Recently we hosted Dr. Fatimah Pierce on Designers, Plants, and Coffee, and our conversation landed somewhere powerful: grief isn’t only about death. As creatives and entrepreneurs we lose things all the time — dreams, income, time, partnerships, creative momentum — and learning how to practice dealing with grief as a creative can change the way we move through setbacks and rebuild our work and lives.
One of the clearest points Fatimah made was this: grief is the response to loss — not only a person’s death. Moving across the country, closing a shop, losing a partner, having to go back to a 9-to-5 after running a full-time creative business — these are losses. Grief is an act of love; it’s part of the story of what you cared about. It’s normal, human, and often messy.
When your business or creative life shifts, the emotional hit can feel identical to other forms of grief: sadness, fear, anxiety, guilt, regret. You might notice:
These reactions are not failures; they’re part of grieving what was and adapting to what can be.
Fatimah’s grief coaching is present-focused and action-oriented. Here are some of the approaches we talked about that helped me — and that I encourage you to try when dealing with grief as a creative:
We often try to help, but our words matter. Avoid minimizing phrases that start with “at least.” Instead:
One of the most healing things is to find community. You don’t have to grieve alone. Group coaching, collectives, or peer support can unlock creativity and hope. On Cover Me Chic we’ve built communities like the CMC Collective to help sewists and designers connect, learn, and grow together — even through difficult seasons.
For people in our community who want practical support and reflection tools, here are a few resources I mentioned or that tie into these ideas:
If you’re dealing with grief as a creative, know this: grief can coexist with hope. It’s possible to grieve what you loved and still move forward with courage and gratitude. My conversation with Dr. Fatimah reminded me that healing is a process, and community makes it lighter. If you need a small, practical place to start, try naming one thing you forgive yourself for today — it’s a surprisingly freeing step.
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Zahiyya: Welcome to the Designers Plants and Coffee podcast, where we’re sewing, sipping, and staying rooted.
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We’re three creative women building handmade businesses and sharing real conversations about
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design, growth and what it really takes to make things that matter.
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So grab your coffee, pull up a project, and let’s grow together.
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Naima: Today, we are happy to introduce a lifelong friend of Designers plants and coffee. Dr.
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Fatima Pierce is with us today.
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She she has a super impressive resume, but today she is here in her capacity as a certified grief coach.
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She is going to talk to us about some often misunderstood topics of grief and how we as creative
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entrepreneurs can kind of center ourselves and recognize our grief.
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So welcome to the show, Dr. Pierce.
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So can you give us a little bit of background about how you enter this field of grief coaching
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and life coaching and all of the things that you all of your dot, dot, dots.
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Fatima Pierce: So again, I am a certified grief coach.
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I don’t even know how many degrees, I don’t know how many certificates, but this is my most favorite adventure yet.
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So for more than 20 years now, I’m afraid to say I’ve been coaching in some capacity, whether
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it started out as middle school cheerleading and moving into career coaching when I was a federal
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employee, moving up so quickly, people always wanted to know, how did you do that?
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How did you do your resume?
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How do I get ahead?
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So shifting into career development and leadership coaching as well as consulting and executive coaching.
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But as I talk to mostly women throughout my journey, listening between the lines, what I’m hearing
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from them is not I need a resume or I want a new job.
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It’s I’m suffering with loss, with grief.
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I don’t know how to move forward.
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And of course, we’ve been through life now, so we’ve all experienced grief and loss.
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And if I didn’t have 8 million degrees, I would have gone back and got a degree in clinical psychology.
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But when I found grief coaching, which is a present and focused forward focused approach to
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dealing with issues, I said, this is it.
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This is how I can help women, how I can help all of us begin to move from being a grief avoidant
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society to being grief integrated, grief intentional and grief acceptance.
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So that is how I got here.
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Naima: Thank you for that intro.
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That kind of leads me into our next question.
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You talk a lot about working with women and helping women through all of their coaching.
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What are some common misunderstandings or misgivings as it comes to women and how we deal with grief?
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Fatima Pierce: Sure. Just one of the most common misunderstandings about grief is that it’s tied to Death or
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tied to the loss of a person.
