Jess Goyder knows grief - and what it takes to create a life you can love alongside your losses. A licensed Grief Recovery Specialist® with a Postgrad (Cert) in Psychodynamic Studies from Oxford, she trained with leading grief psychotherapist Francis Weller.
She supports people from all walks of life, with particular expertise in helping high performers and leaders navigate bereavement, major life transitions, illness, and other significant losses. Jess’s support goes far beyond traditional grief counselling. She guides clients from coping and managing to clarity, emotional resolution, and a renewed engagement with life.
Her work draws on over a decade of experience coaching communication skills to executives and creatives at organisations including Adobe, Nestlé, Ogilvy, and Deutsche Bank, alongside extensive teaching experience at business schools and universities.
She also delivers talks and workshops for organisations, helping them recognise the personal and commercial impact of unresolved grief and take meaningful, practical steps to address it. Clients and hosts consistently note her rare blend of expertise, empathy, and lived experience - making an often challenging subject accessible, engaging, and ultimately uplifting.
"Her ability to listen, recognise and validate the emotional complexity of grief has really helped me."
Ria, New York
"Her level of intelligence is matched only by her empathy. Totally rigorous and incredibly kind."
Mike, Oxford
"Her understanding, patience and encouragement made the whole experience life-changing for me."
Gil, London
What brought me to work with grief and loss
I have experienced multiple bereavements, but it wasn’t until my counselling training with the bereavement charity Cruse that I realised the impact other losses have had on my life. This led me directly to The Grief Recovery Institute® in the States and the recovery process their founders developed.
I grew up in Ethiopia while my parents were aid workers during the famine of the mid 1980s. I saw things a child should never see, and was sometimes surrounded by intense loss and suffering on a scale that is hard to fathom.
In 2016, I developed a neuro-immune condition that took much of my functioning. In the six months after it began, three people I loved died. The first hit at the very worst moment – when we had no idea what was wrong, and it was extremely difficult to move around my flat. I felt buried alive. It was an especially traumatising loss. When I was finally diagnosed, I was told there were no medical answers. I was often bed-bound and in and out of wheelchairs.
Before this, I had been very active – as a successful musician and performing artist alongside my coaching and teaching career. I lost so many of the simple, everyday things I had taken for granted: running, swimming, the dance classes I loved, walking freely and choosing when to brush my teeth and hair. Most of all, I lost the ability to sing for many years - the thing I most lived for. At times it felt like an indefinite prison sentence in my own body.
Having all of my ‘doing’ taken away from me began a journey into what the human mind and spirit were truly capable of. I know what it is to live with pain that seems endless, and has no easy answers. My fascination with unconscious processes and how to live well through adversity deepened. Eventually I regained the physical and mental capacity to start my Post Grad at Oxford.
It has taken ten years and endless work, the support of my family, friends and community, and I’ve developed the tools and resilience to build a beautiful, flourishing life around these losses. Even better, I have regained so much of my health and independence too. The Grief Recovery Method® has become a vital part of that process for me – I will keep living the work I share with clients.
I often get asked by people, “don’t you find this work depressing?” If it sounds as if the Grief Recovery Method® involves a lot of emotional heavy lifting, it certainly is action-orientated - a successful outcome depends on what you are prepared to put into it as a client. But this is the most uplifting work I’ve ever had the privilege of sharing with people. And I can promise that whenever there is the right moment to bring joy, curiosity and fun into our time together, I will. Healing is emotional as much as intellectual and above all, we will both be honouring the truth of your feelings.