https://www.caledonia-avl.com/about daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61c4d23d7b40282387c478e6/6a9e9303-3fcb-4ad8-af21-b47fc92e8365/IMG_2623.JPG About - Elizabeth Graves, PhD, LCMHC-S, SD Thank you for your interest in working with me. I look forward to learning more about you and your story. If it helps to know a bit of my own story, I have been licensed since 2001 and worked in many settings including community counseling clinics, schools, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, and private practice. For ten years, I trained school and clinical mental health counselors as faculty at Appalachian State and WCU. My story began changing in 2012, however, when grief and loss initiated me over several painful years into the dubious band of the Bereaved. During this time, I companioned my mother through a prolonged struggle with dementia and eventually death, lost a closest friend to cancer, my father to Parkinson’s Disease, and a beloved professional colleague to violent death. Meanwhile, several of my closest friends allowed me to companion with them through their cancer journeys - and are alive and well today. Soon after followed the pandemic – more losses of friends and family – and most recently, Hurricane Helene, which has left our community broken hearted and our beloved mountains devasted. Certainly, this is a time of big collective grief. What I am learning through this new chapter is how to ride waves of big grief and roll with the pummeling blows of varied losses by turning my face toward grief. This looks like moving grief through my body and lifestory with tears, song, breath, movement, story, art, ritual, meditation/contemplation, nature connection, and other intentional practices. Through this process, I have become an avid student, an apprentice, to grief and death – and as a result the way I live my life has transformed for the better. In fact, what I am learning in both my own life and in the lives of my clients is that turning one’s face toward loss and death much improves life – the way in which we live – indeed, it can transform a period of deep suffering into one of Initiation into new life. Since 2020, it has been my privilege and honor to companion others in their own big life losses as they manage in an era of great collective losses too. Following completion of my death doula training, my advanced Grief Specialist certificate, and my Certificate in Thanatology, those who seek me out tend to be those who: ~are in big life transitions/initiations, or ~have lost/are losing the people most beloved to them, or ~have suffered multiple losses, or ~have lost adult children to sudden death, overdose, suicide, or ~are managing life-threatening or life-limiting illness themselves. To see my full career vitae, click this link [embed vitae link here]. https://www.caledonia-avl.com/therapy daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61c4d23d7b40282387c478e6/6dcdfa14-7cd2-4faf-8936-b60c3da1df00/ocean+wave.jpeg Therapy - “The task is to feel sad without becoming Sadness.” — Laurie Anderson https://www.caledonia-avl.com/home daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61c4d23d7b40282387c478e6/adb7a46e-d9eb-4d6d-afd5-44d88d7195f7/788F937E.jpg Home - Deepen your experience of life with Elizabeth. Elizabeth works with people in a variety of ways to help them deepen their experience of life by broadening their awareness of Self and Others, and therefore, their potential. She offers: grief counseling, psychotherapy, Ketamine Assisted Therapy, IADC therapy, soul guiding/spiritual direction, clinical supervision, communication skills training, and end of life planning and companioning – all through the lens of fostering an initiation perspective. What is ‘initiation perspective’? Francis Weller, in the tradition of Malidoma Some, speaks of grief and encounters with death as Initiation. Many ages ago, humans lived in tight communities of support, led by elders who knew much about creating relational vessels in which persons could, with guardianship, field life’s most challenging experiences without losing their way. Today, however, we live in a Trauma Culture instead of an Initiation Culture. Absent a community of elders and other wise ones who can help us contain and move through our pain and loss, we are left largely to manage death and big grief in silence and separation. Therefore, these huge life losses and transitions become traumas which accumulate in our psyches and bodies. This can leave us ungrounded and lost, the result of which is isolation and the suspicion that loss could kill us – a conclusion with which The American Heart Association agrees. Grief stress and broken hearts can indeed kill us. But it doesn’t have to be this way. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61c4d23d7b40282387c478e6/07658bbf-a3cd-4e28-8487-b54158a154ba/ocean.jpeg Home https://www.caledonia-avl.com/connect daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/our-approach daily 0.75 2025-04-28 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/get-started daily 0.75 2025-04-28 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/new-page daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/eco-grief-therapy daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/mid-life-initiation daily 0.75 2025-04-29 https://www.caledonia-avl.com/home-1 daily 1.0 2025-06-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1595609339784-SQCBD0JY1I2PJTF6463B/image-asset.jpeg Home Providing you with a safe space to relax All your appointments will take place in our soothing office environment with fully private rooms, complimentary tea and water, and individualized care. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1596735343208-REFD48BLXTO0VYD1GP8F/image-asset.jpeg Home Bright natural dining room nook with vases plates and fruits on the table. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1596735437739-PLZ9IGEX0K4LE2I40EX6/image-asset.jpeg Home Happy smiling woman with curly hair lounging on couch. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1596735464610-AI9YSPNX6XDAB7ZYHEVN/image-asset.jpeg Home Scenic shot of the beach with waves hitting the rocks. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1596735391229-WFZO0YGQY5XS8CAGI64G/image-asset.jpeg Home Pretty Caucasian woman at the beach smiling at camera. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1592230716373-ZT0K3F4FT1OIRFNZ1MNL/Thrapy+copy+2.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1592230746331-7KHTZVVBPJJ1MBAAH1K3/Pills+copy+2.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1592229007961-LTP1A4QHMVOKZ5NPVPKQ/Coaching+copy.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1592230803772-L1ERE96JGOYEVC5MY5FY/Accupuncture+copy+2.png Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1595609511395-DHZ1AN4UM2RWT5DUYG2I/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1595609495804-U8BVKL7U6TZ7NC1PRUO3/image-asset.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1615997305106-E9C8DZGPRZC76V1CUSOD/Stocksy_comp_2318452.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ede5d5c4e1eb54d74680dd4/1595609653820-03ONMZIYD38W7ZF3U0Y1/image-asset.jpeg Home