Grief & Loss
Grief is often understood as something that happens after someone dies. In practice, grief is much larger than that.
Grief can arise from the ending of relationships, from infertility or miscarriage, from estrangement, from illness, and from transitions that mark us in ways we did not choose. It can also emerge through shifts in identity, aging, changes in the body, or the loss of a future we once imagined for ourselves.
Sometimes grief is not only about what has been lost. It can also be about what never fully came to be. The unlived life. The path not taken. The version of ourselves that existed in possibility or imagination.
Grief belongs to love, attachment, and meaning. It shows up anywhere something mattered.
Living in a Culture That Struggles With Grief
Many people are not given much support for grieving. There is often pressure to move on quickly or to stay productive. Grief can be treated as something to overcome rather than something to move through. When it lasts longer than expected or does not look the way others think it should, it can be misunderstood or pathologized. At the same time, many of the communal and ritual ways that grief has historically been held are less present in modern life. In many cultures, grief has been met with ceremony, witness, rhythm, and time. It has not been held in isolation. Without those containers, grief can feel disorienting or lonely even when it is a natural response to loss.
Grief is not only emotional pain. It is a process that moves through the emotional, bodily, relational, and sometimes spiritual parts of a person’s life. It can reshape how we experience time, memory, identity, and connection. It can change how we relate to ourselves and others. Grief is not something to fix or rush. It asks to be witnessed, given space, and allowed to move in its own way. For many people, it also becomes a place where meaning, love, and presence deepen over time.
How I Work With Grief
I work in a way that can hold a lot of emotional intensity. Many people come to grief work feeling overwhelmed by the size of what they are carrying, unsure how to approach it, or feeling alone in it. In our work together, there is space to slow things down and stay with what is present rather than moving past it too quickly. Grief is not something to solve or manage your way through. It is something to be met, witnessed, and supported over time.
I help people stay with experiences that feel too large or too heavy to hold alone. This often includes emotional processing and regulation, but also attention to meaning, narrative, and the way grief reshapes how a person understands their life. Symbolic and reflective work can be part of this, especially when words alone are not enough to make sense of what has been lost. Grief does not only live in the mind. It moves through the body, relationships, and sense of identity. Part of the work is learning how to stay in relationship with it without becoming overwhelmed or disconnected from yourself.
For some people, this work also includes exploring ways of marking loss or transition that feel meaningful. This may involve ritual or intentional practices outside of session that help create space for what has changed or what is no longer here. At its core, grief work is about learning how to stay present with change, loss, and love without abandoning yourself in the process.
Types of Grief I Work With
Grief is not limited to death. It can arise in many different places in a person’s life, sometimes in ways that are easy to name and other times in ways that are harder to identify or give language to. Grief I work with includes:
Loss of a loved one
Breakups, divorce, and relationship endings
Estrangement or rupture within family systems
Infertility, miscarriage, and pregnancy loss
Identity shifts and transitions across different life stages
Aging and changes in the body or capacity
Illness and changes in health
Career transitions or loss of a professional identity
Grief connected to unmet needs or experiences in childhood
Realization of patterns that can no longer continue in the same way
Existential grief related to meaning, mortality, and the human condition
Grief connected to the future you imagined that no longer feels available
All of these are forms of grief. They may look different, but they often require similar kinds of attention, care, and space.