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I can tell you that one of my most profound experiences with grief, when I started to look at
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it differently, is when I moved across country and said, why am I feeling like this?
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When this was actually moving back from the Midwest to the east coast, which is home, I’m like,
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why am I feeling this way?
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That’s because I enjoyed my life in the Midwest.
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It was a slower pace.
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I connected with my husband more.
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I was trying new things, and then I came home so quickly because of a job, and I’m like, wait a minute.
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I’ve lost something, and I need to grieve that loss.
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Zahiyya: So.
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Fatima Pierce: So I think we often only associate it with death.
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And as we know as women, society has done a number on us where we have to be strong, yet we can’t show emotion.
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If we are working women, we have to act like we don’t have a job when we’re at home, and when
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we’re at work, we have to act like we don’t have a family because society just wants so much from us.
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And we’ve never been given permission to actually grieve.
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But we also want to understand that grief is an act of love. Love.
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It’s a part of a love story, and so it’s nothing to avoid or to hide from.
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And you can also learn and grow and still find beautiful things in life while you’re grieving.
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As long as you integrate it into your life versus trying to stuff it down, which we know if
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you have a stomach ache, you gotta let.
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Let it out or it’s gonna rot from the inside.
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Grief works the same way. You have to. To let it out.
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Emotions tied to grief are normal and natural, but when grief is unattended, that is when the emotions can turn negative. So we.
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We need to understand also as women, we have significant life changes, and they more significantly impact us.
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Things like divorce or when our kids go off to college or if we have a miscarriage or all these
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other things that are unique to women sometimes where we just don’t have a space to let it down.
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Zahiyya: It’s interesting how you said everybody, you know, associates grief with loss, with, you know,
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someone dying and how you flipped it, and it’s just the loss of something.
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So grief, by definition, is just the loss of something.
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So being that this is like a creative podcast for people, designers, entrepreneurs, you know, so is creative.
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How would that show up for us?
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You know, like, how would that show up for, like, a creative person?
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Be somebody lost their job or someone you know, I don’t know, lost their relationship.
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How would that show up in like a creative setting?
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Fatima Pierce: It shows up the same way because you’re suffering a loss.
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And we have to think about all that we hope for in life.
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We have hopes, we have dreams.
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When we start our businesses and we’re excited, we think we’re going to make a million dollars
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and we’re going to partner with, I don’t know, name a black designer, Sergio Hudson.
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And when those things don’t happen, we are crushed.
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So it manifests itself as if someone is dying because something has died.
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A dream may be lost, finances may be lost.
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As you mentioned, if you are now a full time entrepreneur, solopreneur, your friends go away,
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your husband might leave you.
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So there are all of these things that can accompany style starting and running a business that
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have the same type of grief effect.
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And of course there are cascading effects.
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So you get that divorce.
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And thankfully nobody on this call has been divorced, including me.
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So I feel comfortable using that example.
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But when you get divorced now you’ve lost an income and now you may have to change your dream.
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You got to go back and get a job when you left the job and thought you were going to be a full time career creative.
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So it manifests in all of those ways.
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But the emotions tied to it that we feel, the sadness, the fear, the anxiety, the guilt, the
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regret are similar to what we have even when we.
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Naima: Lose a person that really kind of hits home because as someone who’s had to go back to work
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after trying the full time creative, it was a struggle, you know, just to get back into having
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to go back to a 9 to 5 when I’ve had all this creative freedom for a number of years.
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So that really hit home and that makes me think about like what kind of advice would you give
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somebody who is struggling with having to maybe go back to a 9 to 5 job or having to close their
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business or even if they’re just not feeling that creative passion anymore and don’t know how
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to get out of that slump of letting the business go when it’s not working anymore.
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Fatima Pierce: So one thing that I want to be sure to clarify is that I’m a grief coach, which is different from therapy and counseling.
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So in grief coaching we don’t diagnose, treat.
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I’m not a medical or a health professional.
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Coaching is really present and forward focused, it’s action oriented, it’s how can I move from functioning to high functioning.
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So if you are experiencing things, experiencing things, feelings, behaviors, that are less than functioning.
