Karen van Vuuren is a clinical mental health counselor intern with more than two decades of professional experience as an end-of-life educator. Karen founded the non-profit, Natural Transitions in 2003 and was its executive director until 2024, editing its magazine and teaching workshops on conscious and holistic approaches to end of life. She is also the director of two hospice documentaries.
More recently, Karen founded a holistic funeral home, which she ran for seven years. A few years ago, she chose to build upon her understanding of how we transform and integrate loss by embarking on a career in counseling.
Karen’s counseling orientation is client-centered, acknowledging that grief is a unique process that invites us to individually define who we are in the light of loss and change. To that end, Karen supports her clients to understand that grief is not something we “fix.” Rather she presents a picture of grief as a natural unfolding, a journey we can navigate in a healthy way. To that end, existential questions around meaning and purpose, how we recommit to life, while honoring the significance of the loss, can arise on that journey towards healing. Karen’s role is to demystify the nature of grief and to support her clients to practice self-care while gently exploring these important questions.
In her spare time, Karen enjoys Colorado’s great outdoors, hiking and cross-country skiing. Karen grew up in the UK but has lived in eight countries, raising two children in Boulder. When asked which place she’s liked the best, the answer is always, “This one.”