Whispering Hope is the only consultancy in Singapore specialising in mental health and emotional well-being using the internationally-recognised, evidence-based Grief Recovery Method.
We help people and organizations make the crucial connection between Mental Health and Grief, and work with corporate clients and community partners to facilitate healthy Readiness, Response, Recovery and Resilience.
Our Vision
A world where people have learned how to thrive and rise again in their mental and emotional Resilience, by being Ready for, Responding and Recovering from life’s losses.
Our Mission
To journey with individuals, and to work with corporate clients and community partners in facilitating healthy Readiness, Response, Recovery and Resilience.
Our Goal
To equip people with the awareness, language and tools they need to be Ready, Respond and Recover, so that they can move forward in life with Resilience, hope and joy – despite life’s inevitable losses.
Our Story
Recovery is possible. We know, because we have been there.
We ourselves have walked the journey and bounced back from life’s losses, and are formally trained and certified by the Grief Recovery Institute.
Joan Swee
Founder & Director
With her deep expertise and unique perspective on grief recovery, Joan Swee founded Whispering Hope Singapore, an organization whose aim is to help Singaporeans learn to recover from grief.
Having lost her husband Henry to cancer when she was 35, and left to raise their two young sons aged 6 and 8, Joan has walked the long and lonely road of grief — and yet embodies a joy that transcends her losses.
In 1996, two years into widowhood, Joan co-founded a voluntary welfare organization in Singapore that focused on supporting the bereaved. She served on the management board for 20 years till 2016, authored and co-facilitated the organisation’s key program (a Grief work weekend) from 1998 to 2014, and ran the monthly bereavement support groups from 2011 to 2015. She was also directly involved in bereavement support, and counselled widows of all ages, ranging from age 20+ to 70.
Through the years, Joan’s love and compassion for the grieving have only grown stronger and deeper. She carries a deep empathy for every client, and lends the grieving a slender but sturdy shoulder to lean on.
With an irrepressible twinkle in her eye, Joan celebrates life, and the fact that her sons are now in their thirties and are thriving — despite having weathered great grief and profound loss. Joan is living proof that there is hope, despite the bittersweet losses of life. Henry must be proud, so very proud.
Joan holds a Master of Social Science in Professional Counseling from the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. She is a certified Grief Recovery Specialist® with Grief Recovery Institute Inc., and a certified Life Coach with Lifeforming Leadership Coaching, USA.
Gracie Mak
Co-Founder & Director
Having been the CEO of a medical centre in Singapore, and the Business Development Director of an international five-star hotel, Gracie Mak has a unique blend of 20+ years of senior management experience across MNCs, SMEs and non-profit organizations. Because of this, she has a deep empathy for corporate leaders and mid-career professionals in highly demanding roles.
As Co-founder and Grief Coach at Whispering Hope, Gracie spearheads Whispering Hope’s corporate outreach. She is armed with a passion and conviction to help people process their grief, and to bounce back from life’s losses. It is her joy to witness individuals, families and organizations thrive and rise again.
Having worked extensively with young adults and families, she found that many were not able to bounce back from setbacks and tragedies in life. Her quest for a more effective way to help people in such predicaments led her to the Grief Recovery Method®.
Today, Gracie works energetically toward the vision of a culture where people are comfortable with acknowledging the reality of loss and grief, and learn the skills of processing these complex emotions. That would be a huge cultural shift for a somewhat stoic Asian society, and one that she works tirelessly toward.
Gracie holds a Master’s degree in Organization & Leadership, focused on Organizational Development Consulting. She is a certified Life Coach (Lifeforming Leadership Coaching, USA), and a Grief Recovery Specialist® certified by the Grief Recovery Institute.
Joan’s Journey out of Grief
Grief is hard, but it need not break you. In fact, if left unresolved, grief can spill over and create bigger problems in life. This is Joan’s journey and how she found her way out of the pit of profound grief.
About the Grief Recovery Institute
Every of our Grief Recovery Specialists have been tested by life’s losses, and trained and certified by the Grief Recovery Institute.
The Grief Recovery Institute, headquartered in Oregon, USA, specializes in helping people with grief issues, using the Grief Recovery Method®. Its mission focuses on disseminating information about grief and the possibility of recovery from the impact of death, divorce, and other significant emotional losses.
Members of the Institute have appeared on CNN and other broadcast networks to help people understand emotional responses to national and international grief events – notably, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. They have also given hundreds of print and radio interviews relating to events such as the death of Princess Diana and other celebrities, plane crashes, and natural disasters.
The Institute also trains and certifies mental and medical health professionals, funeral directors, clergy, and others in the application of the principles and actions of The Grief Recovery Method® to help grieving people.
Over the last 40+ years, more than 500,000 people have completed the Grief Recovery Method® program across multiple countries, and in multiple languages.
Grief may be universal, but so is hope!