Grief and Loss

The Cards Stopped Coming, and You’re Still Not Okay

Everyone around you has gone back to their regular life. Yours still has a hole in it.

At work, you hold the shape of a person who’s handling it.

Then you get home, and the evening hits you like a ton of bricks. The hobbies you used to love sit there like objects.

And the anger takes you by surprise. Snapping at someone over nothing – then sitting in the car afterward wondering where that came from.

A mother. A spouse. A best friend. The dog who met you at the door. Whoever you lost, your grief doesn’t rank itself by what anyone else thinks it should be worth.

Nobody Ever Taught You How to Do This

Here’s the part that gets left out of every conversation about grief.

You learned how to grieve in the house you grew up in. Or you learned how not to.

If feelings in your family got met with silence, or a change of subject, or a joke, that’s the training you’re running on right now.

Most of us were never handed a grieving ritual at all. So the grief goes somewhere else. It comes out sideways, as rage, or as flatness at the end of the day.

That makes sense. And it can be relearned.

Your Guilt About Feeling Better Keeps You Here

Some part of you treats a good day like a betrayal.

Ask what you’d want for the people you love if they were the ones left behind. You’d want them to keep you with them and go on living anyway.

Releasing someone means carrying the good of them forward with you. Punishing yourself has never brought anybody back.

Get In, Get It Out

My main tool is shadow work journaling. When your head is full, you write a to-do list and the anxiety drops.

The same thing happens when you write down what’s been living inside you. You can finally see it. And once you can see it, you can put it down.

Alongside the writing, we’ll use talk therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to trace where your guilt got built and what it’s been protecting.

When the loss has trauma folded into it, we work with that directly. I’ll also show you how grief moves, in waves. So the next one doesn’t knock you flat.

Twenty-three years with Child Protective Services in Alameda County put me next to a great deal of loss. Very little of it startles me.

Your Evenings Come Back to You

The waves keep arriving, but you learn to ride them.

Coming home stops meaning shutting down.

The things you used to enjoy start mattering again, a little at a time.

Anger has somewhere to go besides the people in front of you.

And your person stays with you, in the memories that are good to hold.

Let’s Start Where You Are

Reach out, and let’s schedule your free consultation.

We’ll talk about who you lost and where the heaviness sits now.

Grief is going to happen either way. Walking it with someone beside you makes it gentler.

I meet with clients by telehealth, so you can do this work from your own couch.

Call me directly today: (650) 483-5949.