Understanding Grief: It's Not Just About Death
Grief is the natural response to loss—and loss comes in many forms. While we often think of grief as something we experience after a death, the truth is that we grieve many different kinds of losses throughout our lives.
Death of a Loved One
The loss of someone you love—parent, partner, child, friend, or pet. Each relationship is unique, and so is each grief. There's no "right" way to grieve, and there's no timeline for when grief should be "over."
Anticipatory Grief
Grieving while someone is still alive but facing a terminal illness or dementia. This type of grief often feels confusing because you're mourning someone who is still physically present, and it can come with guilt, exhaustion, and complex emotions.
Complicated Grief
When grief becomes persistent and interferes with daily life, making it hard to move forward. This can happen when the loss was traumatic, sudden, or when the relationship was complex or unresolved.
Non-Death Losses
Divorce or relationship endings, career loss, moves or relocations, miscarriage or infertility, health diagnoses, loss of identity or dreams. These losses are real and deserve to be grieved, even though our culture doesn't always recognize them as legitimate grief.
Disenfranchised Grief
Grief that isn't socially recognized or validated—like losing an ex-partner, a friend, a pet, or a miscarriage. Just because others don't understand your loss doesn't make it any less real or painful.
Collective Grief
Shared loss experienced by communities—natural disasters, violence, pandemic losses, or social injustices. Living in Oakland, many of us carry collective grief alongside our personal losses.
If you're experiencing deep sadness, feeling stuck, struggling to find meaning, or carrying unresolved pain from a loss (recent or long past), grief support can help you move through it with compassion and care.
Grief Recovery Method Meets Brainspotting
As a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist and Certified Brainspotting Therapist, I combine two powerful approaches to help you heal from loss—one that addresses the actions of grief recovery, and one that processes grief at the deepest level in your nervous system.
The Grief Recovery Method: Action-Based Healing
The Grief Recovery Method is an evidence-based program that provides concrete tools and a clear path through grief. It helps you:
- Identify and complete the unfinished emotions that naturally follow loss
- Learn what grief actually is (and what it isn't)
- Understand why common grief advice often doesn't help
- Take specific actions to move through grief rather than staying stuck
- Find completion with the relationship or loss
- Discover how to carry love forward while releasing pain
Brainspotting: Processing Grief at Depth
While the Grief Recovery Method gives you a roadmap and specific actions, Brainspotting helps you process the deep emotional and somatic pain of grief that lives in your body and nervous system.
Grief isn't just something we think about—it's something we feel physically. The tightness in your chest, the heaviness in your body, the wave of tears that comes unexpectedly—these are all grief living in your nervous system.
Brainspotting allows you to access and release this stored grief safely. By finding the eye position that connects to your grief activation, your brain can process and integrate the loss at a deep level. Many clients describe finally being able to cry, to feel the full weight of their loss, and then experience genuine relief.
Why Combining Both Works
The Grief Recovery Method gives you the actions and understanding to move through grief intentionally. Brainspotting gives you the neurobiological processing to release grief that's been stored in your body. Together, they offer both a path forward and deep healing.
Depending on your needs, we might use one approach or integrate both. Some clients find structure and action helpful, while others need the spaciousness of Brainspotting. There's no single right way—we'll find what serves your healing.
Grief in the Oakland Community
Oakland is a community that has experienced profound collective losses—from displacement and gentrification to violence and the ongoing impacts of systemic oppression. Many Oakland residents carry both personal and collective grief, and these layers often intertwine.
Additionally, the Bay Area's fast pace, emphasis on productivity, and "moving forward" culture can make it hard to slow down and truly grieve. Grief needs space, time, and permission—all things our culture often doesn't provide.
In our work together, I honor all dimensions of your grief—personal, collective, and cultural. Your grief doesn't need to be "fixed" or "solved"—it needs to be witnessed, felt, and moved through with care.
I also recognize that different cultures have different relationships with grief, death, and loss. I welcome and respect your cultural background and how it shapes your grieving process.
What Healing from Grief Looks Like
Healing from grief doesn't mean "getting over it" or forgetting. It means finding a way to carry your loss that doesn't consume you—to hold both the love and the pain, and gradually feel the pain soften while the love remains.
Not "Getting Over It"—Finding Completion
Our culture often expects grief to follow a timeline or reach an endpoint where you're "over it." But that's not how grief works. You don't stop loving someone because they're gone. You don't forget a dream you had to release.
Instead, healing means finding completion with what was lost—saying what needs to be said, feeling what needs to be felt, and discovering how to move forward while honoring what came before.
Finding Meaning
One of the most powerful aspects of grief work is discovering meaning in loss. This doesn't mean the loss was "meant to be" or that there's a silver lining. It means finding ways that your loss has shaped you, taught you, or deepened your capacity for compassion—both for yourself and others.
Carrying Love Forward
The ultimate goal of grief work is learning how to carry forward the love from what you lost while releasing the pain that keeps you stuck. Your love doesn't have to die with your loss—it can transform and continue to be part of your life in new ways.
Healing looks like being able to remember without being overwhelmed. It's laughing again without guilt. It's feeling the full range of emotions—joy and sadness, hope and grief—without one canceling out the other. It's living fully while honoring what was lost.
What to Expect in Grief Therapy
Initial Sessions
We'll start by understanding your loss, your relationship to it, and what you need most right now. Some clients need space to talk and be heard. Others need tools to manage overwhelming emotions. Still others are ready to dive deep into processing. We'll follow your pace.
The Grief Recovery Program
If we work with the Grief Recovery Method, we'll move through a structured program over 6-8 sessions. This includes education about grief, exercises to identify unfinished emotions, and specific actions for finding completion. You'll have workbook assignments between sessions to deepen the work.
Brainspotting for Grief
If we use Brainspotting, sessions involve identifying where grief lives in your body, finding the eye position that activates it, and allowing your nervous system to process and release. This work is gentle but deep—you'll feel held and supported throughout.
Ongoing Support
Grief isn't linear. There will be waves, anniversaries, and unexpected triggers. I provide ongoing support as you navigate these ebbs and flows, helping you build resilience while honoring your continuing bond with what was lost.
Ready to Begin Grief Healing?
Schedule your free 15-minute consultation to learn how grief recovery and Brainspotting can help you move through loss with compassion.
Serving Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and throughout the Bay Area • In-person and telehealth available