Grief

Grief is one of the most universal human experiences and one of the least well-supported. People are given a few days off work, a casserole, and an expectation that they'll be back to normal within a few weeks. But grief doesn't work on anyone else's timeline. It shows up when it wants, takes forms you don't expect, and can resurface years after you thought you'd moved through it.

Therapy for grief isn't about rushing toward acceptance or finding the silver lining. It's about having a space where the loss is allowed to be exactly as big as it actually is, without someone trying to fix it, minimize it, or move you along before you're ready.

What grief can look like

Most people think of grief in the context of death, but people grieve all kinds of losses, the end of a relationship, a miscarriage, a diagnosis that changes what the future looks like, the loss of a version of yourself you thought you'd be, estrangement from family, the cumulative weight of disappointments that never got processed. Grief is grief regardless of whether anyone else validates the loss as significant.

It can look like sadness, or it can look like numbness, anger, guilt, relief, or a strange combination of all of them at once. It can make it hard to sleep or hard to get out of bed. It can show up as physical symptoms, as irritability, as pulling away from people, or as keeping so busy that there's no space to feel anything at all.

Grief in children and teenagers

Children and teens grieve differently than adults, and their grief is often misread. A child who seems fine a week after a loss isn't necessarily fine, they may be compartmentalizing in ways that surface months or years later. A teenager who seems angry rather than sad is often grieving. This practice has specific experience working with young people through loss, including helping parents understand what their child's grief actually looks like and how to be present with it.

There's no right way to grieve

The five stages are a framework, not a prescription. You don't have to move through grief in order, arrive at acceptance by a certain point, or feel any particular thing. The goal of grief therapy isn't to get over it, it's to find a way to carry it that doesn't break you.