Grief and Loss
"Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
― Jamie Anderson
When grieving, it can feel like you are hiking through a forest without a map
and building the trail as you go. Know we are here to help.
Our role in your grief journey is to walk alongside you and help you find the trail forward.
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Oftentimes, grief follows a natural path. It is a natural, personal process that evolves and changes as your life continues. In some cases, we can get stuck in grief, and we are struggling to move forward. Being stuck in grief can feel like depression, reliving the worst parts of the loss, or being unable to heal enough to continue forward.
Grief can be complicated by several factors, including one’s relationship to the deceased such as the loss of a spouse or child. When losses are unexpected and abrupt, deaths due to violence, or if there was prolonged suffering can all complicate the grief process as well.
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Any of these complicating factors can cause one to develop an emotional trauma response in addition to grief, also known as Traumatic Grief Response. To learn more about emotional trauma click here.
When grief is complicated by emotional trauma, therapeutic support, specifically trauma-focused treatment such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy can be beneficial for healing. EMDR therapy allows for the griever to heal the impact of the traumatic parts of the loss to allow for better integration of the loss and a more normalized grief process. To learn more about EMDR Therapy click here.
In our practice, we focus on helping you process and heal from the parts of the loss that are keeping you stuck.
We support you in learning to befriend grief and adapt to move forward in your life after loss. If you are feeling stuck or lost in your grief, we encourage you to connect and learn how our
therapeutic support during your grieving process could help.
Grief Support
Following Loss of a Child
विलोम Vilomah, in Sanskrit means “against a natural order”.
This term is used to describe parents who have buried their child. Child loss is the most difficult experience any parent can ever have. Grieving the loss of your child can feel like an impossible and insurmountable task. Child loss can feel isolating and is a grief experience that is unique in and of itself. Many people, including well-meaning and supportive friends and family, don’t understand and cannot relate to grieving parents. There are additional stressors involved for grieving parents, such as strain on the relationship between the parents, especially if you are grieving differently. Depending on the circumstance of death, some parents also experience intense feelings of guilt or hold themselves responsible for their child’s death. As a parent, you are not only navigating your own grief, but if you have other children, you are supporting them in their grief. Lastly, managing the busyness and complexities of parenting, while grieving an immense loss, is extremely difficult to do day in and day out.
Having worked in Neonatal Intensive Care and Pediatric Intensive Care Units, we have companioned and supported many families through the loss of their child. We understand the nuances and complexities involved in this type of grief, as well as the immense trauma that is child loss.
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Our role is to provide you with the support and understanding that many grieving parents have difficulty finding and getting you to a place where you feel like you can function in life. We walk alongside you and help you move towards finding a new normal, whatever that looks like, while integrating the memory of your child and honoring them in your life as you continue on.
