Laurel Hilliker

Laurel Hilliker, PhD

Founder, Bearing Loss: Grief Education and Consulting, LLC

Laurel is a sociologist specializing in grief studies who believes that bereaved individuals need our compassionate response to their stories. As a fervent advocate for this population for over 15 years, she has a wide reach with speaking engagements at the community level and keynote presentations at academic conferences. Her work is published in Bereavement Care, An International Journal For Those Who Help Bereaved People, as well as in Omega, Journal of Death Studies. Through her passion to equip future healthcare workers, Laurel developed a college level course, Wellness in the Face of Loss, and is also the author of Grief-Stricken: Stories of Altered Loss in a Pandemic Haze, a teaching memoir with stories of how her family endured the loss of a daughter, husband, mother, and brother in 2020.