Sarah Christopher, MDiv

I'm Sarah, a lifelong chaplain and spiritual director of youth, young adults and adults of all ages. I've been walking alongside others in schools, churches and hospital settings over the course of my long career in deep listening and spiritual growth. A mother of four truly excellent young adults -- ages 18-23 -- I am a native of the south side of Chicago who has lived in Northern California since 1997. During the middle of a very stuck, contentious and painful divorce process, my chaplaincy supervisor said, "You'd be a great grief counselor...and you need this work personally, too." My ego wouldn't admit I needed anything, and, believing I just needed to keep pushing past my personal life and pushing through in my professional life (who has time to grieve?!), I engaged the specialist training as professional development only and expected very little impact on my personal life. Unprepared for the transformative container this method provided, I will humbly say that the work changed my life. Taking an inventory of my losses, and working on particular relationships with specific tools for healing, re-wired ALL of my relationships. I was able to be present and allow whatever came into my life as a gift, a puzzle, a teacher...instead of a project, a burden, a challenge or another something for me to take care of or manage. I was freed to let go of the belief that I didn't deserve to have a full life, to experience joy, to be whole. Uncovering, naming and releasing my grief made for so much spacious inside me, so much freedom to creatively rebuild after divorce, after the loss of the dream of my life and the betrayal and breakdown that preceded my marriage long before. No one is a cartoon villain or a cartoon hero in the landscape of our lives -- we are all complicated and difficult, we are all longing for and deserving of love and release. Even you! Even me! I am here as a Grief Recovery Specialist capable of listening to stories of unresolved loss and hurt that get in the way of mental, emotional and spiritual health. "It's not the weight you carry -- books, bricks, grief -- but how you carry it" writes the poet Mary Oliver, " it's all in the way you embrace it, balance it...carry it when you cannot, and would not, put it down." Let's put it down together. Sarah Christopher Master of Divinity, Yale University Chaplain, Educator, Coach and Pastor plumblinecoaching.org