Tammy Fleming

Tammy is an American ex-pat whose permanent residency is Kyiv, Ukraine. Living in a city under nearly daily missile and drone attacks means she is constantly dealing with the conflicting emotions characteristic of many different kinds of grief and loss.  

Tammy was certified as a Grief Recovery Method® Specialist in 2017 and went on to become a Specialist Trainer for the Institute. She has been passionate about delivering the program and making it available to people in the countries where she spent many years working in Christian missions. Prior to the current state of war between Russia and Ukraine, in 2021 she organized the first certification training in the Russian language for fifteen native Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Certified Grief Recovery Method® Specialists living in five countries in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. She and the newly trained Ukrainian-based Specialists completed the Ukrainian language translation of The Grief Recovery Handbook in 2024. 

Loss came early in her life when, as an only child, both her parents died of aggressive cancers. As a missionary, she frequently uprooted and moved her family, which meant loss of relationships, security, culture, language and identity. The only way she knew to deal with the emotional pain from these moves and all the other losses and disappointments along life’s way was to look on the bright side, put up a brave front and “move on” as quickly as possible. In practice, that meant keeping very busy. She had no idea that while she was doing such a great job of keeping busy, she wasn’t actually “moving on” at all. Instead, important unfinished business from all kinds of losses and disappointments was stacking up, stealing her ability to be emotionally present for loved ones and systematically eroding her health. 

“When I finally experienced the Grief Recovery Method® with a certified Specialist,” Tammy says, “I was 56 and I had just spent an awful year consumed with anxiety about my relationship with my grown son, but I showed up mostly because I was interested in finding effective tools to help other people. I had very little idea how desperate my own need was!”

Tammy speaks conversational Russian is learning Ukrainian. She is married for nearly forty years to Andy Fleming, and they have two married children and three grandchildren. She studied comparative literature and creative writing at Cornell University and is a published author, consultant, and international speaker.