Grief is a living thing.
Loss is not a problem to be fixed, or something you are expected to get over. It can change your relationships, your sense of yourself, and the life you thought you were going to have. There is no one way to grieve. There is no right way. Sorrow, anger, numbness, longing, relief, confusion—even feelings that seem to contradict one another—can all belong to the experience. There is certainly no time limit. Our work begins with what comes up for you, rather than what anyone thinks grief ought to look like. We can make room for what has changed, for what remains, and for what it means to live with a loss that cannot simply be undone.
When the world you knew has changed
Loss can reach into nearly every part of life: the conversations you can no longer have, the future you expected, the relationships that feel different now—even going to the grocery store. Sometimes the people around you recognize the loss but not all the ways your world has changed. And the circumstances matter. A death that was sudden, violent, or preceded by years of uncertainty can leave very different questions in its wake. So can the loss of someone whose relationship with you was complicated by anger, distance, or harm. There may be questions without answers, or things you cannot yet say aloud, let alone say to yourself. I don’t think the particular circumstances of a loss, or the complexities of a relationship, should be flattened into a general explanation of grief. We can pay attention to the particular relationship, the particular loss, and how you are living with it—without deciding in advance what it ought to become.
Making room for the whole story
I work with people experiencing complex and traumatic grief, including bereavement following suicide, homicide, multiple deaths, and the death of children. I also work with loss in the context of war and conflict, where grief may involve not only death, but disappearance, displacement, and the loss of home or community. These experiences can bring questions that don’t fit easily into ordinary conversations about loss—what happened, what might have happened differently, what others believe, and what no one seems willing to hear. Sometimes our conversations are about the person who died. Sometimes they are about the living: a partner who grieves differently, a family that has become difficult to recognize, or a world that seems to expect you to be who you were before. We may return to the same memory many times, or discover that something seemingly insignificant carries more meaning than we initially understood. I’m interested in what you bring, what may be difficult to speak about, and what unfolds as we talk. I don’t expect everything to make sense, or every question to have an answer—easy or otherwise. You don’t need to arrive with a coherent story. We can begin with what you have.