what counselors describe as a deep cultural resistance to allowing people adequate time and space to mourn.
Pikes Peak Hospice and the Aspen Mine Center are jointly sponsoring the new program, which will meet in person at the Woodland Park library across six weekly sessions beginning Oct. 28 and concluding Dec. 9, with no meeting during Thanksgiving week. The format centers on facilitated group discussion rather than individual clinical therapy.
Grief counselors report that people who have experienced a loss frequently face pressure from those around them to recover on an unrealistically short timeline, leading to isolation and exhaustion among the bereaved and raising alarm among practitioners who argue that society's tendency to avoid the subject of death is prolonging suffering. A bereavement counselor with Pikes Peak Hospice & Palliative Care noted that workers who lose a spouse are commonly allotted only three to five days away from the job — a window in which they must also attend to legal paperwork, bank accounts and life insurance while absorbing what she called an emotional "sucker punch."
The counselor said that because the culture withholds permission to grieve openly, people become skilled at concealing their pain — but that concealment carries a cost. "Faking it is exhausting," she said. The support groups aim to give participants a space where they can remove that facade and speak honestly without fear of being judged.
The curriculum draws on the "companioning" model devised by Dr. Alan Wolfelt, which reframes grief as something other than a medical problem to be solved. At its core, companioning means staying present with someone in their pain rather than working to take that pain away, and it calls for listening with emotional attunement rather than clinical analysis. Facilitators serve as witnesses to each person's experience rather than advisers directing them toward a predetermined destination, honoring the natural confusion that accompanies loss instead of trying to impose structure on it.
Two counselors lead Pikes Peak Hospice's three core general grief curriculums — a bereavement counselor and a colleague who has worked in that role with the organization for five years. Beyond those general offerings, the organization also runs specialty groups tailored to particular kinds of loss, covering deaths connected to substance use, bereavement within military families, suicide, and infant and pregnancy loss.
Care continues after any six-week program ends, with participants able to access ongoing support through yearly remembrance gatherings — including a warm-weather butterfly release and the Holiday Luminaria event offered through Voices of Grief, which is now in its fourth year. A two-session community education series called "Bridge to Hope," led by the Pikes Peak Hospice bereavement counselor, is set for Nov. 7–8 at St. Michael's Church in Colorado Springs, with Saturday's session running from 9 a.m. to noon and Sunday's from 12:30 to 4 p.m.; the series is designed to help community members understand typical grief responses and learn how to support those who are mourning.
Enrollment details for the Woodland Park group and capacity limits for each session had not been made public at the time of reporting.