Grief Counseling

Grief is not a problem to be solved, and we're not going to try to solve it. Your person is gone, or your marriage is, or the life you thought you'd have, and no amount of therapy brings that back. Anyone promising to fix it is selling something.

What we can do is sit in it with you, so you're not doing it alone, and help you carry a thing that doesn't get lighter so much as you get stronger under it.

The parts nobody warns you about

Grief isn't sad-and-then-better. It's sad and furious and numb and, weirdly, sometimes fine, sometimes in the same afternoon, and then leveled again by a song in the grocery store. It doesn't move in stages. It moves in ambushes.

And it comes with things people don't admit out loud. Here's one of the big ones, and if it's true for you, you are not a monster: part of you might be relieved. Not just that they're not suffering anymore, the acceptable kind of relief, but relieved that you don't have to manage their needs anymore. That the phone calls stopped. That the hardest relationship in your life is over. People carry that one in total silence because it feels like proof they didn't love them. It isn't. Almost everyone who loses someone feels some version of it, especially after a long illness or a complicated relationship. You're not selfish for it. It doesn't cancel the love. It can just sit next to it.

There's more the world doesn't make room for. Anger at the person for leaving. Anger at everyone whose life just continued. The specific loneliness of being surrounded by people who've quietly decided you should be over it by now. The dread of the question "how are you," because the true answer is too big and "fine" is a lie you're tired of telling.

None of that means you're doing it wrong. It means you're doing it.

It's not only death

People come to us grieving all kinds of losses the world doesn't hold a funeral for. A marriage. A friendship that ended without a fight. A pregnancy. A parent who's still alive but no longer knows you. A career, a body, a version of the future you'd already furnished in your head. A pet, and the people who tell you it was "just" a pet.

Loss is loss. You don't have to justify it to us, and you don't have to rank it against someone who "has it worse."

What we actually do

We don't have a timeline for you and we won't rush you toward "closure," which is mostly a word other people use when they want you to be finished. Some people come for a few sessions. Some come for a long time. Some come a year later, when the casseroles have stopped and everyone else has moved on and the quiet finally got loud.

Mostly we make a place where you can say the true thing out loud, the ugly parts included, to someone who won't flinch and won't tidy it up for you. Sometimes that's talk. Sometimes it's EMDR when the loss is tangled with trauma, or the way it happened won't stop replaying. Sometimes it's just not being alone with it for fifty minutes.

We see clients in our Greeley office and by telehealth across Colorado, including Loveland and the surrounding area.

Frequently asked

Is it too soon, or too late, to come? Neither exists. Some people come the week after. Some come three years later when it unexpectedly caught back up with them. Both are normal, and grief doesn't expire.

I feel relief, not just sadness. Is that wrong? No. Relief is one of the most common and least talked-about parts of grief, especially after a long illness or a hard relationship. It doesn't mean you didn't love them, and it doesn't make you selfish. We can hold that without judgment.

Shouldn't I be over this by now? There's no "by now." People who love you sometimes get impatient because your grief is uncomfortable for them. That's not a measure of how you're doing. You're allowed to take the time it takes.

How long does it take? There's no set number. Some people come briefly, some longer. We check in on how it's going and we won't keep you past the point of usefulness. The goal isn't to stop missing them. It's to be able to carry it and still live.

Do you take my insurance? Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, and every Colorado Medicaid plan, with a sliding scale for private pay. Check your actual per-session cost in about thirty seconds, no phone call.