Grief & Loss

After all the shock, anger, grief, and pain of loss passes, what we are left with is love.
— Heather Lortie, Ed.M., L.C.S.W., Founder of The Collaborative for Holistic Therapy

Grief can feel like an unpredictable, exhausting tidal force—physical, emotional, and haunting all at once. Whether you’re grieving the finality of death or a more ambiguous loss—a breakup, estrangement, miscarriage, the loss of a role, dream, youth, abilities, innocence, job, home, faith, or worldview—grief shows up when something deeply meaningful is gone.

Even invisible losses, like the end of a secret relationship, the loss of safety after trauma, or collective grief from war, climate, or pandemic crises, can be profoundly disorienting.

Loss evokes deep and difficult questions:
Who am I without what I lost?
How will I bear life without them—or it?
Will I ever feel whole again?
Why did this happen? Could I have prevented it?
How do I begin from here?

Loss Invites Deep Self-Reflection

Don’t bear this on your own. Grief, while immensely painful, often opens the door to profound transformation. It strips away the nonessential, quieting the noise of everyday life so you can see what truly matters. It invites deep self-reflection, asking hard but honest questions about identity, values, and meaning. These moments, though heavy, can be gateways to authenticity and inner growth.

Emotional Expansion and Inner Strength

Grief doesn’t just break us—it builds us. As we move through sorrow, our emotional depth expands. Compassion, presence, and even joy grow deeper roots. Healing through grief is not about forgetting; it’s about learning to carry loss with purpose and grace. We discover a wellspring of resilience within ourselves, learning that we can survive the unimaginable and grow stronger from it.

Love as the Thread Through Loss

High levels of grief can radically reorient our relationship with life. We may find ourselves no longer willing to live under external pressures or in fear. Pain can become a portal—revealing tenderness, authenticity, and a deeper understanding of love. Grief doesn’t end love; it transforms it. What we lost continues to live on in how we choose to love forward—through creativity, connection, service, and advocacy. Love becomes the fabric we walk forward with.

FAQs

Grief therapy creates space to process overwhelming emotions, explore your identity after loss, and reconnect with meaning. It helps you carry your pain with purpose—not erase it, but transform it into resilience, compassion, and love.

You may not go back to who you were—but grief can guide you toward a more authentic self. Over time, many people find that loss deepens their emotional capacity and helps them live with greater presence and purpose.

Ambiguous grief happens when the loss isn’t clearly defined—like after a breakup, estrangement, miscarriage, or the loss of a dream or identity. Because there’s no closure or public acknowledgment, it can feel isolating and confusing, but it’s just as real and valid as any other kind of grief.

Other issues we treat

Depression

Depression isn’t always obvious. For many people, especially those with a history of trauma, depression doesn’t show up as sadness or tears — it shows up as numbness, fatigue, disconnection, or a sense of not really being here.

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Medical Trauma

Trauma isn’t just about what happened—it’s about how your mind and body had to adapt to survive. Whether the trauma was acute or ongoing, physical or emotional, its imprint can linger in the nervous system as fear, numbness, shame, or disconnection.

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Self Esteem

Overcoming low self-esteem is less like becoming a new person, and more like finally coming home to yourself.

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Social Anxiety

Social anxiety isn’t just shyness. It’s the deep desire to connect—paired with a nervous system that responds to connection like it’s a threat.

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Career Stress & Burnout

The pressures of modern life are real. The fast pace and multi-dimensional nature of life – work, school, family, social challenges and the baseline intensity of life can inspire us or push us beyond our limits.

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Chronic Pain

Is pain in your body—or your brain? The truth is, pain isn’t just physical. It’s also shaped by your emotions, thoughts, and even your relationships.

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Online therapy

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Take the first step toward healing. Get in touch and we’ll walk with you from there.