Day 65 : After a series of heavier posts, I offer up an ode to one of the wisest grief companions in my life: our Holland Lop, Snowball. Seriously—he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t offer advice, he wants to be close, he is ridiculously soft, he is consistent and simple in his demands, and his downfalls are minimal (carpet chewing and feet licking). An important part of being able to move through grief is to oscillate-meaning coming up from the existential dread, deep missing, and

Day 64: Hard Grief Truths So much of my personal and professional work exists in the realm of building tolerance—tolerance for distress, tolerance for sitting with the unknown, with what doesn’t make sense, with what isn’t fair, and with what we cannot control and fix. On its face, this might sound like a dismal pursuit and job. Yet, it is not. For I believe we humans are all capable of expanding our tolerance—because we really don’t have much of a choice. To expand our

Day 62: The “Who-to-Tell” Pyramid As I reflect on the early days of my own acute grief, I remember the hazy quality of everything—the air, my thoughts, other people’s offerings of condolences. There was a benevolent fog over everything. I remember needing to not talk about anything related to my dad’s death, except with my daughter, mom, and sisters, for about two weeks. My system couldn’t tolerate expanding this circle, and I honored that. My clients often describe so

Day 61: The Missing Keeps Happening Before experiencing acute grief, it’s hard to conceptualize the level of missing that grievers live with. Let me try to break it down: when a person you love dies, they continue to stay dead--every. single. day. My clients warned me of this. And now I know what this actually means. The missing doesn’t go away. In fact, it is cumulative. It adds up. It’s a lot of days that keep happening to miss someone AND it’s a lot of days to ponde

Day 60: Pause. Get Quiet. Get Still. Drink a Paloma. Turn Inward. Shift. I am living what I have witnessed so often—the increased rawness of grief, sometimes beginning a couple months after the loss. It’s the moment when people begin to stop asking about it/you/the person who died as much. And it is also the moment (for me) when it no longer feels healing to speak of the experience out loud, as much. I feel more protective of my grief—not because it needs to be closeted

Day 59: How Does a Therapist Grieve #12 ? PLAY Yep. You read it correctly. Even after my marriage died, then after my dad died—even after Buffalo and Uvalde, the assault on Roe-v-Wade, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Gorge Floyd, Jan 6, the wild fires out west—after each of these onslaughts—I tried to play. This is not an act of forgetting. Or being flippant or disrespectful. It is an act of connecting. An act of defiance and refusal. It doesn’t mean that playing feels wonderful

Day 58: How Does a Therapist Grieve #11 ? Knowing the Differences between Empathy and Compassion This may be a controversial topic because there is so much out there that tells us we lack empathy in the world. I don’t necessarily agree (mainly with the semantics of that). I think there is a lack of the ability to tolerate an empathetic connection beyond 4 seconds. Empathy is a feeling with—one human’s nervous system connecting to another’s to take the perspective and fe

Day 59: How Does a Grief Therapist Grieve #10 ? Allow the Absence to Take Shape The grief is taking up residence. It has moved in. It is taking shape. It’s been about 2 months and my grief is no longer diffuse and hard to pin down, like it was at the beginning. Instead, it has weight and shape to it—even a sharpness that I don’t want to admit feels harder to bear than at the beginning. There is so much irony in this grief process—allowing the grief to take shape, and

Day 57: How Does a Therapist Grieve #9 ? I let myself fall apart in the car and on the airplane. Cars and planes can be grief incubators. They provide (in my opinion) a pretty damn good recipe for being able to sit with the pain of your grief. Here is the recipe: Strangers + Forced Space for Unfocused Attention + Existential Thoughts (maybe more on planes due to hurling through the air) + Forced Stillness + Literal Perspective (watching the silliness of human lives t

Day 56: How Does a Grief Therapist Grieve #8 ? I hold the possibility that there is enough space for both my own grief AND for the immensity of grief that so many are experiencing in our country and world. The assault on Roe v Wade (aka WOMEN) interacts with my own grief. The terror of the War in Ukraine elicits my own grief. I believe that in its pure and honest form, grief connects us, instead of divides us. Grief is a human experience. All so often, I hear this from

