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Karuna Cards for Processing Grief

Name: Minds On Design Lab Inc.
Price range: $

The Karuna Cards are a deck of 52 creative ideas to help process grief using writing, expressive modalities and thoughtful questions.

A resource by Claudia Coenen: The Karuna Project

Expressing your inner experience of grief allows you to explore it, process it and move through it. Creative expression is my own go-to activity when I have difficult times in my life so recommending journaling or moving was natural for me. When I worked in a hospice program, I often I recommended creative ideas to my grieving clients and the Cards were developed to help them get started.

The Karuna Cards contain writing prompts, open-ended questions, suggestions for processing grief through activities such as collage, energy drawing, walking in nature and reflection. Ideas for releasing emotion and begin to think about living fully again after loss. These cards allow a grieving person to explore their grief, express it and move through it.

My invitation to you is to shuffle the deck, pick a card and respond to it. If you do not like the card you picked, shuffle and pick again!

My Inspiration

Karuna means compassion in action. My late husband wrote this word on the top of his letters and after he died, we realized that he was the most compassionate person we knew. I decided that I would name any future endeavor "The Karuna Project." No matter what I do in my life now, there is always a connection to Alby Coenen. He helped me grow into the person I am now and when I sit with a grieving person, I feel his presence, encouraging me to open my heart. When someone shuffles the Karuna Cards, I imagine him smiling at them and perhaps, in the midst of their own sorrow, they can feel his warmth. Naming this deck "Karuna Cards" is a way to bring his energy forward into the world he left behind.

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