Dania Balohé Lacourrège

My grief began with a departure. I am Lebanese on my father’s side, Tunisian on my mother’s. I lived in Lebanon from the age of six and a half to thirteen, years shaped by war before I had the words for it. Lebanon was then under Syrian occupation. And since the Lebanese borders were never fully respected, I remember Israeli surveillance planes flying over the garden while I played with my sisters, my grandmother calling us inside because the planes were back. In 2006, war broke out between Lebanon and Israel five days before we were due to fly in for the summer — so instead we spent that summer glued to the phone, trying to reach family between bombings, watching the massacres on the news. Leaving Lebanon at thirteen was its own loss — one separate from any death. I was born in France and lived there until I was six, so I wasn’t a stranger to French culture, but going back still meant losing the world I’d grown up with: a huge, present extended family — great-uncles, great-aunts, my father’s cousins — always around, always close. In France, I had to rebuild a sense of belonging from nothing, and face racism while doing it. That uprootedness was its own grief, with no death attached to it.

After years as a tenured literature teacher in France, a chronic illness diagnosis in 2022 pushed me to ask myself what I actually wanted to give my life to. The answer had been there since childhood: grief work. I trained as a death doula with the Institut Deuils-Doulas de Fin de Vie in Besançon. I took two deeper courses on grief after suicide and perinatal grief, and I am currently completing my third-level certification as a transgenerational analyst with Genéapsy.

My specialty is grief within theSouth West Asia and Northern African diaspora — grief shaped by immigration, by colonialism, by wars lived across multiple generations. As a transgenerational analyst, I work with what has been silently transmitted from one generation to the next: the fear, the loyalty, the unspoken losses that can quietly hold someone back from a life transition — because loss, in my practice, is not only death. It is every threshold that asks you to leave something behind.

My approach is therapeutic, decolonial, and spiritual. I believe therapy is political. What happens nationally and internationally — including what is happening right now in Palestine and in Lebanon — shapes our mental and emotional health, and I will not ask you to leave that at the door. In our work together, injustice, anger, and disillusionment in the face of discrimination and colonial violence can be named for what they are. When it’s needed, I also open space for the spiritual: mediumship readings, contact with deceased loved ones, and rituals we build together to honor ancestors, say goodbye, and free yourself from what was never yours to carry.

Over the past two years, I’ve worked with individuals and partnered with senior residences, funeral homes, and a perinatal health clinic to train staff on perinatal grief. I co-facilitate grief café-style gatherings with the association Happy End, and I’ve spoken about death doula work on local TV and radio, and in local press.

Whether you’re navigating a death, a migration, or a life transition shaped by what was passed down to you, there’s a place for your grief here — in French, in English, or in Lebanese Arabic, in person in Tours or virtually.

Start with a free discovery call, where we’ll talk through what you’re carrying and whether a one-off session, a psychic reading, or The Aliveness Program is the right next step.