Working with Grief & Loss

Losing a loved one, whether it is anticipated or not, disrupts the fabric of daily life and brings up questions about meaning, relationship with others, and how to be with difficult emotions. 

Distraction can help, momentarily. Coming from a mindfulness perspective, I offer my clients tools to connect with what is occurring in the moment and move through it. Any loss challenges our story of the way things are. Together, we can find ways to understand your life story that integrate grief and loss as powerful allies for moving forward with newly awakened awareness. While you might not be able to control the timing of life events, you CAN create and receive care for yourself in trying times.

 Heavy – Mary Oliver 

That time 

I thought I could not 

go any closer to grief 

without dying. 

I went closer, 

and I did not die. 

Surely God 

had His hand in this, 

as well as friends. 

Still I was bent, 

and my laughter, 

as the poet said, 

was nowhere to be found. 

Then said my friend Daniel 

(brave even among lions), 

“It is not the weight you carry 

but how you carry it— 

books, bricks, grief— 

it’s all in the way 

you embrace it, balance it, carry it 

When you cannot, and would not, 

put it down.” 

So I went practicing. 

Have you noticed? 

Have you heard 

the laughter 

that comes, now and again, 

out of my startled mouth? 

How I linger 

to admire, admire 

the things of this world 

that are kind and maybe 

also troubled— 

roses in the wind, 

The sea geese on the steep waves, 

a love 

to which there is no reply?