About Meghan
My work is personal. I was nine when a teenager beloved to my small Cape Cod community drowned while my family and I sat unknowingly nearby. In 2017, my father died after a yearlong battle with small cell cancer, and two years later my mother died unexpectedly while my family and I were on vacation in her house. Almost immediately, I suffered PTSD which eventually required in-patient treatment. I returned to my office and my patients just before the COVID-19 pandemic sent us on a trajectory of unprecedented loss, which we are all still learning to navigate.
During a time of unprecedented loss, my team helped C-Suite leadership of several companies navigate the shift to remote work, followed by a hybrid return to the office. In this process, we identified two powerful struggles emerging at work: 1) the challenge of identifying and accessing emotions related to loss and change, and more importantly 2) how to process those emotions through the body through an active practice of grieving.
The Grief Mentor Method™ was made to teach people to do both.
“Grief is the energy created in the body on account of loss.”
- Meghan Riordan Jarvis
A word from Meghan.
“I’ve been a daughter/sibling for 48 years, therapist for 21, wife for 18, a mother for 15, an orphan since August 2019. My father died in June of 2017, one year and five days after his initial diagnosis of small cell cancer. My mother died unexpectedly in her sleep while my husband, three kids, and I visited her on summer vacation in 2019.
I have a teenage daughter and two slightly younger boys who are inexplicably the same size despite being two years apart. Collectively we love all the sports, musical theater, board games, mystery books and The Great British Bake-off. My husband is taller than me, smarter than me, kinder than me, and has a better accent. Raised in England, he has brought the love of tea, BBC cop shows, and Arsenal FC to our household.
Our crew spent March to June of 2020 holed up in our house, failing at sourdough bread and the plank challenge. We spent June and July alternately cleaning out the home representing thirty-five years of my parents’ lives and swimming in slightly shark invested waters off the shores of Cape Cod.
I grew up smack in the middle of three brothers, and two sisters (I literally have everything you could ever want–older brothers, AND a younger brother, an older sister, AND a younger sister), and my kids have a zillion cousins. We spend a lot of our time trying to find ways to visit them or at least get them on the phone. I’m incredibly grateful to have a day job as a trauma therapist in a pretty office I spent too much time and too much money decorating and may have referred to more than once as my clubhouse. I love my clients even more than my furniture. They are brave, and curious, and determined to heal. It’s a privilege to sit with them.
I was raised in the church and have spent hours kneeling in all kinds of houses of worship. I find faith really slippery, so at best, I call myself an open-hearted seeker, at worst, a skeptic. But I’m here, and you’re here, so I hope we both find comfort and company and maybe learn from each other.”
Podcast Appearances
Writing & Featured Publications
Meghan’s work has been featured across multiple news outlets, publications, blogs and podcasts. Her expertise as a psychotherapist, partnered with her experience with personal trauma, enables her to take a relatable and professional stance to help a variety of people address grief in a healthy way.