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That’s a sign that you may need medical, clinical type of attention.
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So I wanted to clarify that piece of it you heard me mention in the beginning or maybe in the intro about gratitude.
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And my coaching framework is all about living through hope and gratitude.
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We can look at any text, religious text, anything that we believe in, all of our teachings.
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Nowhere does it say that living is absent of suffering.
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So we know that suffering is a part of life.
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No one ever said it’s going to be amazing every single time.
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And even in the context of counting it all, joy.
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We tend to think joy means you have to be happy about everything.
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But what it really means is that you are living, you’re living a life.
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If you are experiencing suffering, that means you’re alive, you are experiencing a setback,
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you still have a chance to move forward.
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So when we are in that place where we don’t want to be, we have to go through a self reflection
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process where we can ask ourselves, how do I want to show up now?
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How can I still accomplish my dream?
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Going to work has never been the end of the world for anybody.
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Because with these jobs now, we can do more than one thing at once.
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How about I now have a stable income where I can re energize my business for a year and hustle
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hard and then go back to full time being an entrepreneur.
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So it’s really about the reflective piece and questioning how am I choosing to show up today
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in this moment and what am I going to actually do about the dream that I still want to come true?
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Zahiyya: I mean, you mentioned it a little bit in terms of like moving forward.
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But how would you like recommend someone who feels like stuck in that place and they feel that
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they can’t get through, like whether whatever the loss is, whether it be loss of someone’s job,
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a business, whatever that is and how like what steps would you take to move forward?
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Fatima Pierce: So grief is unique to whoever is grieving.
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So I hear the questions about steps, but you won’t ever hear me say, first do this step, second,
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do this and then do that third thing.
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Because grief doesn’t work that way.
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It’s not linear, it’s not pretty, although it can be beautiful.
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So what I would encourage people to do when they’re feeling stuck is do the hard thing. We have to.
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And this is something we say in grief that usually takes people’s breath away.
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You have to relinquish the expectation of a better or different yesterday. We cannot change that.
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We cannot go back to it.
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Guilt and Regret are big emotions to try to get through when we’re grieving.
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But how useful are they?
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If I had only done this, if I had answered the phone when they called, if I had gone to this
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fit versus going to wherever I ended up going to school.
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Those things cannot change where you are now and they cannot go with you where you’re going.
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So we have to relinquish that expectation that yesterday is going to somehow be different.
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We have to also practice forgiveness and that includes ourselves.
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We need to say to ourselves, like, I forgive myself and others for everything related to the loss.
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Maybe that business partner left you hanging.
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If you have not forgiven them for that again, you are the one that’s going to be stuck.
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They rebranded and they ripping somebody else off.
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But you, you’re still stuck.
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So we need to ask ourselves these questions.
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Questions like, how much have I actually lost by not forgiving?
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That’s how you become unstuck with the self reflection piece of that, where you are really thinking
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about you, how you’re showing, what did you actually lose?
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What can this teach me about loss?
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I would think in this business we hear a lot of people who start businesses or name products
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after loved ones like Carol’s daughter and, you know, Uncle Jesse’s or whatever it is.
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And if we lose that person, we’re like, how can I go on?
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They would have wanted me to do this or they would have wanted me to do that.
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So we have to be a little bit selfish in our grief and our growth where we try to take control
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over what can I do now?
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Who do I want to become?
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What do I want to say to the person that I’m grieving?
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What do I want to say to the old me?
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And once you let those things out now, who do I want to be moving forward? So it’s deep work. It’s deep work.
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And that’s what coaching does take you through that framework of really understanding who you
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are and how you want to move forward.
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Naima: And I think that, that that in itself is a word, but I think that is the biggest fear for a
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lot of people is that self reflection and doing that self work and digging deeper than saying,
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oh, I’m okay or I’m sad about it, but just digging into and getting deeper into the root of the problem.
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Zahiyya: Let’s say it’s not you that’s necessarily grieving if it’s somebody else that you see grieving.
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I mean, I know it’s like we talked about the deep work and you know, you have to self reflect and Stuff.