Day 55: How Does a Therapist Grieve #7 ? Surrendering to Receiving (featuring work by artist @paulxrutz ) Receiving help can feel like an admission of not-okness. Over the years, I’ve seen it happen in some clients as they walk through the door of my office, tears welling up as they land in a spot that acknowledges that they are not doing well. Receiving might also feel hard because of societal learnings and burdens around reciprocity. I am finding that to receive from

Day 54: How Does a Therapist Grieve #6 ? Facing the truth that the grief will not go away. Saying that the grief “won’t go away” can be frightening. Yet, I’ve found for so many grievers, this phrase is also relieving. But why? We are pressured so often to “be ok” when we’re really not, to be “moved on,” when there is no such thing, to “let go” when the context of our lives does not allow that, and for our grief to “subside” when what does that even mean in grief? Being a

Day 53: How Does a Therapist Grieve #5 ? Seek Out Projects (Hammer preferred) I grew up going to the hardware store with my dad. I always appreciated (and still do) the consistent candy options at the check-out, the concrete floors, a full aisle of nails, and even the sharp sound of a key being cut. My daughter and I have found ourselves at ACE many times over the past year, and even more in the past month. Recently, we’ve built a platform/elevator with pulley for her

Day 52: How Does a Therapist Grieve #4 ? Allowing For Not Knowing and Mind Changing My ability and willingness (and even relief) to say “I have no idea,” no matter what that not knowing is about, has been a learning I’ve embraced since the beginning of the pandemic. Not knowing and saying it out loud is in my experience, a shift from a feeling of helplessness to an experience of powerlessness. I choose powerlessness any day, which I experience as a full embrace of what

Day 51: How Does a Therapist Grieve #3 ? By Getting Lost in a Meaty Novel As much as I let the absences flow over and into and through me, I also know that part of grief is oscillating—moving from a depth, to something else. Sometimes, this something else is a happy memory. But more than not in early grief, it needs to be completely unrelated—a break, a pause, a momentary shift from one’s reality. I do not call this distraction. I do not call this dissociation. I call i

Day 50: How Does a Therapist Grieve #2 ? Noticing the Absences As painful as it is, I let myself notice the absences. My mom offered up “the blessing” at a family dinner—something I’ve never heard her do in my entire life. My dad wasn’t at the top of the driveway to greet us. The lights are lower in the house, instead of achingly bright as he liked them. His car takes up the same spot. It is about that time that it is beginning to feel odd to not have spoken to him. The

Day 48: How Does a Grief Therapist Grieve? Collect Quality Children’s Grief Books. As I grief therapist, I am supposed to tell you that I put myself first when my dad died, honored my process, and let my grief be most important. But that’s not what happened. As a parent to a 5 year old who was very close to her Bapa, and being that I do not live with another adult, putting my grief first did not happen. At least that first day. My 5 year old was the first person who I to

Day 47: A New Series—How Does a Grief Therapist Grieve? In no particular order, I will be sharing on the topic of grieving as a grief therapist. This question has come up for some lately, and I will run with it. The major caveats to what I have to share include: 1) I am only one human, living one specific life, and do not/cannot represent any “correct” or “right” way when it comes to how to grieve. 2) Most of what I have learned to center for myself during my own gr

Day 46: Grief Fog—a benevolent companion The fog of grief is something I hear about often, and feel encompassed by at the moment. I have learned to embrace it, because I know it is protective. The fog knows there is the creep of the visceral knowing that all is different—which seems to sneak in late at night and in the early mornings. It is the knowing, maybe only for a few seconds, that I exist in a new world. And that knowing is way too much to know and hold in the b

Day 45: Early on in grief, absence looms as it’s own presence. It is in every nook and cranny. Vacuuming the rug you gave me. Your slippers at the garage entrance. Your bathrobe hanging on the hook. The last text I sent, not replied to with “love, dad.” Your rhododendrons in the back. You died, and then the next day, spring came. The buds opened. The pollen blanketed my car. We started to sneeze. We picked some eager rhododendron blossoms that don’t usually bloom until Ma