Grief and loss

Is it too late to bring this in?

No. Grief does not expire, and it does not always arrive on schedule. People come in about a loss from last month and about a loss from twenty years ago that they were too busy surviving to feel at the time.

Delayed does not mean broken. It usually means there was no safe place for it then.

Does it have to be a death?

No. People grieve a marriage, a career, a body that used to work differently, a country they left, a version of themselves who existed before something happened. Leaving service is a loss for many people, even when it was the right decision.

If it feels like grief, we can treat it as grief.

What is the work, if it cannot be fixed?

You are right that it cannot be undone, and I will not pretend otherwise. What changes is the size of the space it takes up, and what else is allowed to exist alongside it.

Two things are true at once here more than anywhere: this person or this life mattered enormously, and you are allowed to have a good day. Most people need help believing the second one is not a betrayal of the first.

What if I have not cried?

Then you have not cried. Grief does not have a correct format, and numbness is one of its most common ones, especially in people who had to keep functioning while it happened.

We work with what is actually there, not with what grief is supposed to look like.

Ready when you are.

Therapy starts with a conversation. Send a short message and tell me what is going on, in your own words. We meet in person in Omaha, and online across Nebraska and Rhode Island.