Alana meets each person with a warm smile and an open heart. She spoke on stage at my TEDxWomen event. Her speaking topic: Grief. Not a light endeavor. Yet, she won the audience over immediately with her gentle manner and intimate style. Her own comfort in her vulnerability built immediate rapport with the audience. She is masterful in guiding people through the journey of finding themselves. – Jodi Womack, No More Nylons
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Without me doing anything but read it, Picking up the Pieces wove a healing blanket around my saddest, fearful places. There are no platitudes here, and no subtle push to feel better. There’s the steady, compassionate beat of a heart who knows grief; a soft chorus of voices that feels like a hand of support at my back; and prompts that make darkness feel that much less bleak. Picking up the Pieces, for me, is a beautiful, healing dawn. - Kristin Noelle, Trust Tending
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I wanted you to know that I read Picking Up the Pieces this weekend and I wept – it is so beautiful. Gorgeous writing, and I love the way you have structured it, with concrete suggestions. Your contributors are all lovely too. I hope it doesn’t trivialize your own sorrow to say that I feel like so much of it resonated even though I haven’t been recently through an episode of sharp grief. It made me think, in fact, about how universal grief is, in varying intensities and volumes, of course. Thank you so much for sharing your work. – Lindsey Mead, A Design So Vast
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Your Picking Up the Pieces book is so magical and gorgeous. It brings me peace and comfort and helps me connect to my own broken heart – that place where I am
most me. – Pamela Hunt, Walking On My Hands
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It is written with such skill in capturing bald honesty …….. no pretense of preachy-knowingness as we get with so many good intentioned, self-help works. The joy (as Rumi put it) and personal freedom from this grieving process was artfully painted-with-words page after page. I only read 5 or 6 pages when I had enough. It was as if I was savoring a rich, indescribably delectable dish that you save for later because you can’t handle anymore of a good thing, and you want to make it last as long as you can. – Tim H.
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These are just a few words to express my deepest gratitude to you for sharing this so generously with the world, I feel it is like an oyster with such a beautiful and precious pearl inside of it, I am so moved as I read it, and words are too small to say what I feel... – Sophia Style, childbirth and menstrual cycle educator, Spain.
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I found Picking Up The Pieces delivered a frank and truthful account of the personal process of grief. As I read along I could feel my own fear of losing a loved one rise up and this scared me. I found myself not being able to finish some stories at first because I didn’t want to even think about something like this happening to me. I kept thinking, “grief is a reality, and one day I will encounter it…will I be able to get through it?” I am grateful to Alana for having the courage to compile such a powerful guide for those experiencing grief now and for those who will experience it in the future. – C.W. graduate student at Adler School of Professional Psychology
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Our retreat is so sacred to me. It was an amazing transition for myself in physical, mental and emotional realms. My light shines brighter, my intuition is stronger, my self-love is so much more and I am so much happier in my life.
- Jennifer K.
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I have had the pleasure (yes, pleasure! in grief work!) of working with Alana, and attending her retreat, Picking Up the Pieces, in September 2011. If any of [the] words in [her] TEDx Talk resonate with you, I urge you to look up her work or contact her. She has a unique ability to listen and to guide you – being the leader – while also sharing her own stories and working right along beside you. She is wise without being intimidating, caring and nurturing without “mothering,” and exudes calm. – Ann M.
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The tele-retreat furthered my healing and growth. The awareness of other forms of grief and acknowledging that most everyone is fighting a hard battle. It constantly peeled away the layers of stigma I had for myself and others about grief. For me, I feel I can tap into a more compassionate side of myself reserved for giving to, and was able give myself the same compassion. I was constantly sharing with my husband and opening up new avenues to let the light in. There was one period where the grief work got hard and I didn’t want to acknowledge current grief (which would flare up old grief.) But I called-in, and thank God I did, b/c the topics on Relationships and Grieving was the kick in the butt I needed to release tears and love myself and others. – Jes L.
