SPECIALTIES
Grief & Loss Support
in Vancouver, BC
Grief is one of the most isolating experiences there is, not because it’s rare, but because the world tends to move on before you’re anywhere near ready to move with it. There is no right way to grieve, no timeline you should be on, and no loss too small or too complicated to deserve care. Wherever you are in this, you don’t have to carry it alone.
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UNDERSTANDING THE EXPERIENCE
What grief is and what it can look like
Grief is the natural response to loss and loss is far broader than death. We grieve relationships that have ended, identities we’ve had to let go of, futures we planned that will no longer happen, versions of ourselves or the people we love that have been altered by illness, estrangement, or time. Grief is not a problem to be solved or a phase to be completed. It is a profound human experience that changes shape over time but rarely disappears entirely.
The familiar model of grief as a series of stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and has shaped how many people understand their own experience, and often left them feeling like they’re doing it wrong. Grief is rarely that orderly. It is non-linear, frequently contradictory, and deeply personal. Some people feel it acutely and immediately. Others are numb for months before it arrives. Some carry a loss quietly for years before something opens it up again. All of these are normal and all of them can be worked with.
Ways grief can show up
A persistent sense of emptiness, sadness, or longing that comes in waves
Difficulty accepting that the loss is real, even when you know it is
Feeling disconnected from the world around you — as if life is happening behind glass
Guilt, regret, or unfinished emotional business with the person or thing lost
Anger that feels disproportionate or hard to direct at anything specific
Physical heaviness — exhaustion, disrupted sleep, loss of appetite, a sense of weight in the body
Grief that feels frozen or stuck — unable to move through it but unable to put it down
A loss that others don’t seem to recognise or take seriously — leaving you without the support you need
Anticipatory grief — grieving something or someone you haven’t lost yet but know you will
The grief of a life not lived — roads not taken, possibilities foreclosed, versions of yourself that never got the chance to exist
MY APPROACH
How I work with grief and loss
My approach to grief is shaped heavily by Narrative Therapy — a tradition with a rich and specific body of work around loss. At its centre is the understanding that grief is not about severing connection to what or who has been lost, but about finding a way to carry that connection differently. The goal is not to move on, to let go, or to reach acceptance as a final destination. It is to find a way to live with the loss — to integrate it into who you are rather than organising your entire life around avoiding it or being consumed by it.
This means we pay close attention to the stories that surround the loss — the story of the relationship or the thing lost, the story of what happened, and the story you’ve been telling yourself about what it means. Grief has a way of rewriting those stories in harsh and often inaccurate ways — survivor’s guilt, regret, the conviction that you should be further along than you are. Part of this work is examining those stories carefully and finding the ones that are more complete, more honest, and more compassionate. Alongside this, mindfulness and depth work help us stay present with grief at the level of the body and beneath the surface of conscious understanding — where loss often lives most persistently.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative Therapy approaches grief not as a problem to solve but as a story to understand. We work with the story of who or what was lost, what that loss means, and how to carry the connection forward rather than sever it. Grief doesn’t end — but the way it is storied can change, and that changes everything.
Mindfulness
Grief lives in the body as much as the mind , the disrupted sleep, the moment something triggers a wave you weren’t expecting. Mindfulness practices help develop the capacity to be present with those experiences without being overwhelmed by them, building a steadier relationship with what grief brings up.
Depth Work
Significant losses often reach deeper than the loss itself and into questions of identity, meaning, and what it means to continue living in a world that now looks different. Depth Work creates space to explore those layers without rushing toward resolution, but finding what the loss is asking of you.
WHO I WORK WITH
You might be looking for this support if…
Someone you loved has died recently, or longer ago than you feel you should still be affected by and you are somewhere in the complicated, non-linear reality of bereavement. Maybe the grief is acute and immediate. Maybe it has been quietly present for years and something has recently opened it up again. Maybe you’ve been functioning, holding it together, and you’re finally ready to stop doing that alone.
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Your loss isn’t a death and you’ve noticed that the world doesn’t always make room for grief that doesn’t fit that category. A relationship has ended. A diagnosis has changed what the future looks like. An estrangement has cost you someone who is still alive. A version of yourself or your life that you’d planned on will no longer exist. These losses are real, they deserve care, and they can be worked with in exactly the same way.