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But how could you, how could you help somebody else through it?
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I mean, what would you do to like, encourage them to do the deep work?
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Fatima Pierce: Absolutely. One, we have to understand that grief has its own language.
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And we, how we talk to people.
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We’re a grief avoidant society.
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So we just do what we think we know.
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When we say, oh, I’m so sorry for your loss, but that can really upset people.
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Or when we want people to get through it and feel better because we love to check a box, we
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may say, well, at least you’re still young, you can get married again.
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Or, you lost your baby, but you got two other kids.
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What’s going on with you?
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You can always start your own business.
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It was just a little business.
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You weren’t making any money anyway.
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So we have to understand that empathy doesn’t start with the words at least.
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And we don’t want to minimize how someone is feeling because it can be more than one thing.
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Yes, I may still be able to get married again, but I’m also still crushed about my divorce.
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And give them permission to live in that and help them through it.
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Be very specific about what you can offer.
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If you say, hey, call me anytime they call and you’re not there, then what happens?
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So how about, I’m going to the grocery store, can I get something for you? I’m near your house.
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I’ll come sit with you if you let me.
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I’m going to our favorite coffee shop at 2 o’. Clock.
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Whether you come or you don’t come, I’m going to sit there for 15 minutes and just wait for you.
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The best thing you could also do is ask them, how would you like to be supported in this time?
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Maybe they don’t know, but you can offer them things like this.
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And one of the greatest gifts that you can offer someone is to give them permission too.
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Because just like we’re having this conversation, other, others have not had it.
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So they think they have to tell you that they’re okay.
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They think they have to show up in a brave face, with a brave face.
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These jobs for nine to five folks, they only give you three days of bereavement as it is, so
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you feel like you have to keep going.
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So making sure that you are gentle with them.
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And that’s also a sign for us to do that with ourselves because we treat friends so much better than we treat ourselves.
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If our friend is suffering a loss and they say, you know, I can’t make it to the event today,
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we say, oh, that’s okay. We get it.
00:16:05,600 –> 00:16:08,280
But for us, we’re like, oh, my God, they’re going to think so bad of me.
00:16:08,280 –> 00:16:09,280
I got to show up.
00:16:09,360 –> 00:16:10,560
I need to be there.
00:16:10,880 –> 00:16:13,280
It doesn’t matter if this thing just happened.
00:16:13,280 –> 00:16:18,560
So we need to treat ourselves like we would treat others who are experiencing losses, too.
00:16:18,880 –> 00:16:23,720
Zahiyya: So, I mean, I know we were about to wrap up, but is there anything else that we have not touched
00:16:23,720 –> 00:16:26,270
on that you think that the audience should know?
00:16:26,270 –> 00:16:29,310
Fatima Pierce: One thing to think about is community.
00:16:29,790 –> 00:16:35,790
Just like you’re doing here with this podcast or how you do when you have your collectives and
00:16:35,790 –> 00:16:42,350
everything else, finding space that appreciates whatever it is that you’re going through is
00:16:42,350 –> 00:16:44,750
not something that we need to go through alone.
00:16:44,830 –> 00:16:50,510
Although we’re talking about self reflection, we also have group coaching and things like that.
00:16:50,510 –> 00:16:56,810
That may be beneficial because when you start to connect with others and really see, see that
00:16:56,810 –> 00:17:04,210
you’re not alone, that unlocks a lot of creativity and healing and hope and gratitude as well.
00:17:04,370 –> 00:17:11,170
So make sure that you are not in a place where you want to completely cut off from everyone else.
00:17:11,170 –> 00:17:16,050
And we’re tempted to do that because we don’t want anyone to see we’ve not given anyone permission.
00:17:16,050 –> 00:17:22,370
And as business owners, I think there was one question that I saw earlier about just what to
00:17:22,370 –> 00:17:25,290
do when you get stuck.
00:17:25,450 –> 00:17:26,330
I’m trying to think of.
00:17:26,330 –> 00:17:28,410
Let me look on here. Oh, the balance.
00:17:28,650 –> 00:17:29,650
How do you show up?
00:17:29,650 –> 00:17:31,370
How do you balance being.
