BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — Bishop Ronald Hardy is still grieving his wife one year after his wife, Robyn Hardy, died from COVID-19. She was one of the first in the Baton Rouge area to test positive and lose the battle.

Hardy has turned his grief into a way of giving back. He is now a certified grieving coach offering virtual grief coaching and writing a book on his journey to help others cope with loss.

“I’m helping others, in honor of her,” Hardy said.

The bishop is coaching the Dawson family, they lost their 27-year-old son four months ago.

“After the loss of my son, he came over to my house and we were talking about it. Having these conversations would not have made as much progress,” said Ken Dawson. “We learned to celebrate the life of the person that we lost.”

Hardy says grieving is hard to deal with no matter how you lose someone. Adding in the pandemic can make things harder.

“I realized to feel what I was feeling I knew others were feeling that, I was going to try my best to help them,” he said.

He’s putting the final touches on his new book to help many others like himself overcome grief.

“You see people have a breakdown, mental breakdown, five to 10 years from now because they never had that opportunity to properly grieve or you will see people on anxiety medication or having health problems because they never had the proper opportunity to grieve,” Hardy said.

The Bishop’s new book ‘Unexpected Journey’ is available here.