Advance Together: Our Collective Learning Series
We believe there is always something new to learn—and sometimes the best lessons come from one another. Our Collective Learning Series brings together helpful resources, meaningful conversations, practical tools, and shared experiences designed to help us grow through life’s many seasons.
From grief and healing to faith, relationships, starting over, personal growth, and everything in between, this is a place to discover resources that encourage, educate, and remind you that you don’t have to figure it all out alone.
Come learn with us, grow with us, and move forward—together.
Grief Therapy Suggestions
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Grief Therapy Suggestions *
Journaling — Give Your Grief Somewhere to Go
When your mind is full of memories, questions, anger, regrets, and things you wish you could
say, writing can give those feelings somewhere to land.
Write letters to your loved one.
Keep a “grief journal” without worrying about grammar or structure.
Write about your favorite memories.
Write about what you miss most.
Write down the things you wish you had said.
Keep a list of things your loved one taught you.
Write about the hardest part of today—not necessarily the hardest part of your whole life.
Try finishing the sentence: “Today I wish you were here because…”
The Center for Loss & Life Transition specifically identifies journaling, sharing stories, and
creating photo albums as ways of expressing grief outwardly.
Grief Therapy through Creative Expression
Art as a Way to Express What Words Can’t
You don’t have to be an artist.
Sometimes grief is too complicated for words. Drawing, painting, coloring, photography,
collage, pottery, sewing, or even creating a memory box can give emotions another way to come out.
Ideas:
Paint what your grief feels like.
Create a collage of memories.
Make a scrapbook.
Create a memory box.
Draw or paint a favorite place you shared.
Make something using a piece of your loved one’s clothing.
Create a piece of art in their honor.
Faith & Encouragement
Faith & Encouragement
Grow in faith. Find hope. Keep walking with God.
Faith is not always about having the answers. Sometimes it’s simply choosing to trust God when
you don’t understand what He is doing.
There are seasons when our faith feels strong and seasons when we struggle to hold on. There are
prayers that seem to be answered and prayers that leave us waiting. Through all of it, God
remains faithful.
This is a place for stories, reflections, encouragement, and reminders of God’s
goodness—especially when life feels uncertain.
Come as you are. Bring your questions, your hopes, your struggles, and your faith.
Because sometimes we don’t need all the answers. We just need a reminder that we’re not
walking through this season alone.
Family & Relationships
The relationships that shape us aren’t always simple—and they don’t have to be.
Family can be where we find our greatest comfort, our deepest joy, and sometimes our hardest
lessons. Relationships can be beautiful, complicated, messy, healing, and everything in between.
Here, we talk about the people we love, the relationships that have changed us, the boundaries
we sometimes need to set, and the courage it takes to love others while learning to care for
ourselves.
Whether you’re navigating family changes, rebuilding after heartbreak, learning to let go, or
simply trying to love the people in your life a little better, you’re not alone.
Pull up a chair. There’s room for your story here, too.
Support the relationships that shape us—the beautiful, the complicated, and both.
Get Encouraged. Find Understanding. Feel Less Alone.
Grief & Healing
There are some kinds of grief that change you forever.
Grief isn’t always about losing someone we love. Sometimes we grieve a marriage that ended, a
family that changed, a dream that never came true, a season of life we thought would last
forever, or the person we used to be before life asked us to become someone new.
And sometimes, grief arrives in ways we never expected.
It can find us in the quiet of the morning. In an empty chair. In an old photograph. In a song we
weren’t prepared to hear. In a holiday, a birthday, or an ordinary Tuesday when something
suddenly reminds us of what—or who—we’ve lost.
For a long time, I thought healing meant getting to the point where it didn’t hurt anymore.
I’m learning that healing looks different.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting.
It doesn’t mean pretending we’re okay when we’re not.
It doesn’t mean rushing through the hard days because someone else thinks we should be “over
it” by now.
Healing means learning how to carry what happened without allowing it to carry us.
It means giving ourselves permission to grieve the things we wish had been different.
It means crying when we need to cry.
Resting when we are tired.
Talking about the people and places we miss.
And sometimes, it means simply making it through today.
There is no perfect timeline for grief. No calendar that tells your heart when it should be finished
hurting.
Some days you may feel strong, and the next day you may find yourself sitting on the floor
wondering how you got back here.
That doesn’t mean you’re going backward.
It means you’re human.
And if you are walking through grief right now, I want you to know something:
You don’t have to have it all figured out.
You don’t have to be strong every minute.
You don’t have to hide your tears.
You don’t have to apologize for still missing someone or mourning something that mattered
deeply to you.
Give yourself grace.
Healing is often quiet. It happens little by little—in the moments when you choose to get out of
bed, take another breath, open your heart again, laugh without feeling guilty, or believe that there
might still be something beautiful waiting for you.
And if your faith is part of your story, remember this:
God is not afraid of your grief.
You don’t have to clean up your heart before bringing it to Him.
Bring Him the questions.
Bring Him the anger.
Bring Him the tears.
Bring Him the loneliness.
Bring Him the pieces you don’t know how to put back together.
He can meet you right there.
Sometimes healing doesn’t look like getting back to the person you were before.
Sometimes healing is becoming someone new—someone softer in some places, stronger in
others, more compassionate, more grateful, and more aware of just how precious this life really
is.
So, if you’re grieving today, sit with us a while.
You don’t have to pretend here.
You are allowed to remember.
You are allowed to hurt.
You are allowed to hope.
And most importantly, you are not alone.
Pull up a chair on the porch.
There’s room for you here.
— The Southern Porch Collective
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3