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Alana came into my life at the most miraculous time. We became friends just days before my mother’s unexpected passing. In the midst of my grief, I decided to join her tele-retreat. It was the poultice my aching heart needed. She created a tight knit community, connecting us by sharing her weekly wisdom and providing a private online space for dialogue. If you’ve experienced loss of any magnitude, I cannot recommend Alana’s Picking Up the Pieces Tele-Retreat highly enough. – Kerrie Blazek, Pleasure Catalyst @ In Her Element – Life Coaching
www.InHerElement.biz
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Your grief course has helped me to be savvy to the fact that grief about my family will continue to come up, even for years to come. I am finally beginning to learn that even though these emotions are present, they do not need to be “dealt with” or acted upon or running my life. The emotions can just be. This is the gift you have taught me. For this, I am so grateful! – Lynn S.
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I think it’s so apt that Alana speaks of “alchemy” – my grief shifted from a big overwhelmingly difficult emotional struggle to a sense that my grief is my own, there’s no wrong way for me to grieve, and that I can be whole again. My grief went from something unmanageable which was causing me such suffering to something that I could sit with and appreciate and through which I could nurture myself and grow. I had no faith that my grief could be transformed; this tele-retreat is where the transformation happened.
I would recommend the tele-retreat to anyone who has experienced a loss, anyone who is suffering or struggling with grief. Or who is trying not to grieve and not to suffer. I found grief to be a strange thing which I didn’t know how to manage. Alana took the guesswork out of how to survive. I know that sounds dramatic, but my pain had been huge and I didn’t know how to get myself out of the suffering I was in. It’s like a story I heard before: Alana jumped down into the hole with me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ve been here before, and I know how to get out.” I don’t have to be free of my grief now. I can find peace within it. Alana was very accessible and approachable throughout the tele-retreat. I was surprised and pleased to find how involved she was. – Carla E.
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Alana, Your TEDx talk on grief was amazing. Since my husband died in 2010, I found great comfort in reading many books on grief, watching videos, talking to people who were grieving and who have grieved, and reading hundreds of articles. Your talk is right up there at the top and spoke to me at a very deep level. I vowed when Bill died to walk through my grief (not around it) and to learn all I could about grief for my own healing and so that I could, in my office (as a psychotherapist with forty years experience), and as a friend and family member assist others on their journeys through their grief. I thought I knew grief until Bill died. Believe me, I did not know grief. His death brought me to my knees. Your acknowledgement that we all grieve differently; that grief is our teacher if we allow it to be; that we can change the world by opening our hearts to grief were just a few truths (spoken by you in this video) that affirmed the path I chose in order to deal with, walk with, honor and even embrace my own grief. Thank you for your vulnerability and courage. You inspire all of us. – Mary Friedel-Hunt, LCSW
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I feel major shifts in my perceptions of myself during and after our meetings. I feel very safe and accepted and instead of over-analyzing things in my head I am learning to accept myself and where I’m at in my life. I am definitely enjoying life more and am learning to have fun. The biggest difference is feeling like I’m moving through life instead of being stuck. I am experiencing the world in a different way. Like I’ve known for a long time that the world is not always scary and that all people aren’t untrustworthy, I just haven’t fully trusted this. Life is showing me that my world is full of friends and family that are very supportive, trustworthy and full of love. – C.A.
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I have known Alana Sheeren for six months. Each time we see each other, I am immediately comfortable with her, sensing her warm heart and kind manner.
When she spoke at TEDxOjaiWomen, her honesty to and with herself, bared onstage in front of hundreds of people touched something in me that hadn’t been touched before. Her own clarity triggered an “ah ha” moment: though I have impeccable integrity, I had not been 100% honest with myself and thus betrayed my deepest self more than any outsider did. I knew that Alana could help me.
I had lost my way in life. I felt grief from losing myself, losing my innate happiness, my resilience, and even my interest in life.
Alana asked me one question in the first session. My response was held tenderly with love, acceptance, honor, and care. Alana said not a word. Her whole being was receiving, was hearing at a deep empathetic level. Reflections, memories untouched arose because of her presence. Alana clearly heard 3 unloving messages I had been given throughout my life, messages I had understood though previous counseling, and thought that I had completely grown out of and grown from. But as Alana linked them together I felt release at a whole new level. I felt fully seen for the first time. That single hour was the nurturing catalyst that moved my life towards self-acceptance and joy. – Linnaea Bohn www.affordable-massage.com
