What Grief Counseling Is
Trauma Informed.
Grief often includes elements of trauma. I can help you learn strategies that can help lessen the chances of a traumatic experience turning into something more complex.
Grief focused.
Grief counseling focuses specifically on the processing and integration of loss. Occasionally, larger issues of personal history or family dynamics arise that are outside the scope of grief counseling work. In such situations, appropriate referrals to other mental health professionals can be made.
Flexible.
I see individuals and couples. Sometimes we meet weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, sometimes less frequently. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and we search together for what will be most helpful.
How Grief Counseling Can Help
Grief counseling can give you a safe space to process the complex emotions that accompany your loss. Many losses are not recognized, often dismissed, and rarely mentioned in our society. Having dedicated time and space where you can talk freely about what happened can be a tremendous gift.
Grief counseling can help you learn get underneath the parts of life that feel unmanageable under the cloud of grief. Often after a loss, things that once felt easy can feel difficult, places in which you once felt welcome can feel hostile, people with whom you were once at ease treat you differently. Grief counseling can help you learn how to anticipate and cope with those kinds of things as they inevitably arise.
Grief counseling can help you reengage your days in a way that honors both your loss and the gifts your life still holds.
General Grief Counseling
Non-death Losses
Anticipatory Grief
Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss
The loss of a pregnancy can be devastating. Expectations for the happy welcome of our child into the world are crushed.
Our wonderings about who our child will look like or whose personality she will have come to an end.
Our hopes for his little life and for our life together vanish.
Whether loss happens early in a pregnancy, even before we heard a heart beat, or later in a pregnancy, when everything seemed to be right on track, it can leave us broken-hearted and searching for help.
Whether the news of loss was anticipated, because we received a life-limiting fetal diagnosis, or whether the news comes simply out of nowhere, it can leave us feeling disoriented and not knowing what to do next.
Whether the loss comes after years of struggling with fertility or whether it comes after other healthy pregnancies, it can leave us traumatized and scared for the future.
In any case, under any circumstances, parents who know these kinds of losses are often helped by grief counseling. With the right support, healing is possible.
Death of a Child
Support families caring for a child with a potentially life-threatening illness or families expecting the birth of a child with a serious medical condition
Work with interdisciplinary team to address children and families’ physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and improve quality of life
Provide grief counseling to individuals and couples navigating the challenging circumstances of pediatric illness and/or death
What Grief Counseling Is
Trauma Informed.
The loss of a pregnancy or the death of a child is traumatic. The care needed for healing needs to be grounded in a solid understand understanding of trauma. The unique strategies for processing trauma can help lessen the chances of a traumatic experience turning into something more complex.
Grief focused.
Grief counseling focuses specifically on the processing and integration of loss. Occasionally, larger issues of personal history or family dynamics arise that are outside the scope of grief counseling work. In such situations, appropriate referrals to other mental health professionals can be made.
Flexible.
Sometimes parents benefit from one-on-one sessions. Other times, they benefit from meeting together as a couple or with other family members. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and we search together for what will be most helpful.
How Grief Counseling Can Help
Grief counseling can give you a safe space to process the complex emotions that accompany your loss. Perinatal loss is sometimes not even recognized, often dismissed, and rarely mentioned in our society. Having dedicated time and space where you can talk freely about what happened can be a tremendous gift.
Grief counseling can help you learn strategies for managing the parts of life that feel unmanageable under the cloud of grief. Often after a loss, things that once felt easy can feel difficult, places in which you once felt welcome can feel hostile, people with whom you were once at ease treat you differently. Grief counseling can help you learn how to anticipate and cope with those kinds of things as they inevitably arise.
Grief counseling can help you reengage your days in a way that honors both your loss and the gifts your life still holds. The greatest fear of bereaved parents is often that their child will be forgotten. Working with a grief counselor can help you find ways to honor and remember your baby as you move into the future and into a life still
full of so much potential.
I am a Certified Grief Counselor (GC-C). My educational background includes study and degrees in psychology and theology. I also have specialized training in Perinatal and Infant Bereavement, and I am a certified in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Practice. My counseling style incorporates warm conversation, the setting of realistic and challenging goals, and a broad awareness of the need for care of the whole person, body, mind and spirit.
I am a bereaved parent. I know the pain of losing a child. Our infant son Will died in 2005. Over and over, I have found that parents who are dealing with the death of a child benefit from the awareness that their counselor knows this pain directly.