Your grief feels complicated by ambivalence about the person or thing lost, by a relationship that was difficult, by circumstances that others find hard to understand, or by the sense that no one around you seems to think you should still be feeling what you’re feeling. Disenfranchised grief — grief that isn’t socially recognized or validated is some of the hardest grief to carry, because you carry it without the support that loss is supposed to bring.
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THE PROCESS
What to expect from grief therapy at Grounded Practice
The First Session
The first session is a conversation about what you’ve lost and what that loss has meant. There’s no pressure to tell the whole story at once, and no expectation that you’ll arrive knowing what you need. Many people come to grief therapy with a mixture of relief — that there’s finally space for this — and uncertainty about whether talking will help. Both are welcome. We start wherever you are.
Ongoing Work
Grief therapy doesn’t follow a standard arc. Some people find relief in a relatively focused period of work — a few months of regular sessions that provide space and structure for what they’ve been carrying. Others do longer work, particularly when the loss is complex, long-held, or layered with earlier losses. I don’t operate from a fixed model of how grief should progress or what the end goal should look like. We’ll move at a pace that feels right, and we’ll be honest with each other about how the work is going. Sessions are typically weekly, adjusting as the work develops.
In-person sessions are available in Vancouver, BC. Online therapy is available across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Newfoundland, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut via secure video.
FAQs
Common questions about grief therapy
How long should grief last?
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There is no timeline that grief should follow, and the idea that you should be “over it” by a certain point is one of the most unhelpful things our culture tells people about loss. Grief changes shape over time and it becomes less constantly present, less all-consuming, but for significant losses it rarely disappears entirely, nor should it. What therapy can offer is not a faster exit from grief but a different way of being with it, one that allows you to live more fully alongside it rather than being organized entirely around it.
What if I’m grieving something that isn’t a death?
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Grief belongs to any significant loss, not only bereavement. The end of a relationship, a diagnosis, an estrangement, the loss of a career or an identity, a miscarriage, the life you thought you’d have, these losses are real and deserve the same care as any bereavement. You don’t need to have lost someone to death to deserve grief support, and you don’t need to minimize what you’re carrying because others might think it doesn’t count.
What if my grief feels stuck or complicated?
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Prolonged grief, sometimes called complicated grief, is grief that feels frozen, that doesn’t shift over time in the way you’d expect, or that significantly disrupts your ability to function and engage with life. It’s more common than people realise, and it responds well to therapy. Complicated grief often has specific features such as avoidance, intense yearning, difficulty accepting the loss, or a sense that life can’t have meaning without what was lost and it can be worked with directly. If your grief feels stuck, that’s not a sign that something is wrong with you. It’s a sign that you need more support than you’ve had access to.
Is it possible for therapy to make grief worse?
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This can be a concern and it deserves a direct answer. Good grief therapy doesn’t force you to go somewhere you’re not ready to go, it follows your pace, builds safety before depth, and attends carefully to what you can hold at any given point. If you’ve had a previous experience of therapy that felt overwhelming or retraumatising, that’s worth talking about. It tells us something important about what a different approach might need to look like.
OTHER AREAS OF SUPPORT
You may also be looking for help with…
Anxiety & Depression
Grief and depression frequently overlap — the heaviness, withdrawal, and loss of meaning that characterise depression are also common features of significant loss. The two aren’t always easy to distinguish, and they often need to be addressed together rather than separately.
Trauma & PTSD
When a loss is sudden, violent, unexpected, or involves trauma, accidents, suicide, overdose, sudden cardiac events, grief and trauma become intertwined. Traumatic grief has specific features that respond best to approaches that address both dimensions simultaneously.
Life Transitions
Every significant loss is also a transition, an ending that requires finding a way forward in a landscape that no longer looks the same. Life transitions work provides a broader frame for the grief of change, identity shifts, and the process of building meaning in what comes next.
READY TO BEGIN?
Grief doesn’t end. But the way you carry it can change.
Request a free 15-minute consultation to learn more about working together. Whether you’re ready to start therapy in Vancouver or have questions about how we can work together online across Canada, I look forward to hearing what brings you to counselling