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Charlene Lam | Grief Coach, Speaker & Author, Curating Grief

@curating_grief

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I help grievers feel lighter.
💖 Grief Coach, Author, TEDx speaker
🖼 The Grief Gallery l Sorting Stuff course
👇 Free Grief Gathering

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“No one wants to talk about grief.” The full house for my workshop at the National Organization for Arts in Health conference (NOAHCON) @artsinhealthus proves that wrong! 80 people registered to learn about Curating Grief, with quite a few folks sitting on the floor — thank you for being such a warm, engaged audience.

I gave them a taste of The Grief Gallery experience, including the prompt: “If you were to curate an exhibition about grief and loss, what would you choose to include?” Attendees were invited to share at the mic, with each other, or by index card (or not at all). And the answers shared were so beautiful, varied, and touching.

Another highlight of the conference in Rochester, NY: Receiving my Honorable Mention recognition in the Cam Busch Arts in Health Awards for The Grief Gallery’s exhibition at Portugal’s biggest public hospital … wearing my mom’s dress. I know she would be so proud.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible, including the organizers, jurors, selection committee members @buschcam @performancehypothesis and all the wonderful arts in health practitioners I met! Looking forward to bringing The Grief Gallery to your universities, healthcare centers, and organizations!

#curatinggrief #griefcoach #thegriefgallery

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✨FINAL EPISODE OF SEASON 7✨

Check out this carousel and you’ll get a glimpse of the incredibly powerful, insightful, and moving conversations I had the honor of having with these extraordinary guests this past season.

Thank you to ALL my guests and to every single one of you who took the time to listen, share the show, or left a review.

Please listen to this episode because it’s not only a reflection on the conversations that happened, it’s a preview of the shifts happening in Season 8 which starts NEXT WEEK!

🔗 IN BIO or comment PODCAST and I will DM you the link.

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Lighter Together
SCAD Photography and Charlene Lam, founder of The Grief Gallery® and Curating Grief®, in partnership with SCAD Office of Mental Health, invite you to a series of conversations, photographs and gatherings exploring how creativity and connection help us hold loss more lightly, together.
In Conversation with Charlene Lam
Sat, Oct. 24 · 2–3:30 p.m.
River event space, 17th floor, 640 Indian St.
Open to SCAD community.
Dear Objects: Exhibition Opening
Sat, Oct. 24 · 3:30–5:30 p.m. · Graham Scott Gallery, 641 Indian St.
Open to the public.
Portrait of a Dear Object: Pop-Up Photo Studio
Bring a meaningful object to be photographed by SCAD Photography students and added to the exhibition.
Sat, Oct. 24 · 3:30–5:30 p.m. · Graham Scott Gallery, at the opening
Wed, Oct. 28 · 5–7:30 p.m. · Graham Scott Gallery
Supported by the Feinglos Fund and PAUSE.
Image: Sydney Apple, After April
#SCADPhotography #CharleneLam #scadmoa

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One of my favorite things about the work I do is the wonderful people it’s brought into my life. ❤️

Charlene Lam (@curating_grief) and I first connected years ago through our shared work in the grief space (thanks @alica.forneret for the intro!), but somehow we’d never actually met in person. That finally changed this week when I joined her in NYC to record an episode of her Curating Grief podcast!

We talked about Speaking Grief (@wpsugrief), how my work in this space has evolved over the years, and what I’m doing now with the Grief-Sensitive Healthcare Project (@yalegshp) at Yale Child Study Center. We also got personal, talking about my mom’s death and some of the weird, unexpected, and not-always-rational thoughts that can pop into our heads when we’re grieving. (Grief is strange, y’all.)

It was such a joy to finally spend time together in person, and I’m so grateful for the chance to share a little of my own story alongside the work that’s become such a meaningful part of my life.

Thank you, Charlene, for the wonderful conversation and for being one of the lovely people this work has brought into my orbit. Can’t wait to share the episode!

