Areas of support
Grief keeps its own time.
Whether you are grieving a person, a relationship, a home, or a life you thought you would have, there is no deadline here. Your loss does not have to be recent, or tidy, or understood by anyone else to matter.
What it can feel like
Grief rarely moves in straight lines. Some days feel almost normal, and then a song, a smell, or a date on the calendar pulls everything back to the surface. On the outside you might be functioning well. You work, you answer messages, you keep things going, and inside there is a heaviness that does not lift. Sometimes it is not even sadness exactly. It can be numbness, restlessness, anger, or a strange guilt about the moments you feel okay.
Not every loss comes with a funeral. The end of a relationship, a change in your health, leaving a home or a country, a friendship that quietly faded, a future you had planned that is not going to happen: these are real losses, and they deserve real grief. If part of you keeps saying you should be over it by now, I want you to know that grief does not read the same clock the rest of the world does.
You might notice
- Waves of sadness that arrive without warning, then pass
- Feeling numb or far away when you expected to feel more
- Guilt about what you did or did not do, or about laughing again
- Dreading anniversaries, birthdays, and the firsts of everything
- Telling people you are fine because the truth feels like too much
- Anger that surprises you, at the situation, at others, even at the person you lost
- A body that feels heavier than usual: tired, foggy, moving through syrup
- Missing a version of your life as much as you miss a person
You don’t need to tick every box, or any of them neatly. If some of this feels familiar, that’s enough of a reason to reach out.
Pattern / Pause / Path
Pattern, pause, path: grieving in your own time
Grief is not a problem to solve, and I will not treat it like one. There are kinder ways to be with it: understanding what your grief carries, making room around it, and finding your footing again without leaving your loss behind.
Pattern
Many of us learned early what to do with loss. Keep busy, stay strong for others, do not make it a big deal. Those responses often began as ways to protect the people around us, or to keep life running when it had to. Together we look, gently, at how you learned to carry loss, and at what your grief might be asking for now.
Pause
In our sessions, there is space to slow down with what you are feeling instead of pushing through it. That might mean letting a wave of sadness move through without rushing to fix it, or noticing the guilt or anger underneath the numbness. Nothing has to be expressed perfectly. Sometimes the pause is just being with your loss in the company of someone who is not afraid of it.
Path
Over time, many people find the waves still come, but they move through differently, with a little more room to breathe. The path is not about getting over your loss or leaving it behind. It can look like keeping what matters close while slowly returning to the parts of your life that are still here. Meals with people you love, small plans, moments of ease that no longer feel like betrayal.
In sessions
How we work with grief together
We begin with your story of the loss, as much or as little of it as you want to share. Some people need to talk about the person or the life they lost in detail, more than once. Others barely have words yet. Both are welcome. I will follow your pace rather than a schedule, because grief does not keep one.
Depending on what fits, we might draw on narrative therapy to honour the story of what you lost and what it meant, or use parts work to sit with the part of you that is angry, or guilty, or afraid to feel it all at once. Acceptance and commitment therapy can help you carry grief alongside the things that still matter to you. We go slowly, and nothing is forced.
Ways of working I draw on
Sessions are 50, 75, or 90 minutes, by secure video anywhere in British Columbia. See the ways of working together or what sessions cost.
Not sure this is the right name for what you’re carrying? That’s okay. The free consultation is exactly for that.
Questions people ask
No. Grief does not expire, and it does not follow a schedule. Sometimes a loss from years ago surfaces when life finally slows down, or when a new loss stirs the older one. People often arrive apologetic, as if they should have dealt with it by now. There is no by now. If it is still with you, it still deserves attention, and we can begin wherever you are.
Yes. The end of a relationship, your health changing in ways you did not choose, leaving a home or a country, estrangement from family, a future you were counting on. These are losses, and they are grieved like losses. They often come without rituals or condolences, so this kind of grief can feel invisible, even to you. Naming it as grief is often where things begin to make sense.
It can stir things up, and I will be honest about that. But there is a difference between drowning in grief and being accompanied in it. We go at your pace. You decide what we touch and when, and we can always slow down or step back. Many people find that saying things out loud, to someone who can stay with them, makes the weight a little easier to carry.
Related areas of support
You do not have to carry this alone.
If you are grieving a person, or a life you imagined, recently or from long ago, you are welcome here. A free 15-minute consultation is a simple, no-pressure way to begin. We talk for a few minutes, and you can see how it feels.