About Grief Watch

Helping People Navigate Grief and Loss

Grief Watch is a family-owned publisher and provider of grief and bereavement resources for individuals, families and professional caregivers.

For more than 25 years, we have created and distributed books, educational materials and support resources that help people better understand grief and find their own way through loss.

Our resources are used by grieving families and by professionals working in hospitals, hospices, schools, funeral homes, support groups and other organizations that care for people following a loss.

Grief Watch has a long history of providing resources for pregnancy and infant loss, including miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death, as well as materials addressing children’s grief, adult grief and family bereavement.

Home of Tear Soup

Grief Watch is the publisher of Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss, written by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen and illustrated by Taylor Bills.

Since its publication in 1999, Tear Soup has helped families, counselors, support groups and professional caregivers talk about grief through the simple metaphor of making a pot of soup.

The idea at the heart of the book reflects much of what we believe at Grief Watch: there is no single recipe for grieving. Each person’s grief is different, and each person must discover what helps them heal.

Our Purpose

Loss touches every family.

Sometimes people need information. Sometimes they need reassurance that what they are experiencing is normal. Sometimes they need a way to remember someone they love. And sometimes they simply need something that helps them begin a difficult conversation.

Grief Watch exists to provide thoughtful resources for those moments.

We serve both people experiencing grief, and the professionals who care for them, with resources designed to educate, comfort, encourage remembrance and support healthy grieving.

Our mission has remained remarkably simple:
To help people better understand grief and to provide meaningful resources for the journey through loss.

Resources

We are well-known for the beloved book, Tear Soup, a recipe for healing after loss, as well as our infant loss book series. Over the years, our ceramics have become our most sought after items, providing gentle reminders of lasting love that can be carried with the bereaved every day. Our resources are commonly used by individuals, hospitals, hospices, schools, funerals homes, donor banks and more.

A Little History

Some of our earliest publications bear the imprint "Perinatal Loss" dating back to the 1970s when Pat Schwiebert was one of the first to recognize and write about the particular dynamics of grief for parents who have suffered the loss of unborn, stillborn, or newly born infants. In the 90's we adopted the name Grief Watch, reflecting our growing variety of resources that encompassed all types of grief.

For decades, Grief Watch was located in the 18th Ave Peace House. This Portland, OR location housed a variety of ministries focused on hospitality, community, peace-making, and care for the dying. To meet growing production and storage needs, we moved across the river to Vancouver, WA in 2018. Community members of the Peace House continued to assist with ceramic production until the house sold in 2026.

About our name

If you have looked at our name and wondered how it came about, you found the right section.

The name Grief Watch was inspired by the New Testament story in which Jesus, filled with agony and grief in anticipation of his own death at the hands of his enemies, chides his companions who have fallen asleep during his ordeal. Jesus says, “Could you not watch with me for one brief hour.” (Matthew 26:40)  At Grief Watch, we believe in the importance of being fully present with others as they move through the pain of their grief.

Though the program was created by persons who lived in a faith community and operated from a faith perspective, its materials and employees do not proselytize or promote any particular religion.

For more information about Grief Watch, contact us at order@griefwatch.com.