Grief and Loss Therapy

Grief doesn't follow the neat stages people talk about. It comes in waves, sometimes years later, sometimes over things nobody else seems to notice. And in a culture that wants us to be "over it" quickly, a lot of folks end up grieving alone.

What it can feel like

It might be that someone you love has died, and the world has carried on in a way that doesn't yet make sense to you. Or grief has stayed longer than you expected, and you're tired of feeling that you should be over it by now. You might feel numb when you thought you'd feel devastated, or furious when you thought you'd feel sad.

Not all grief is about death. You might be grieving a marriage, a friendship, a family you're estranged from, a pregnancy, your health, a country you left, or a life you thought you'd have. These losses are real, even when there's no funeral, and no one brings a casserole.

When grief gets complicated

Some grief is tangled up with a difficult relationship with the person who died: love mixed with anger, relief mixed with guilt, or grief for the relationship you never got to have. That kind of grief can be especially lonely, because it doesn't fit the story people expect.

The feelings people don't talk about

Sometimes the hardest part of grief is what you don't feel, or what you feel instead.

Relief is one of the most common feelings after a death, and one of the least talked about. It might come after months or years of caring for someone who was suffering, or after the death of someone who made your life harder. Feeling relieved doesn't mean you didn't love them, or that you wanted them gone. Often it means you've been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

Then there's not caring, or not feeling much at all. You might expect to be devastated, but instead feel flat or oddly fine, and then wonder what's wrong with you. Numbness can be the mind's way of protecting you until you're ready. And sometimes, honestly, the relationship was distant or painful enough that there isn't much grief there, and that can come with its own guilt.

None of these feelings make you a bad person. In therapy, there's room for all of it, including the parts you haven't said out loud to anyone.

How I work with grief

Bereavement has been part of my work from the very beginning. I started out at Kingston Bereavement Service in London, and more recently I designed and facilitated grief and loss groups at Verdant.

I don't think grief is something to fix or get through as fast as possible. In therapy, I will invite you to make room for all of it, including the parts that don't seem allowed, and to let grief be felt with someone alongside you instead of carried alone. Over time, many people find that grief changes shape. It doesn't disappear, but it becomes something they can live with, and sometimes something that deepens their sense of what matters.

Grief groups

When I ran grief and loss groups at Verdant, I designed the eight-week curriculum myself. We began with a letter: each person wrote to their five-year-old self about what that child needed to know, and how they'd look after them over the weeks ahead.

After that, each session opened with a poem. Two people each had half an hour to tell their life story, and we closed with open time together. Later in the group, everyone brought something that spoke to their grief: a poem, a paragraph from a book, song lyrics, anything that felt like a poem to them. Afterward, the group talked about the connections they noticed between that piece, the person's story, and their own experiences of loss.

In the final week, we wrote down what we were ready to let go of, took the papers out to the parking lot, and set fire to them. Then we sat down, shared the food everyone had brought, and said our goodbyes.

What I took from those groups is how much grief needs witnesses. Being heard, and hearing your loss echoed in someone else's, changes something that's hard to change alone.

Questions people often ask

Is it too soon, or too late, to come to therapy?
Neither. Some people come in the first raw weeks; others come years later, when grief they never had space for catches up with them. Both make sense.

Do you offer grief groups?
I would love to run grief groups again, but the answer is no: not right now.

What if I'm in crisis?
I'm not a crisis service. If you're in crisis, please call or text 988, or call 911.