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Grieving Heart
Community grief infrastructure San Francisco In development

No one should have to search for help while they're grieving.

Grieving Heart connects grieving San Franciscans to the support that already exists, and teaches the rest of us how to show up.

Help shape it How it will work
Two folded paper hearts, one charcoal and one red, hanging together on a single string

Our vision

Imagine a city that understands grief before tragedy makes it personal, and knows how to show up when it does.

The need

What's missing isn't support. It's the path to it.

San Francisco has grief support. Each source has its own eligibility, its own timing, its own front door.

The person who just lost someone is expected to find their way among them, at the moment they have the least capacity to search.

And most of us learn how to understand grief, or how to help someone in it, only when loss becomes personal.

Where grief support lives today

Each with its own front door.

  • Hospices
  • Hospital bereavement programs
  • Peer support groups
  • Faith communities
  • Children’s grief programs
  • Therapists & counselors
  • Funeral homes
  • Senior centers
  • Libraries
  • Community organizations
  • Schools
  • Employers & EAPs
  • Palliative care teams
  • Chaplains
  • Grief camps
  • Veterans services
  • Cultural centers
  • Online communities
  • Primary care
  • NICU & pediatric teams
  • Universities
  • Victim services
  • Neighborhood groups
  • Support lines
  • Mutual aid networks
  • Recovery communities
  • Death doulas

Our approach

Two things, together.

Designed to ask less of the grieving person, before loss, when it happens, or years later, whenever support is needed.

When loss happens

Find support

One trusted place to start. Say what's happening in ordinary language (by text, on the web, or with a person) and get a small number of real options that fit, with help taking the next step. If one doesn't work, come back. You won't have to start over.

Before loss becomes personal

Understand grief

Age-appropriate learning for schools, education for health professionals, and plain guidance for the friends, coworkers, and families around someone who is grieving, so fewer people face loss without language for it, and more people know how to stay present.

Grieving Heart doesn't replace the organizations already doing this work. It makes them easier to find, reach, and return to.

People

Who's behind it

Jenny Kim, PharmD, BCPPS

Founder & CEO

Born and raised in San Francisco, trained at UCSF, and a pediatric critical care pharmacist for a decade. After her youngest son, Joey, died, she became a grief educator; she has delivered Grand Rounds and national professional education and is the author of The Grieving Heart: Grief, Grace, and Glimmers in Pediatric Health Care (Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 2026). She leads Grievers & Friends.

Marty McCall

Chief Technology Officer

Co-founder of Sandgarden. Thirty years building software that makes complicated systems usable by the people who have to use them.

Grieving Heart is being developed by The Joey Project, Inc., dba Grievers & Friends, and is intended to become an independent nonprofit.

Get involved

Help shape it.

We're building this with the people who'll use it. If you're grieving, supporting someone, or working in this field in San Francisco and want to be part of shaping Grieving Heart, write to us.