Compassionate support for the losses in life that shape us.
Grief and Loss Therapy in Boulder and Online Across Colorado.
Grief is love with nowhere to go.
It doesn't follow a timeline. It doesn't resolve on schedule. And it certainly doesn't need to be fixed. It deserves to be held with care.
We are not very good, as a culture, at grief. We give it two weeks. We say things like “at least” and “everything happens for a reason.” We mistake the absence of visible tears for healing. We make people feel that their grief is somehow excessive or inappropriate if it goes on too long, or doesn't look the way grief is supposed to look. But your grief isn’t wrong. It means something mattered. It means you loved something, a person, a pet, a place, a version of your life, a future you had imagined… and now it's gone. And the world, with its relentless forward motion, keeps asking you to keep up.
Some of what I hear most often from the people who find their way to me:
"Everyone keeps telling me to move on, but I can’t. It’s really frustrating. I feel like something is wrong with me."
“I burst into tears whenever I see something that reminds me of my life before all this."
"I don’t know what to say or how to act when people ask how I’m doing.”
“I constantly feel overwelmed and exhausted. Everything feels hard."
“I've gotten so good at holding it all together. No one knows how painful this still feels.”
"I lost my independence, my career, my whole identity. It’s not fair.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore. Everything feels different and uncertain."
“I don't want to burden the people around me anymore. I should be over this by now.”
“I feel so alone. People who haven't gone through something similar just don’t understand."
If any of these landed — you're in the right place.
First, a few important things to note about grief.
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is the natural and necessary response to love and loss. It doesn't need to be fixed or managed or moved through on a timeline. It needs to be witnessed, honored, and held with patience and genuine care.
Grief and identity are deeply intertwined. When we lose someone or something central to our lives, we often lose a piece of ourselves too. The person you were as someone's partner, parent, colleague, or child. The self you knew when your body worked, or your career was intact. Grief asks not just "how do I live without this?" but "who am I now?"
There is no hierarchy of loss. The grief you feel over a beloved pet or loved one is just as real as the grief of losing a career you gave your life to, or a relationship ending, or a diagnosis changing everything, or a future you had planned suddenly disappearing. All of it deserves attention. You don't need permission to grieve.
Moving forward and healing from a great loss isn't about forgetting or letting go. It's about finding a way to carry what you've lost with you — integrated into who you are, present but no longer crushing. The love doesn't have to end for the acute suffering to ease.
— THE TYPES OF LOSSES I WORK WITH
Grief comes in many forms, and not all of them are always recognized or validated by the people around us. I work with the full range of loss.
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The death of a partner, parent, child, sibling, friend, or anyone whose absence has left a particular shape in your life. Including sudden loss, anticipated loss, traumatic loss, and the complicated grief that comes when the relationship was difficult.
The grief of losing a beloved animal companion is just as real and significant, though frequently minimized by others. It deserves real space and real support.
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The grief that comes with chronic illness, injury, disability, or a diagnosis that changes how you live, what you can do, and who you understand yourself to be. This is one of the least recognized and most isolating forms of grief.
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The grief of work that was more than a job — that was a calling, a community, an identity. Particularly for civil servants, USAID and humanitarian workers, mission-driven professionals, and others who gave their working lives to something meaningful and had it taken away.
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Divorce, separation, the end of a long partnership, or the quiet estrangement that sometimes grows between people over time. Including the particular grief of a relationship ending that you wanted to save.
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Grieving a loss before it happens — a terminal diagnosis, a declining parent, the approaching end of something you love. This grief is real and present even though the loss hasn't fully arrived yet.
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Grief for someone who is still alive but no longer present in the same way — through dementia, addiction, mental illness, estrangement, or other circumstances. This is one of the most disorienting and least supported forms of grief, because it exists without the social rituals and recognition that surround death.
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Loss that others don't recognize or validate as real grief — a pregnancy loss, the end of a friendship, the loss of a home or community, a miscarriage, a role that ended. If you've felt like you don't have permission to grieve what you're grieving, that feeling itself is worth bringing to therapy.
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Carrying multiple losses at once, or losses that have stacked over time without enough space to process each one. This can leave people feeling overwhelmed, numb, or emotionally depleted in ways that are hard to trace back to any single event.
— HOW I CAN HELP
Grief is seldom a linear path or straightforward journey. It often requires a whole person appraoch that allows you sit in the hard places without an agenda about where you should be heading.
Tending to Your Heart & Body
Grief is a physical experience as much as an emotional one, often leaving you feeling depleted and disconnected from yourself and the world around you. Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and mindfulness, we’ll work on expanding your capacity to sit with difficult emotions without being swallowed by them. By integrating DBT-informed skills, we’ll also help you build out a toolkit of techniques that provide a sense of stability when the waves of loss feel most unpredictable, helping you find a rhythm that honors both your pain and your need for rest.
Exploring & Honoring Your Grief
Loss often fractures our sense of self, leaving us to figure out how to carry a version of "us" that no longer feels whole. Using somatic Internal Family Systems (IFS) and depth-oriented, contemplative practices, we’ll create a safe space to explore and process the the many different angles of your grief. We’ll honor your unique story while making space for the "big questions” that often come with loss and change, so that you may slowly move toward a place of inner peace where you can hold your pain with greater insight, compassion, and care.
Having walked my own path through profound professional and personal loss and chronic pain, I would be honored to sit in the heavy places of grief with you.
How It Works
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A real conversation, no pressure, no commitment. You share what you've been dealing with, I share how I work, and we both get a sense of whether this might be the right fit.
If you decide to move forward, sessions are 50 minutes. We can meet weekly or every other week depending on what works best for you. I offer in person therapy at The Grove in Boulder or online anywhere in Colorado.
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In the beginning, sessions will focus on building trust and giving your grief the room it deserves. We explore the stories, memories, and patterns that define your loss. Whether your grief is fresh or has been carried in silence for years, we’ll work to better understand how it has impacted your identity and your sense of safety in the world.
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Healing doesn't mean "moving on.” It means moving forward with what has happened. Once rapport and understanding are established, and you feel ready, we’ll move into the active work of integration, untangling the complicated parts of loss like guilt, regret, or anger. We focus on practicing self-compassion skills and making values-based choices that honor your past while slowly opening up space for a meaningful future.
READY TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP?