Who I am
Dania Balohé Lacourrège
Grief counselor and transgenerational analyst · Death doula · Founder of The Aliveness Program
I accompany people through grief in all its forms: a death, an illness, a separation, and the grief of leaving a country, or of being born far from the one your family comes from. I work in English, French or Lebanese Arabic, online, and in person in Tours.
[Book a free call →]
Where this work comes from
I was thirteen and a half when we left Lebanon. Everyone called it an opportunity, and it was. It was also the end of the only future I had imagined, and there was nowhere to put that grief. In the summer of 2006, when I was fifteen, our bags were half packed for the holidays when the war began. Instead of going home, we watched the news, and I saw how the Western media framed the attacks on Lebanon. I understood that what I felt was much more than missing home, and I didn’t yet have the words for it.
I grew up with parents who are doctors, in a family where death is announced quickly and the emotions that follow stay out of sight once the ceremony is over. As a child, I wanted to be a teacher and a mortician. For years I was the first: I taught English for more than eight years.
Then two losses made this personal: the death of my cousin, and my epilepsy diagnosis in 2022, which cut my life into a before and an after. I had to stop my PhD and let go of a certain image of myself. I used that pause to train in what I had been drawn to since childhood: accompanying the grieving, and understanding how grief, and the silence around it, travels from one generation to the next.
What I believe
We go through griefs far more often than we think: the end of a relationship, an illness that changes everything, an identity that falls apart, a country we can’t go back to the way we left it. These are real losses, and each one asks for its own mourning.
I believe that pain is both lived and passed on. What we carry today often bears the mark of what our families went through before us. And I believe that naming what we live, with the most accurate words, is already a way of beginning to carry it differently.
Grief is not something you get over. My work is not to help you pretend you are fine, but to accompany you in living with what you carry, and in giving yourself permission to want your own life again.
What I bring that’s different
- You don’t have to translate yourself. I work in English, French and Lebanese Arabic, and you can move between them. Some things can only be said in the language they were lived in.
- I know the in-between from the inside. I grew up between Lebanon and France, between Islam and Catholicism, between a way of mourning that is expressive and one that is silent. When we create rituals together, I can meet you in your own references and beliefs, without imposing a frame that isn’t yours.
- War, exile and the way the world looks at us shape how we mourn. I don’t treat that as background. It is part of the work.
- Humour has its place. People are often surprised that we laugh in sessions. It lets us say heavy things without them crushing us, and it never means we take them lightly.
Am I the right person for you?
It is therapeutic work, and I am a grief counselor, not a clinician: I do not diagnose or treat mental health conditions. My work does not replace psychological or psychiatric care, and it can sit alongside it.
What I bring is training in grief and transgenerational analysis, more than eight years of teaching, and a lived experience of war, migration and loss. I explain what is happening and why, because understanding what you live through is already a way of carrying it differently. The training without the lived experience would not be enough, and neither would the lived experience without the training.
Training and credentials
- Death doula certification, Institut Deuils & Doulas de Fin de Vie (2023 to 2024)
- Further training in perinatal grief and grief after suicide, with Laurence Brun (2024)
- Transgenerational analysis, Levels 1 to 3, Institut Généapsy (2024 to 2026)
- Post-mortem make-up, Make Up For Ever Academy, Paris (2024)
- Certified trainer for Ensemble Formation (2025) and Happy End (2026); trainer for Greta Centre-Val de Loire and Eurinfac
- Research master’s in English language, literature and civilisation, University of Tours (2015); CAPES in English (2018)
In the community and the media
- Happy End ambassador in Tours since 2023, co-host of the Apéros de la Mort
- Guest on the Mosaic Identity podcast; profile on The Grief Hub; local TV, radio and press [add links]
- In practice in Tours since 2024
A few more things about me
I’m Lebanese and Tunisian by origin, born in Tours, and I spent two university years in the United States. I’m married, I have three tattoos, one of them for a friend who left too soon, and I love black cats, singing and horror films. When homesickness comes, I belly dance: the music and the movement give what I miss somewhere to go.
The question I hear most in a first conversation is « Is it normal to feel this way? » If you are asking it too, let’s talk.
[Book a free call →] [Get the free guide on migratory grief →]
- Master’s Degree (Research) in English Language, Literature and Civilization – University of Tours
- Certified English Teacher.
- Certified Death Doula – Institut Deuils & Doulas de Fin de Vie (France)
- Currently completing certification in Transgenerational Analysis – Généapsy Institute
- Trained in post-mortem make-up – Make Up For Ever Academy.
- Ambassador for the association Happy End and co-facilitator of “Les Apéros de la Mort” in Tours
- Co-facilitator of Family Cafés for Caton Funeral Homes in Tours and Orléans.
- Certified Trainer – Happy End and Ensemble Formation.
8+
years of teaching
2+
Years of therapeutic experience
7+
Partners
My approach
The Path of Aliveness
Aliveness is not a concept.
It’s a movement that begins in the body, passes through emotion and memory, and rises toward meaning.It’s the art of letting what has died be acknowledged, so that what longs to live may find its way again. This is not traditional therapy.It is a journey back to the living —
a space where the soul, the body, and the story meet.
My approach rests on four foundations:
Grief as transformation
Grief is not only about loss — it’s a passage toward meaning.
When it’s allowed to unfold, it becomes a creative force.
Transgenerational analysis
Understanding the invisible loyalties, repetitions, and emotional inheritances within our lineage.
Letting go of what is not ours to carry, and reclaiming our rightful place in the family story.
Symbolization and ritual
Words are not always enough.
The body, gesture, and ritual give form to what is unspeakable — they allow completion and renewal.
Embodied presence and breath
The body remembers what the mind has silenced.
Reconnecting with breath, rhythm, and sensation restores safety and vitality.
Testimonials
Words of passage
My role
Holding the Threshold
I work with gentleness, depth, and intuition, always allowing what emerges to guide the process.
The frame is steady yet alive — like a breath.
I invite the body, the story, the lineage, and the symbol to come into dialogue, so that the person can find coherence, meaning, and movement again.
1
To be a therapist of aliveness is to hold space for the threshold.
2
Not to save or to lead, but to walk alongside — within a grounded, ethical, and compassionate therapeutic framework.
3
To be present when the old no longer fits, when the new is not yet born, and when life, quietly, begins to move again.
4
Supporting the return to movement, so you can reinvest in your life.
Dania Balohé Lacourrège
Thérapeute de la Vivance | Thanadoula & Praticienne en Analyse Transgénérationnelle | Formatrice
My background
Between Heritage and Passage
Before becoming a therapist, I was a teacher, guiding minds and critical thinkers.
Life has since taken me to other shores — those of grief, change, and the deep memory of lineage.
Trained in grief accompaniment and transgenerational analysis, and deeply shaped by years of personal exploration — migration, war, loss, chronic illness — I have woven these dimensions into a unified practice:
Aliveness Therapy.
I accompany people through grief, trauma, illness, and profound transitions.
Those who no longer wish to survive, but to reinvest in life itself.
Together, we restore connection, meaning, and vitality — in the body, in the breath, in the present moment.
It is a work of transformation.
It is also, deeply, a work of love.
If you are ready to meet life again — in all its tenderness and depth —
I will walk with you, at your pace.
The passage begins the moment you stop running from what calls to be felt.