Grief and Loss
It has been a year, and that is supposed to mean something.
For grief that does not match the schedule other people expect, including losses that were not deaths. We do not work in stages and we do not aim at closure.
Overview
There is no correct timeline, and no closure to reach.
There is a widespread belief that grief comes in five stages and finishes. It does not, and the people who invented that framing did not intend it as a schedule. What actually happens is closer to weather. It moves. It is gone for three weeks and then a song in a hardware store takes your legs out. Two years in, a Tuesday can be worse than the first month, and there is nothing wrong with you when that happens.
Grief also arrives for losses nobody sends a card for. A parent who is alive and does not know you. A diagnosis that ended the future you had planned. A child who has stopped speaking to you. Estrangement, infertility, the friend who moved away. Ambiguous loss is grief without an event, which means it never gets the acknowledgment that lets other people make room for it. That is often the loneliest version.
At a Glance
- Adults and couples, in person in San Diego
- Telehealth Monday through Friday across California
- EMDR certified, Gottman and EFIT Level 1 trained
- Free 15-minute consultation
Individual sessions are $210, or $325 for 90 minutes. Couples sessions are $225, or $345 for 90 minutes.
Full fees and policiesDoes This Sound Familiar?
The specifics, not a symptom list
Open any line to see how I would think about it with you.
Open any line that feels familiar.
The Work
Not stages, and not closure
Room to say it out loud
Much of grief work is having one place where you do not have to manage the listener's discomfort or reassure anyone that you are doing well. Sometimes the whole hour is just the person being talked about, and that is the work.
Continuing bonds, not letting go
The current thinking, and my experience, is that people do not move on so much as carry the relationship differently. We look at what you want to keep, how you mark dates, and how the person stays present without your life stopping.
When it is stuck on the event
If the death or discovery itself is intrusive, replaying in images, EMDR can process that specific memory so it stops overwriting the rest of the relationship. We do not process the grief away. We take the trauma layer off the top of it.
The Arc
A shape, not a protocol
Everyone moves differently. This is how this particular work usually unfolds here.
The story, at your pace, with as much detail as you want, including the parts you have edited out for other people. There is no hurry in these sessions and nothing you say needs softening.
Questions
Answered plainly
Anything not covered here is worth asking on the free 15-minute consult.
Related Work
How long is grief supposed to last?
There is no supposed to. Timelines come from other people's discomfort more than from anything clinical. What we watch is whether it is moving at all, and whether your life is still narrowing a year or two later.
Is it normal to feel relief?
Yes, and it is one of the most common things people are ashamed to say. Relief after a long illness, or after a difficult relationship ends, is not a betrayal. It usually sits alongside the loss rather than replacing it.
What is ambiguous loss?
It is loss without a clear ending or without social recognition: a person present but changed, someone estranged, a future that will not happen. There is no funeral and no acknowledgment, which is exactly why it tends to go unprocessed for years.
Do you run a grief support group?
I do not currently offer groups. This is individual work, and it can be done alongside a community group if you find one, which some people find valuable for different reasons.
Will therapy make me stop missing them?
No, and I would not aim for it. The missing is part of the relationship continuing. What tends to change is that it stops arriving without warning and taking the whole day with it.
Free 15-Minute Consult
Fifteen minutes to find out whether this is the right work.
Tell me what is actually going on. I will tell you honestly how I would approach it and what to expect.
In person in San Diego, and by telehealth across California.