If you’re here because you’ve recently experienced a loss, I’m sorry you’re here. And I’m hopeful that something in this article helps you feel seen and held in your heartache.
Read on to learn more about grief support: what it is, (and what it isn’t), what kinds of grief can be brought to support, and how you can get care as you navigate the new landscape of your loss.
What is Grief support?
At its core, grief support is a safe environment for you to share the story of your loss with someone who cares and provides non-judgmental, compassionate space.
Grief support provides you a place to simply Be – with all of it. With your sorrow, with your rage, with your tears, with your memories. My clients and I often do all three – sometimes in the span of a single session. There are no emotions that are unallowed. When clients wipe away tears, I encourage them to weep more.
I never rush the process. I never prescribe. It takes as long as it takes: love and heartache and grief – all tangled together.
What kind of grief can I bring to a grief support session?
Though it might be common to think of all grief as death loss, grief can come in many forms: mourning the ending of a relationship (a breakup or divorce), the death of a beloved soul-pet, or even stepping into a different season in life.
Each of these are seismic shifts, and each loss brings with it its own type of grief. I believe each of these losses deserves to be honored, seen, and moved through.
What is grief support not?
Grief support is not clinical mental health therapy. I do not label my clients with depression, anxiety, or anything that requires clinical training to diagnose. Clinical interventions are also not provided in grief support.
Instead, I lean into tools that are born from four things: my specialized grief training, my lived experience of grief, my experience in supporting clients through a variety of losses, and my own soul’s intuition.
Although some parts of the grieving process can overlap with depression, that does not mean you are necessarily experiencing a depressive episode requiring clinical intervention. My heart has cracked open when I witness the suffering of my clients born from inappropriate labels like prolonged grief disorder, leading people to ask of my clients, “What? You’re still grieving the death of your mother? But she died a year ago. You should be over it by now.”
At the heart of grief, I have observed in my work with clients, is storytelling. Having the story of their pain witnessed and heard, and sharing the stories of their loss. Simply being able to validate your experience, rather than tell you to “get over it by now,” is an incredibly powerful act of witnessing.
Grief support and mental health counseling can be combined…or not.
Sometimes potential clients will ask me: can I work with you if I am also working with a therapist? My answer is always yes.
I have worked with clients from both sides of the spectrum: some who come to me after working with non grief-specific therapists and who had poor experiences, or clients who do choose to add me to their care team in addition to their clinical therapist.
I like to think both therapist and doula are similar roles, but on slightly differering capacities. Together, they form a holistic sort of care.
What do I get in grief support?
Mostly, I find that people simply want to talk, talk, talk and share about their loss. I once sat for twenty minutes, uninterrupted, as a client rambled on – and I was eager to listen.
While we work together, I provide a treasure chest of grief resources. This could include sample readings from books (let’s be honest, reading an entire book isn’t always in the cards while reeling in the aftermath of a loss), short articles, exercise suggestions, and guidance for shaping rituals to honor the loss.
Additionally, I keep thorough notes of our sessions and provide them to you for further reflection – all in your timing.
In those notes, I include questions or prompts to go deeper – things we may not have mentioned in-session.
Armed with my expertise in grief, I offer various frameworks through which you can learn to understand your grief – including metaphors, and research-backed models of grief. Through this grief education, you gain awareness into the somatic and physical symptoms that often present in the wake of tragedy.
Conclusion
Grief likes to be seen, not shoved away, which is what society is expert at doing: telling us to hide our pain. By contrast, grief support is a space where your pain can be witnessed – raw, real, messy – where it does not need to be covered.
If something in this piece struck your heart and you feel you could benefit from a loving witness to your loss, please reach out to book your grief support session with me. These sessions can be as short as a one-off, or provide ongoing care for as long as needed.
My grief support work is offered in-person (if you’re local to Salt Lake City, Utah) though more often than not, virtually on a Zoom call, from the comfort of home, where I have worked with clients across the country.
These sessions are a come as you are vibe: with a mug of warm cider, or hot tea or your favorite yummy beverage.
Whatever you choose, I wish you peace as you navigate your grief and the journey ahead.