#CuratingGrief #Podcast #Grief

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It’s international podcast day and we are celebrating the members of Get Griefy’s small business collective who have started incredible modes for healing, conversation and community! Here’s part FOUR of all the amazing podcasters inside our Get Griefy Small Business Collective Community 🤝 give them a follow! #grief #griefresources #grieftools #griefpodcast #griefsupport

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I couldn’t be more grateful that my #griefy #research received the opportunity to head to #portugal and learn from global #grief experts 🫶🏼

#bereavement

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#griefresearch #aiandgrief #griefbot

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The European Grief Conference in Porto was amazing. The weather, the sites, the people, the grief research! And it all started 11 years ago …

Oct 2015, London: I curated my first grief exhibition featuring my mom’s belongings. The start of The Grief Gallery and my Curating Grief practice.

Oct 2024, Lisbon: The Grief Gallery’s first exhibition in Portugal, at the country’s biggest public hospital, Hospital de Santa Maria @ulssantamaria_epe in partnership with the palliative care team, with major help from nurse @paliativospt 🏥

Now, in Sept 2026 I’m presenting in Porto at the European Grief Conference! Sharing The Grief Gallery with delegates from almost 40 countries. 🎉I’m so proud and I know my mom would be so proud. 🥰

It was amazing connecting with grief scholars, artists, guides and leaders, and seeing mentors and teachers like @doctormfoconnor, Dr. Lucy Selman from @goodgrieffestival @griefcentrebris, Bob Neimayer and Carolyn Ng from the Portland Institute of Loss and Transition @_meaningbridge_ ❤️

Thank you to the organizers, Bereavement Network Europe, the Danish National Center for Grief @detnationalesorgcenter and steering committee members. Thank you to everyone who made this possible, including the Feinglos Fund @rfeinglos PAUSE @timetopauseorg and of course, Mom.

Excited to bring The Grief Gallery to Germany, Ireland, Denmark, and more places in Portugal and beyond! 🌎🌍🌏

#curatinggrief #europeangriefconference #griefspeaker

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Ainda sobre o espetáculo do @balletnagraca . Muito orgulhosa desta turma, que cresce de ano para ano 💗🦢✨

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Sometimes the right book finds you even when you think you already know that territory. ❤️ 10 years into my own journey with grief, Curating Grief gave me a completely new way to understand something I had instinctively done myself.

Charlene Lam‘s beautiful, compassionate book asks us to reconsider what we do with all the “stuff” our people leave behind – not simply as things to keep or throw away, but as objects we can collect, curate, and create with as we continue our relationships with the people we’ve lost. Continuing bonds, she calls them, and they are very real.

Somewhere along the way, I realized my own book, In the Garden Behind the Moon, is a Grief Gallery™️. I just never knew to call it that. And I think that says something important about what Lam has articulated here: a process, ritual, and reframing that grieving people may instinctively need, even before anyone gives them language for it.

I especially loved how she grounds the psychology of grief in stories of her own mother-in-law, making it warm, immediate, and deeply personal — alongside charming, watercolor illustrations of the ordinary objects people leave behind: purse, contents, pens, unfinished craft projects. And, reader, it all begins with an ordinary soy sauce bottle. On a white museum plinth. 🖤

If you’re grieving, or facing the belongings, someone you love left behind, I hope you’ll discover Curating Grief. It’s practical, wise, deeply validating, and extra extraordinarily kind. Visit Charlene’s page, too, for wonderful grief content.

Grief needs a witness, as they say, and this book knows how to be one.

@curating_grief #CuratingGrief #GriefGallery #GriefBooks #GriefSupport #ContinuingBonds

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In this week’s episode I’m joined by grief coach, speaker and author Charlene Lam @curating_grief for a thoughtful conversation about grief, sentimental clutter and the emotional weight of letting go. We talk about why sorting through a loved one’s belongings can feel so overwhelming, how grief shows up in our homes and our hearts and why there is no right timeline for moving through loss.

If you’ve ever struggled with what to keep, what to release or how to navigate loss with more gentleness, this conversation offers both comfort and practical perspective.

#liveonpurpose #griefjourney #griefawareness #intentionallife

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