The tide does not leave in a straight line.
Grief is not a set of stages you complete. It comes in, goes out, comes back on a Tuesday for no reason. There is nothing wrong with you. There is something to be carried, and it is easier carried with someone.
- Someone died, recently or years ago, and the world has moved on faster than you have.
- You are grieving someone who is still alive — a diagnosis, dementia, estrangement, a border.
- A loss no one sends a card for: a pregnancy, a job, a country, a body that used to work, a friendship.
- You are facing the end of your own life and want to think and speak about it clearly.
- You are 'fine' in front of everyone and not fine at all when the door closes.
The people around a grieving person want the tide to go out and stay out. That is love, and it is also pressure. Grief does not work that way. It comes in on anniversaries and in grocery stores, in a song, in the shape of someone’s hands. This is not a failure to heal. It is how a bond behaves when the other person is gone.
I work with bereavement — the death of a parent, partner, child, friend — and with the losses that get less recognition: someone still alive but no longer themselves, a diagnosis that ends a future you had planned, a country you cannot return to, a body that used to be reliable. Grief for these is real and often lonelier, because no one brings food.
The work is not to finish grieving. It is to find a way to walk with it that lets you live, and to let the person or the thing you lost stay part of your life in a form you can hold.
- Letting grief have a rhythm instead of a deadline.
- Anticipatory grief — mourning while still caring, still showing up.
- Guilt and the things left unsaid; anger at the person, at God, at doctors, at yourself.
- Cultural and family expectations about how grief should look, and what they cost you.
- Continuing a relationship with someone who is gone — rituals, stories, legacy.
- Re-entering life without leaving the person behind.
You can tell me about the person, or the loss, or you can tell me you cannot talk about it yet. Both are a beginning. I will ask what grief has been doing to your days — sleep, appetite, the moments it ambushes you — and we go from there.
How long is too long to still be grieving?
There is no clock. Grief changes shape over time rather than ending. If it has been long enough that you are asking the question, that is reason enough to have some company with it.
Is grief therapy different in Spanish?
The grief is the same; the words, rituals, and family expectations are often not. I work in Spanish and English, and I pay attention to what your culture asks of a mourner — and where you might want permission to grieve differently.
I'm the one who is dying. Is this for me?
Yes. Legacy therapy — helping a person tell their story in a form that lasts — is part of my work, and so is sitting with fear, unfinished business, and the practical conversations that families avoid.