My Path to Becoming the Therapist I Needed in My Grief

When you lose someone, your whole world changes.

That's what happened to me when I lost my son in 2002. My heart was torn out of me, and my world imploded.

It took me years to find my way back to myself — not the self I was before, but someone new, still carrying him with me.

What helped? The love of my husband and kids. Friends and family surrounding me. My faith. Purposeful self-care. Helping others.

What didn't help, at least at first, was therapy.

I tried a couple of therapists — they hurt more than they helped. They may have been perfectly good therapists. I don't know. But they scared me off of therapy for a couple of decades, because they made me feel like just another patient in their day. They assumed things about my grief before they'd taken the time to actually know it. And they didn't feel with me — the rooms were cold, not the temperature, but the relationship.

All of that deepened my isolation and left me alone with my grief and my guilt.

I needed someone who felt WITH me — who understood how frightened and alone I was.

I needed someone who understood the crushing weight of guilt in my soul, and that even though it wasn't my fault, I couldn't stop believing it was.

I needed someone who understood the existential crisis of needing God to get me through this, while not understanding how God could "allow" it to happen.

I needed someone who understood the exhaustion of grief layered on top of the exhaustion of already being a mother to several young children.

I needed someone who understood the heart of motherhood — that each child is their own complete relationship with you, and that losing one, no matter how many children you have left, is like losing a whole part of yourself.

I needed someone who understood that traumatic grief makes you terrified of harming your other children — through your own failure, or simply because you're not the same mother anymore.

I needed someone who understood what it was like to fight for sleep every night while your mind replayed your child's death, getting only a couple of hours before you had to wake up — late — and be mom again.

I needed someone who understood what it was like to wake up every morning and remember the truth of your life all over again, like it was happening for the first time.

I could keep going. It's never-ending.

I just needed someone who understood.

That's why I've gone down this road: to become the therapist I needed then.

Before I finally found the kind of therapy that actually helped, the symptoms of PTSD from traumatic grief nearly killed me. No one told me that I wasn't just "needing to grieve" — that my mind, my body, and my sense of meaning had been fundamentally altered, and that I needed real therapeutic support to help me rebuild my sense of self and purpose.

That's why I do what I do.

If this sounds familiar — if you're a mother carrying a grief no one seems to understand — I'd be honored to walk this path with you. Learn more about my work with traumatic grief and/or child loss, or reach out directly to talk about what support could look like.

I'm here for you.