“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.”
— Wendell Berry
Grief being a universal part of life doesn’t make it any less life changing and painful. I know the visceral pain of loss - the cloudy, disorienting days after a loved one has died, the way that grief can manifest in the body through symptoms like nausea, headaches, tension, and fatigue, as if the pain of a person no longer being here is stalking your body. The discourse around grief can be isolating, often ripe with well-meaning but, at times, insulting platitudes, undesired advice, and discomfort from others who might struggle to tolerate the realities that come with death, dying, and grief.
Grief makes us understand hard truths about loving, life, and mortality, truths we might have intellectually understood prior to losing someone but understand on a more embodied level through lived experience. This experience can impact us physically, mentally, emotionally, and existentially. In the face of loss, we are often left existing inside questions like “What just happened?", “Whose life is this?”, and “What now?” while trying to survive the day to day. Our life suddenly becomes marked by a before and after, and it can be difficult to know how to deal with all that we are feeling or trying not to feel.
Death is not the only experience that brings grief. We experience loss around breakups, divorce, infertility, miscarriage, changes in identity and ability, estrangement from family and friends, relationships impacted by addiction, medical diagnoses given to yourself or a loved one, and more. All loss matters and all grief is worthy of support.
Suicide Loss
Losing someone you love to suicide can be uniquely painful. The fog of disbelief and shock is often especially thick when someone has died by suicide. The sense that others can’t understand can be particularly isolating, and processing grief in the face of a loss of this kind must take into account the type of loss you’ve experienced. It is completely understandable to be left struggling to make sense of what has happened and feeling a variety of complex, layered, potentially conflicting emotions. It is not uncommon for suicide loss survivors to grapple with guilt, regret, and self-blame. You don’t have to face those feelings alone. The gravity of losing a loved one to suicide leaves me with the utmost tenderness and respect when supporting clients in the face of this loss.
Caregiver Support
Perhaps you’re in the midst of caregiving or making sense of life after caregiving for months or years. You know days filled with medication management, intimate care tasks you might have felt ill-equipped to handle, and a whole host of emotions - love, awe, compassion sometimes right alongside fear, anger, and resentment. Caregiving can be a deeply meaningful and purposeful experience. Yet, with so few accessible social and systemic supports available in the U.S., we are often left caring for loved ones on our own. This goes against the interdependent, communal nature of humans and can be emotionally and physically taxing and seriously isolating. I bring both professional and personal experience with caregiving to therapy, and would be honored to support you.
Therapy for Grief & Loss might include:
Time & space to be with any and all emotions you are feeling, together
Building skills and supports for relating to your experience of grief
Exploring societal and cultural messaging you learned about grief and debunking any harmful ideas with education about grief and trauma
Remembering what was and giving voice to what you wish had been
Working together to grieve unanswerable questions and accept uncertainty
Investigating the stories you are telling yourself about this loss and working together to build narratives you can move forward with
Processing trauma related to this loss
Creating rituals to process grief/connect with your loved one
Finding ways to connect with your loved one and incorporate them into your life
Discussing socializing after loss - how you want to answer difficult questions, navigating if and how you want to share your story with others
Building community to counter isolation in your grief experience
Uncovering and embracing newfound needs you may have
Identifying your support system and practicing how to communicate with them