Some experiences do more than hurt. They change what feels true, what feels possible, and what feels important going forward.
When your old story no longer fits, the GROWTH Journey helps you build a new one that can carry what you’ve lived through.
Start Your Journey
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A PATH TO MEANING FOLLOWING A PAINFUL OR DISORIENTING TIME IN YOUR LIFE?
Hi. I'm Mark. I created the GROWTH Journey with you in mind.
Helping people grow and find meaning when they've faced trauma and other life crises is my passion. I got into this work because of my own experience with tragedy and my observations of others whose lives were reshaped by hardship.
After years studying the science of wellbeing under top researchers, and building on lessons I learned spending time with others who've been forged by the unthinkable, I developed the GROWTH Journey to share a set of tools, ideas, and ways of thinking that can help restore balance after major upheavals.
This program is for people who are seeking meaning after trauma or tragedy, who feel compelled to make something good out of experiences that have been painful, scary, or heartbreaking, or who are hurting but hopeful. Many of us find ourselves suprised over time that we have grown stronger and deeper in the midst of our despair.
Our worst, most overwhelming, and painful experiences can leave us feeling powerless and pessimistic.
These experiences can shake the foundations of our worldviews and personal narratives. We can feel disoriented and unmoored from a way of seeing the world that worked for us before but no longer seems to make sense. At times, distressing thoughts intrude, and we might have difficulty focusing on anything besides what has hurt us.
But as time passes, we may begin to regain control over our thoughts and our lives.
We reflect on what happened and what it means for us. That's when trauma, loss, and adversity can begin to transform us in profound ways. Posttraumatic growth, what researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun have defined as the “experience of positive change that occurs as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life crises," may lead us to greater appreciation of life, new possibilities for the future, warmer and more intimate relationships, increased personal strength, and a deeper spiritual life and sense of meaning.
We can discover strengths we didn’t know we possessed, find ourselves loving more fully, appreciate what really matters, and live with greater purpose, connection, and integration.
We might find we love what we are becoming even though we grieve for the "before times," and we can flourish even though parts of our life have felt overwhelming or beyond our capacity to cope.
- New Possibilities. We may experience ideas about new possibilities and opportunities in our lives, like pursuing a new goal, travelling, or being of service to others.
- Appreciation of Life. We may experience greater appreciation of life as well as changes in our priorities, taking time to savor the small things and value what may have previously been taken for granted.
- Relating to Others. We may find ourselves connecting in ways that are warmer and more intimate, identifying with the suffering of others, and feeling we can help.
- Personal Strength. We may find we have a greater sense of strength and preparedness for the next crisis and that some things we used to worry about are not as big of a deal.
- Spiritual Change. We may find we change spiritually within a religious practice or in our relationship with or understanding of God, a higher power, nature, or existence.
I wish things were different.
I wish you didn't have the experience that brought you to this transformative moment in your life. But I'm honored you'd consider having me join you on your journey.
My love for helping others grew from my own encounter with tragedy, but the GROWTH Journey is based on more than my personal experiences and observations.
Before developing the GROWTH Journey, I spent years studying positive psychology, wellbeing, resilience, and posttraumatic growth and supporting people on their journeys to find meaning, purpose, and personal growth after the worst experiences in their lives.
I now serve on the instructional team at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, where I previously earned a master's degree in applied positive psychology, and I help teach courses on positive psychology applications and research methods to undergraduate and graduate students.
I've filled the GROWTH Journey with what I learned directly from top researchers and thinkers in these fields, hoping to equip you with the most promising tools to help you cultivate some of the good outcomes that can come from what you've been through.
You Don't Have to Be Sure to Begin
The GROWTH Journey is a self-paced, research-based program for people whose lives were disrupted by serious adversity and who want support integrating what happened without minimizing it or being rushed. That's why you can start for free, see if it's for you, and continue at your own pace if it feels right.
Start Your Journey
INTRODUCING
The GROWTH Journey
Growth- and Resilience-Oriented Wellbeing and Transformational Healing (GROWTH) is a 16-week guided journey designed to help you integrate your past, embrace the present even when it's different from what you envisioned, and intentionally shape a future that reflects what matters most to you.
Applying the science of positive psychology, resilience, and posttraumatic growth, this journey does not aim to make the hard parts of your life go away. Instead, it helps integrate hardship, restore coherence, and cultivate growth after profound life disruption.
