The Ethics of Grief Coaching in the Age of Social Media

This is PART ONE of a deep dive into how the field has evolved, where the ethical lines are drawn, and what responsible grief coaching looks like today:

A decade ago, grief was largely processed in private and structured places. Therapy, hospice, religious & community-led groups offered grief support with little digital exposure. Today, social media has rewritten the rules of grief support. What was once private is now public. What was once difficult to access is now instantly available.

In the 7 years I’ve been writing about grief on social media, there has been an explosion of grief content online, and with it, the normalization of publicly shared grief narratives. I distinctly remember watching the hashtag #grief cross the one million posts mark, in the early years of my instagram account, and any day now, #grief will cross four million posts.

Grief is everywhere, on Instagram feeds, TikTok videos, online courses, and podcast interviews.

More & more people now look online and turn to grief coaches, educators, content creators and digital communities for education, guidance & support.

This shift has been both a revolution and a reckoning. On one hand, it has made grief support available to more people, in more ways, than ever before. It has offered grieving people with a sense of community, reducing the isolation that so often accompanies loss.

On the other, it has created ethical challenges, from unqualified individuals coaching people through grief & trauma (unknowingly causing harm) to the sensationalizing of personal tragedy for engagement (impacting the way grief is presented through the algorithm).

The sharing of personal grief content online & the expansion of the grief coaching field has opened up new possibilities, but it has also created new responsibilities. The impact of social media & grief coaching in the field of bereavement is powerful, but only if it is done ethically, responsibly, and with the well-being of grievers at the center.

As the field grows, so do the questions:

• Where is the line between coaching and therapy?

• Who gets to call themselves a grief expert?

• What does ethical grief support actually look like?

If grief coaching is to be a legitimate, responsible field, we need to talk about ethics, boundaries, and the responsibility that comes with guiding people through what is often the most tender & distressing moment of their lives.