Meet Our Team

Gwen Russo is an Advanced Grief Recovery Method Specialist, GRI Trainer, Interfaith Minister, Certified Life Coach & NYS Licensed Speech-Language Pathologist.

As an interfaith minister, I reveled in supporting people individually, giving talks, and running workshops. Soon after, I began to have an influx of people seeking help for grief and loss. Always wanting to give the people I work with the best of the best, I set out for a separate certification through the American Academy of Grief Counseling where I became a certified Grief Coach. Going even further, I then attended even more extensive training through The Grief Recovery Institute on The Grief Recovery Method® first as a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist. This is where my work really took off. As a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist, I was able to help people as never before by showing them how to heal quickly from the inside out. I was then chosen to be in a selective class of Advanced Grief Recovery Specialists and have had the privilege of helping and supporting now hundreds of people through the process of Grief Recovery.

I then was invited to be part of a select group and asked to be a Trainer for The Grief Recovery Institute.  I humbly accepted and am thoroughly enjoying training others in this very powerful program, The Grief Recovery Method.

Rebecca’s desire to help grievers came in 2006 after the devastating loss of a close friend. During that period she was attending design school and witnessed for the first time how creative practices such as writing, storytelling, and art can assist with healing during life’s most painful moments. These experiences eventually guided Rebecca down a long path towards personal healing.

While searching for professional resources on grief, she came across the Grief Recovery Method and read raving reviews. The method resonated on so many levels with everything else she was studying on current frameworks for working with loss. However, it was after experiencing the power of Grief Recovery for herself that she then went on to become an Advanced Grief Recovery Method Specialist in Washington State.

Rebecca’s experience also includes 7+years of training in patient care and bereavement support through Providence Hospice of Seattle, the Zen Caregiving Project and Virginia Mason’s Restorative Retelling method for violent and traumatic death. She is passionate in her work as an active hospice volunteer and providing educational and spiritual support in her Seattle community.

Now, at Hopeful Heart Solutions, Ltd., Rebecca is currently serving grievers from all areas, all backgrounds and with all types of loss. We are very excited to have her as an integral part of our team.

Erika is a Certified Life Coach through ADDCA (ADD Coach Academy), a Certified Advanced Grief Recovery Method Specialist through the Grief Recovery Institute and a Member of Achology (The Academy of Modern Applied Psychology).

Her experience with grief and the path to the Grief Recovery Institute has not been straight or clear. Losing her father at the age of 24 left her feeling devastated, incomplete, empty, angry, confused and lost and caused her to spend the better part of two decades in an overwhelming state of feeling like a broken human being unable to “get over” losing the most important person in her life and making poor decisions in the process.

Twenty years after losing her dad, Erika suffered a knee injury while playing soccer. The loss of health, functioning of a body part, friendships and identity in no longer being able to compete athletically compounded the feelings she was already living with. It wasn’t until a friend brought to her attention that what she was feeling sounded a lot like grief.

After much research on how to help herself, she found the Grief Recovery Institute and signed up for a two-day workshop and is grateful that she did. Nothing she had tried prior to that had made a difference for her. Two years after that workshop, Erika received her own certification and can now support and guide others on their own path to healing.

It is Erika’s hope, passion and sincere desire to impact others in a meaningful way and help them heal from the emotional pain and burdens they carry and ultimately take action over their healing and recovery.