Start Your Journey
You’ll explore the science of wellbeing and posttraumatic growth and take the first steps on your journey to greater wellbeing, resilience and transformation. You’ll prepare a journal to reflect and reinforce what you learn about yourself and complete foundational reflections to guide your practice and vision.
Generate Good Feelings and Experiences
You’ll examine the role of emotional intelligence, positive emotions and pleasant experiences in times of distress. You’ll engage in exercises to intentionally cultivate good feelings and experiences because you’re worthy of feeling good and because feeling good can help you see more clearly and build momentum for healing and change.
Envision a Good Future
You’ll explore the concepts of optimism and hope to understand how envisioning a good future can guide your present thinking and actions. Optimism and hope make growth more likely and remind you that positive things can happen even though you're going through something that might seem impossibly difficult.
See the Good in Yourself and Others
You’ll learn about character strengths to understand and reflect on the best qualities in yourself and the people around you. You’ll practice using your strengths to make resilience and growth feel natural while looking to the strengths of others for inspiration and connection.
See More Good in the World
You’ll explore how your assumptions about the world and your place in it may have been shaped by trauma and hardship and practice strategies for intentionally cultivating awareness of what’s good in the world. Having a balanced view of the world supports wellbeing, growth, and resilience.
Grow in Wise Responding
You’ll examine the shortcuts your brain might take to think quickly in stressful times and the ways those shortcuts can lead you astray. You’ll practice strategies for identifying and avoiding these thinking traps in times of distress or conflict. Slowing down and being intentional about your thinking is a resilience skills that allows your hard-earned wisdom to work for you and others.
Grow in Connection to Others
You’ll learn about the role that relationships play in wellbeing and how trauma and adversity can lead to warmer relationships with the people around you. You’ll explore the ways that people may have helped you get through the tough experiences you've had and how you can use what you learned to be there for others.
Grow in Gratitude
You’ll explore how gratitude supports wellbeing and resilience, and you’ll practice exercises to make gratitude a habit and emphasize the things you appreciate most in your life, a key domain for posttraumatic growth. Gratitude and appreciation can increase your sense of meaning and wonder, even in a world that has contained pain and difficulty for you.
Grow in Purpose and Forgiveness
You’ll explore new possibilities for your future, and you’ll take action to try something new and meaningful for the future. You'll also reflect on and practice forgiveness to let go of parts of the past that aren't serving you, and you’ll consider how to make pusuing your purpose align with your life and values. This module is about integrating the past and moving deliberately into a future that is different.
Crystallize Your New Narrative
You’ll consolidate what you’ve learned about yourself, your past, and the people and world around you to craft a new narrative of growth. Recognizing the wisdom that your experiences and intentional efforts have endowed you with, you’ll plan to model and share what’s valuable for your own benefit and that of those around you.
A Structured but Flexible Path to Make Sense of What You've Been Through
Through guided practices grounded in positive psychology and posttraumatic growth research, the GROWTH Journey helps you honor and reflect on the past, strengthen what’s emerging in the present, and move forward with greater clarity, confidence, and self-trust.
Start Your JourneyWho is the GROWTH Journey For?
The GROWTH Journey is for adults who have had a painful or highly distressing life experience like trauma, grief, or betrayal, a major setback or feeling that they've let themselves down, or other substantial adversity that feels like a personal turning point.
- You may benefit from the program if you're interested in exploring both painful and positive aspects of your experiences with an eye toward identifying and building your strengths, developing habits of thought and action that support personal thriving, and engaging in good and meaningful ways with the people and world around you.
- Many of the practices and exercises in the GROWTH Journey have been adapted from activities shown to support flourishing in many different groups, applying positive psychology concepts and research that are broadly beneficial to many of us. In that sense, the program is likely to benefit a wide range prople. But this journey is spefically designed for examining and integrating really difficult experiences you've had and to support you in charting a path toward a more meaningful life for yourself and others.
- Not everyone who has been hurt is ready for the GROWTH Journey (and that doesn't mean they won't be at some point in the future). This program is intended for people who are not in need of clinical care or therapy for PTSD or other mental health disorders, or, if they are in need of such care, they are receiving it, and they have informed their clinician of their plan to participate embark on this journey.
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning