Grief Is More Than Losing Someone: A Conversation with Life Coach and Grief Educator Lisa Archer

Grief doesn't always arrive when someone dies. Sometimes it shows up when a marriage ends, when a career disappears, when a diagnosis changes everything, or when a body you trusted stops working the way it used to.

That's one of the most powerful threads running through my recent conversation with Lisa Archer, International Certified Life Coach and Grief Educator, on the Grief Unedited podcast. Lisa joined me to talk about her journey into grief work, the misconceptions she encounters daily, and why she believes grief education belongs everywhere from therapy rooms to boardrooms.

If any of that resonates with you, keep reading. There's a lot of warmth and wisdom in what Lisa shared.

Who Is Lisa Archer?

Lisa is originally from Seattle and has lived in the UK for over 20 years. She's an International Certified and Accredited Life Coach, a Certified Grief Educator trained by world-renowned grief expert David Kessler, a speaker, and a trainer.

But her path into this work wasn't planned - it was lived.

Between 2018 and 2019, Lisa lost 12 people she loved. Both parents. Her niece. Her 24-year-old son-in-law, Jack. Friends. Friends' children. It was, as she put it, a period that simply changed her.

"Loss changes you," she said simply. "So you receive that call. My dad had been diagnosed with brain cancer. I quit my job and went back to Seattle and took care of him and my mom until he passed away seven months later."

From that place of profound personal grief, Lisa eventually found her way to counselling, then life coaching, then grief education and ultimately to a career built around helping others who are stuck in their own loss journey find their way forward.

What Does Lisa's Work Actually Look Like?

Lisa is clear that she's not a therapist or counsellor. Her role sits in a different, but equally important, space, and it's one that often begins where other support ends.

"When an individual has lost a loved one four years ago, nine years ago, ten years ago, and they're stuck, that's where I come in," Lisa explained. "Stuck in that grief, wanting to move on. Not move on as in forgetting their loved one, but wanting to live. Wanting to now live this short and fragile life."

Her approach blends life coaching principles, goal-setting, forward movement, personal accountability, with a deep understanding of grief, its many forms, and the education that surrounds it. She also delivers grief in the workplace training, helping managers, directors, and business leaders understand how to support employees who are bereaved.

"Managers don't know how to support their employees," she said honestly. "And I think giving people practical tools on how to navigate loss, the do's and don'ts, what to say, what not to say, that's really where my passion lies."

Grief Isn't Just About Death

This is perhaps the most important thing Lisa wants people to understand: grief is not reserved for bereavement.

"Someone has passed away, that's where we automatically go," she said. "But grief is the emotion that lies under any loss."

She shared a striking example from her own practice. A client came to her who had played rugby for years. It was central to her identity. Then she was injured, and it was taken away. As Lisa worked with her, she realised: this is grief. This woman was grieving the loss of who she was.

"For me, that was a huge revelation. And that, I didn't quite get at the beginning, and now I definitely do."

Losses that can carry grief include:

• Bereavement (the death of someone we love)

• Relationship breakdown and divorce

• Job loss or career change

• Health diagnoses or physical changes

• Loss of identity, community, or purpose

• Emigration and leaving loved ones behind

• Friendship endings

• Miscarriage and pregnancy loss

If you've experienced any of these and felt something heavy and hard to name - that may well be grief.

The Biggest Misconception About Grief Support

When Lisa goes to networking events and mentions she's a grief educator and life coach, people often respond the same way: "Oh, my friend's mum just died — she needs your positivity right now!"

And Lisa has to gently explain: that's not quite how it works.

"There's this misconception that positivity is what a grieving person needs," she said. "But what that friend actually needs is someone to sit with her. To let her talk about her mum. To just be present."

She described her role vividly: "Those who come to me are stuck in the muck. They're in a raging river, and I'm not jumping in with them. I am throwing them a rope."

For those in the immediate, raw stages of loss, Lisa is clear, she'll signpost them to the right support. A counsellor. A therapist. Someone who specialises in early and acute grief. And when the time is right, when the question shifts from "how do I survive this?" to "how do I live again?" that's when she steps in.

How to Support Someone Who Is Grieving

One of the most practical threads in our conversation was around what it actually looks like to support a grieving friend or family member.

Lisa's honest answer? Less is more.

"One of the worst things that can happen is people ghosting you, not talking to you at all. They see you across the street and they walk to the other side, because they don't know what to say."

What helps instead:

Just show up. You don't need the right words. You often don't need any words at all.

Sit with them. Resist the urge to fix, advise, or silver-lining the situation. As author Megan Devine's work beautifully captures — getting into the trenches with someone is often far more helpful than trying to pull them out.

Do something practical. When Lisa's friends lost their son in a car accident, she coordinated a meal train. Whether they ate the food or not was beside the point, it was one less thing they had to think about.

Ask what they need. Not what you think they need. What they actually need. And accept that sometimes the answer is "nothing, I'm just going to sit here."

"Rarely is trying to lift somebody out of their sadness the right thing to do," I said during our conversation. "The best thing we can do is get in beside them and accompany them in that space."

There Are No Rules to Grief

One of the most liberating messages from our chat was this: you can't grieve wrong.

Lisa described how, after her dad died, she came home to the UK, shut the curtains, and wanted to see nobody. But when her mum died fourteen months later, and her son-in-law just two months after that, she opened the curtains. She needed people around her.

"What I needed was very different," she said, still a little surprised by it even now. "And I remember thinking, this is strange."

Grief is as unique as a fingerprint. It shifts not just from person to person but from loss to loss, even within the same person. What helped you last time might not help you this time. And that's okay.

As a supporter, whether you're a friend, a family member, or a colleague, the most important question you can help a grieving person ask themselves is: what do I need today?

The answer might be going for a walk. Or a nap. Or watching Netflix with a hoodie pulled over their head. Or going to work for a few hours, just to feel like themselves again for a little while.

All of it counts. All of it is valid.

Grief in the Workplace; A Conversation Long Overdue

Both Lisa and I do grief training with organisations, and it's a topic close to both of our hearts.

The reality in most workplaces is stark. Bereavement leave is often limited — a day or two, maybe five, depending on your relationship to the person who died. Then you come back, and life is expected to resume.

"Managers, directors, CEOs, they just don't know how to support their employee," Lisa said. "And I think that's an area that's really, really important."

Part of the challenge, as I've seen in my own training sessions, is that the people making decisions about how to support a grieving employee often haven't experienced significant loss themselves. They approach it from a business lens, minimising disruption rather than from a human one.

Lisa's grief-in-the-workplace training aims to change that by giving teams practical, compassionate tools. Not just for managers, but for the grieving employee too — helping them understand their own needs, and giving them permission to advocate for themselves.

If you're an employer or HR professional reading this and wondering how to do better — this is a conversation worth starting.

The Moment That Confirmed Everything

When I asked Lisa about the moment that affirmed she was in exactly the right place, she shared a story that's stayed with me.

A client came to her four years after losing her mum. She was very stuck. As they worked together, it became clear that there had been many losses layered underneath, and her mum's death was the pinnacle of them all.

"When I said to her, 'God , that is a lot,' you could physically see her go, 'Oh... I'm not crazy. I'm not broken. I'm not damaged. I'm not insane. I'm grieving.'"

Over time, the work shifted. The client found a photo of her mum that had been hidden away in the kitchen. She decided she needed to talk to her — and she did, on her own, in her own time. She raged at her. She let it all out.

"She said, 'Lisa, I've moved my mum into the living room. And now she's just with us every day.'"

Lisa's voice softened as she told it. "That was the most powerful experience. And that's why I do what I do."

Shortly after, their grief sessions organically became life coaching, forward-focused, possibility-filled, alive.

"I can physically see them transforming before my very eyes," she said. "Anytime running a business feels hard, those moments happen. And I think oh. That's why."

Connect with Lisa Archer

If you're somewhere in your grief journey where you feel stuck, and you're wondering what "moving forward" might look like - Lisa might be the right person to talk to.

You can find her at: www.holisticlifecoaching.org.uk

She also hosts her own podcast: Because We Love: Finding Meaning After Loss, well worth a listen if today's conversation has resonated with you.

A Note on Getting Support

Whether your grief is recent or long-carried, whether it was a death or a different kind of loss- you don't have to navigate it alone.

If you'd like to explore working with me, Karen Lafferty, as your grief counsellor, you can find out more and get in touch at ContinuumCounselling.com.

And if this episode spoke to you, I'd love it if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do for the people we love is quietly pass along something that says: your grief makes sense. You're not broken. You're not alone.

Until next time, Karen x