00:17:31,690 –> 00:17:34,970
Showing up professionally while you’re grieving?
00:17:35,210 –> 00:17:40,890
And I think now with social media and with other things, we have the beauty of being able to
00:17:40,890 –> 00:17:43,090
integrate our personal and professional lives.
00:17:43,090 –> 00:17:45,610
There’s really not this hard line anymore.
00:17:45,690 –> 00:17:50,250
So it’s okay to say to your customers, you know, you haven’t seen me on social media in a while.
00:17:50,330 –> 00:17:53,530
Here’s a tidbit about what’s been going on in my life.
00:17:53,530 –> 00:17:56,450
You may be surprised how they respond to that.
00:17:56,450 –> 00:17:57,490
Same thing with your family.
00:17:57,490 –> 00:17:58,970
I’m starting a business now.
00:17:59,210 –> 00:18:01,290
Somebody else is going to have to cook dinner.
00:18:01,290 –> 00:18:02,730
I’m not messing with y’. All.
00:18:02,730 –> 00:18:10,810
And really just make it known that you’re in this space and that you are working to show up
00:18:10,890 –> 00:18:13,130
one for yourself, show up for them.
00:18:13,370 –> 00:18:14,810
But here’s what you need.
00:18:14,890 –> 00:18:20,280
Just like you are being specific with your friends about what you can provide, you also have
00:18:20,280 –> 00:18:25,760
to be specific with your friends about what you need from them or what you don’t need from them.
00:18:25,920 –> 00:18:31,640
And you can integrate them into your grieving process instead of trying to keep them away from
00:18:31,640 –> 00:18:36,080
it because they’re going to notice anyway, so that’s one way to try to work that out. I did.
00:18:36,080 –> 00:18:41,400
So most of my clients are government, corporate types and all of those things.
00:18:41,400 –> 00:18:48,650
But because I was coming here and I want to show up for the people, I did come create a download
00:18:48,810 –> 00:18:53,330
that you all can pick up. It’s called Creative Momentum.
00:18:53,330 –> 00:18:58,730
Three gentle actions to grieve and grow your business with courage.
00:18:58,890 –> 00:19:03,770
So my coaching circles and my coaching practice is called Anchored in Courage.
00:19:04,010 –> 00:19:11,130
And we know that it is a courageous thing to face a loss and do it with gratitude.
00:19:11,290 –> 00:19:13,850
So I’m under that umbrella, Creative Momentum.
00:19:13,930 –> 00:19:18,210
That’ll be@anchoredencourage.com and we’ll put that in the show notes.
00:19:18,530 –> 00:19:25,250
But I want to just leave with an invitation for you to have more of these conversations.
00:19:25,570 –> 00:19:29,170
They don’t have to be so segmented, like what do we do for business?
00:19:29,250 –> 00:19:30,890
Or what do we do for creatives?
00:19:30,890 –> 00:19:36,690
Because grief is something that everyone experiences and so it’s universal, even though how
00:19:36,690 –> 00:19:38,130
we deal with it is unique.
00:19:38,290 –> 00:19:42,340
And I just want to leave you with hope is always present.
00:19:42,660 –> 00:19:45,540
So I wish you all well in your Greek journeys.
00:19:45,540 –> 00:19:47,140
Naima: Thank you for joining us today.
00:19:47,940 –> 00:19:51,060
I am Naima from Fearless Threads, along.
00:19:51,140 –> 00:19:55,220
Zahiyya: With Sahia from COVID Me Chic and.
00:19:55,540 –> 00:20:00,020
Fatima Pierce: LaTisha of Keeping your Stitches, Fatima of Anchored in Courage.
00:20:01,460 –> 00:20:02,500
Naima: Bye, everybody.
00:20:03,540 –> 00:20:06,860
Zahiyya: Thanks for hanging out with us on the Designers Plants and Coffee podcast.
00:20:06,860 –> 00:20:12,710
If you love this episode, please leave a review, share it with your creative friend, or tag us on Instagram.
00:20:12,790 –> 00:20:16,310
Until next time, keep dreaming big and growing slow.
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