Trauma, Grief & Renewal

Trauma, Grief and Renewal Certificate Program

Program Description

This certificate program combines experiential, introspective, and expressive approaches for a deeper understanding in the areas of trauma, grief, and death and dying. Understanding the natural process of death and dying, as well as grief and loss, can help people honor transitions, lessen fears, support others, and live more consciously and fully. Personal growth can be found in times of grief and loss.

This program is designed to shed light on the human journey of emotional healing from loss. Grief can be acknowledged, honored, supported, and integrated into the wholeness of life. Decreasing trauma can help reduce delayed grief and allow the transformational journey to be discovered and celebrated. A conscious death and dying process can allow an individual the opportunity to complete life in a preferred way. Loved ones, providers, and community can reach a deeper understanding and ability to support the dying process and participate in the grief process.

This program emphasizes the therapeutic skills for care of the dying, grief and trauma counseling, and the potential for transformational growth from loss. Cultural and spiritual competencies will be explored from a universal and individualized view. Ethics, self-care, and renewal from grief and trauma counseling will be explored. Students’ own experiences with loss, death, and trauma will be an avenue for personal growth and understanding to help support others in their transformative process.

Students and community members pursuing a certificate through the New Earth Institute must complete all classes required for the Certificate within six (6) years of taking the first class. All of the classes in this program are offered in a distance format with a virtual classroom on a weekend.

*Southwestern College students may take these courses at the Continuing Education (CE) price unless they are using the course to meet graduate program degree requirements. 

• Theories of the Grief Process
•  Trauma Theory, Process, and Interventions
•  Counseling Skills for Grief and Trauma
•  Ethics, Self-Compassion, and Professional Issues
•  The Art of Healing Grief and Trauma
•  Dying to Know: Issues of Death and Dying for the Professional

Additional courses may be listed in quarterly schedules.

Click Here to See Upcoming classes in this Certificate.
Click Here to See the Frequently Asked Questions page.

Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)

Upon completion, students will be able to:

• PLO 1:
  Recognize and differentiate between the core characteristics and symptoms of trauma and grief, including intergenerational grief and trauma, to provide personal and professional support for individuals and groups in trauma, grief, and renewal.
• PLO 2:
  Explore issues of death and dying within the micro and macrocosm of individual and collective psychology, with a culturally informed perspective that honors both personal and systemic beliefs.
• PLO 3:
  Apply traditional, alternative, and emerging theories on grief and trauma in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of individuals, groups, and families experiencing grief, trauma, death, or loss, following ethical and culturally sustaining practices.
• PLO 4:
  Examine and appraise the role of the counselor/therapist within a cultural context, using reflective practice to develop an embodied, heart-centered, authentic, and transformational approach to treatment.

Where you might use these skills:

• Personal Support and Growth
• Hospitals/Medical Facilities
• Hospice
• Private practice
• First Responder Organizations
• Religious/Spiritual Settings
• Private Practice
• Education (All levels)
• Recovery Centers
• Home Health Services
• Crisis Response Team

Program Director

Rev. Ted Wiard EdD, LPCC, CGC, is the Director of the Trauma, Grief, and Renewal certificate program. Ted is from Taos, New Mexico where he has had many roles in his life and seems to continuously find new ways to help promote emotional healing. He a licensed professional clinical counselor, certified grief counselor, ordained minister, and NM certified educator. He is the co-author of Witnessing Ted: The Journey to Potential through Grief and Loss. Ted is the founder and Director of the behavioral health agency Golden Willow Counseling, and Golden Willow Retreat, a non-profit emotional healing center focused on grief, loss, trauma, and recovery. He also maintains a private practice.

Dr. Wiard is sought out for public speaking all over the nation to discuss organizational change initiatives, emotional healing from loss, spirituality and emotional sobriety, as well as issues pertaining to addiction and recovery. He has been seen on the Oprah Winfrey Network, as a guest on the Shania Twain’s Why Not? series, as well as other documentaries focused on transformation through loss. The list goes on, so it is obvious that Ted passionately believes in the potential of the phenomenological transformational moment that every person owns the ability to experience and celebrate.

Dr. Wiard’s life experiences have helped guide and motivate his drive to be of service professionally focusing on grief, trauma, and recovery. Ted’s losses led to a personal healing journey which included academic pursuits in which he became an ordained minister and then earned his Master’s in Counseling with an emphasis in Grief and Loss as well as completing the Grief Certificate program from Southwestern College. After many years of working in the field of addiction, grief, trauma, and emotional healing, he went back to school to earn his doctorate in Organizational Leadership focusing on leadership behaviors in the midst of change. Ted’s passion and his personal and professional background gives others a great opportunity to learn about and implement grief and trauma counseling.

Southwestern College & New Earth Institute is approved by the New Mexico Counseling and Therapy Practice Board (#CEU2025065) and the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC ACEP No. 7520) as a Continuing Education Provider. If you are not licensed as a mental health professional in New Mexico, please check with your state’s licensing board to see if they will accept approved CEs from these two accrediting bodies.