Grief therapy in Boulder, CO

Grief shows up after all kinds of losses, and not only the ones people expect. A death, yes, but also a divorce or breakup, a friendship that ended, a job, your health, a move away from everything familiar, or the quiet loss of a life you thought you were going to have. Even changes that look good from the outside, like graduating or getting sober, can carry real grief for the version of things you're leaving behind. If you're aching over a loss that other people don't seem to count, it still counts.

There's no "right" way to grieve, and the process isn't linear. Those tidy "stages" you've heard about rarely show up in order, and you can move through the same one more than once. I don't think of grief as a phase you pass through and finish. I think of it as something you carry with you, in different ways, as life keeps moving. Early on it can be mostly sadness or anger. Later it can also hold nostalgia, gratitude, and a strange kind of tenderness. None of that means you're "over it," and getting there faster was never the goal.

So let me take one thing off your plate: you don't have to be grieving well. There's no timeline you're behind on and no way you're supposed to look. Whatever you're feeling, or not feeling, has a place here.

How therapy for grief actually works

I'm not here to hurry you through your grief or talk you out of it. A lot of the work is simply having somewhere to put it, out loud, with someone who won't flinch or rush you. Grief needs a witness more than it needs fixing.

That said, grief sometimes gets snagged on things that make it harder to carry: guilt over what you did or didn't do or say, avoidance that keeps you from the memories or the places, a harsh story you're telling yourself about the loss. When that happens, the CBT tools I use can help gently loosen those snags, so the pain has room to move instead of staying stuck. We'll always go at your pace, and we'll make room for the whole range of it, including the parts that feel contradictory.

What our first steps look like

We start with a free 15-minute consult, just a gentle conversation about what you've lost and how you're doing. There's no agenda and nothing you have to be ready to talk about. If it feels right, we'll meet for a longer first session and go from there, weekly or every other week, in person in Boulder or online.

Who I work with

I work with teens, who often need a lot of steady support around a loss and don't always have the words for what they're carrying, and with college students and young adults grieving in the middle of years that leave little room for it. Family members are welcome to join a teen's sessions at times when that helps, and if you're a parent trying to support a grieving kid, we can talk about that too.