Communities of Care - Grief Support - Marriage Resource Centre

Meeting Summary

Suzanne North, a wellbeing coach and mindfulness practitioner from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Randwick, shared how her parish became a pilot site for a parish-based grief support ministry — one of three established across the Archdiocese of Sydney, funded by Catholic Cemeteries and Crematoria. The initiative grew from a longstanding collaboration with Catholic Grief Care (based at Rookwood), whose team identified a clear and unmet need: in Western society, grief is increasingly a solitary experience. People are expected to move on quickly, and those who struggle are often isolated. Research bears this out — only 3% of grieving people actually need clinical intervention; the other 97% simply need community around them.

The model Suzanne’s team uses is Dr. Alan Wolfelt’s Companioning approach — a deliberate shift away from fixing, advising, or guiding, toward simply being present. The companion’s role is to hold space: to listen actively, reflect back what they hear, and sit with someone in silence if that’s what’s needed. Seven parish volunteers — most with backgrounds in pastoral care or chaplaincy, all with their own grief experience — were trained over 18 months by Catholic Grief Care, including sessions on active listening, suicide awareness, and responses to historical and clergy trauma. The ministry operates from a purpose-set room in the parish that feels like a lounge rather than an office, with a side entrance so people don’t have to walk through a busy parish administration area.

In practice, sessions are one hour, one-on-one, and entirely need-driven — some people come once, some come monthly, some weekly at the start. So far all referrals have involved grief from death, often matched to a volunteer with a similar loss. One participant, after years of counselling, described feeling genuine lightness for the first time — something she attributed to the complete absence of agenda. Looking ahead, the team plans to add community grief walks in nature and a peer-group Seasons for Growth program, with the long-term goal of gradually building these participants back into parish community life.

About the Presenter

Suzanne North is a wellbeing coach, positive psychology practitioner, and mindfulness and meditation teacher based in Sydney. She spent a decade as a family educator with Sydney Catholic Schools and has led women’s retreats and mindfulness circles alongside her parish ministry at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Randwick. In 2024 she established a parish-based grief support ministry in partnership with Catholic Grief Care Sydney, becoming one of the Archdiocese of Sydney’s pilot sites for community grief accompaniment.

Key Takeaways

Only 3% of grieving people need clinical intervention — the rest simply need community around them. Parish grief ministry doesn’t require a counselling service; it requires trained companions who can hold space without fixing, advising, or problem-solving.
Grief doesn’t shrink over time — life grows around it. Louis Tonkin’s model (a circle of grief that stays constant while the circle of life expands around it) reframes the goal from “getting over it” to “reconnecting with life.” People can come to the ministry decades after a loss and still benefit.
The physical environment and the welcome matter enormously. A side entrance to avoid the busy parish office, a room that looks like a comfortable lounge rather than an administration space, a plant and a candle — these signal safety and enable vulnerability before a single word is spoken.
Matching companions to clients by shared grief experience is one of the ministry’s most effective practices — a volunteer who lost a teenage son has naturally accompanied two other parents through the same loss. This is peer accompaniment in its most powerful form.
Building a grief ministry takes longer than expected and that’s intentional. Suzanne’s team spent all of 2023 in training before seeing their first client in early 2024. Rushing the setup risks the safety of both clients and volunteers — and the ministry’s credibility in the parish.