Grief therapy
Grief enters life in many ways. Sometimes through death, but also through other losses — a relationship ending, leaving home, losing a sense of safety, or a future you once expected to have. It can come through the loss of an ideology you once believed in, or through the gradual realisation that an ecosystem, a place, or a way of living is changing or disappearing.
Many people carry grief quietly for a long time. It doesn’t always announce itself clearly. It can show up as tiredness that doesn’t lift, a heaviness in the body, restlessness, or a sense of being slightly out of step with everything around you.
Some people aren’t sure whether what they’re carrying even counts as grief. They tell themselves they should be coping better by now, or that others have it worse. So the feeling gets pushed aside and life continues on the surface, while something underneath is still asking for space and attention.
Grief isn’t something to fix or resolve. It tends to surface when it needs attention. What helps is making space for it — through recognition, through small rituals, through moments of stillness where it can be felt without being pushed away.
This is the basis of grief therapy: not pushing grief away, but creating the conditions where it can be met, felt, and allowed to shift over time.
It does not move towards neat closure, but it can soften over time when it is allowed to be present.
There are no stages of grief. It does not move in a fixed sequence or resolve in a predictable way.
What grief needs
Grief needs permission, space, ritual, and witnessing.
It needs somewhere to go. Somewhere it does not have to be explained, minimised, corrected, or hurried into meaning.
When grief has been held alone for too long, the first movement is often very simple: it needs to be allowed to exist.
Sunrise over the mountains on a summer morning at San Flaviano Grief Therapy Retreat
When trauma surrounds loss (grief therapy context)
Sometimes grief cannot be fully felt because the body is still responding to what happened around the loss.
This can happen when the period leading up to the loss was overwhelming in itself. Long illness, repeated hospital visits, sudden events, displacement, war, or the collapse of a relationship can all create layers of shock and stress. By the time the loss occurs, the body has already been through so much that it remains in a state of protection rather than mourning.
In these situations, grief can feel unfinished or suspended. Part of you may still feel caught in the time before or during the loss, rather than able to be with it in the present. This is often what people mean when they speak about complex grief. It is not that grief is absent. It is that the system has not yet had enough steadiness to process what has happened.
When trauma surrounds a loss, the body may stay alert, numb, or overwhelmed. Until some of that activation begins to settle, there is often very little space to feel the loss itself. The work then involves creating enough safety and stability for the body to recognise that the loss is no longer actively unfolding, and that it can begin to be held in the present.
From there, grief can begin to soften. Not quickly, and not toward neat closure, but toward something that can be felt without the system becoming overwhelmed.
When there has been no space to grieve
When life demands survival, responsibility, or strength, grief is often postponed. Not because it isn’t there, but because there has been no safe place for it to be felt. It settles quietly and waits.
I came to understand this in a very personal way.
The night before I left my home in Senegal to travel to the UK for a summer project, I became unexpectedly upset. I was preparing to be away from my husband, my neighbours, my daily life — the people and rhythms that held me.
I had a small cry. Nothing dramatic. Just the body recognising separation.
The response around me was immediate. I was gently reassured, encouraged not to cry, moved inside, asked to stop. My tears felt unsettling to the people who loved me.
Sitting on the bed, I remember thinking very simply:
Where can I go to cry?
I went outside and let the feeling move through quietly on my own, because there was no space for it where I was.
It was just grief needing a moment.
Experiences like this are common. Grief is often not denied deliberately — there is simply nowhere for it to land. When there is finally a place where it can be acknowledged without being hurried or softened, something begins to shift. The body no longer has to hold it alone.
This is where grief therapy becomes relevant — not as a solution, but as a place where
grief can finally be met without interruption.
How I work with grief
My work with grief is not about pushing it to resolution or helping it “move on.”
This is a form of grief therapy that is steady, contained, and paced in a way the body can tolerate. The focus is not on explanation or insight, but on creating the conditions where grief can be felt without becoming overwhelming.
We work privately, one-to-one. There is no expectation to share your story in a group.
Alongside the sessions, there is support through gentle somatic work, time outdoors, and a rhythm to the week that allows for integration rather than pressure.
Much of the work happens in the spaces between sessions as well — in conversation, in quiet moments, in the way the environment holds you.
Grief is approached carefully. Not forced. Not analysed into meaning. But given enough space, steadiness, and attention that it can begin to shift in its own time.
This work sits within a broader approach to grief therapy, but is shaped by
the need for privacy, steadiness, and real contact.
Working together
I offer one-to-one online sessions for people who want a steady, private place to bring what they’re carrying. Some come specifically for grief; others notice that grief sits alongside trauma, loss of identity, or major life change. We begin wherever you are, and move at a pace that feels manageable for your body as well as your mind.
For some, it helps to have this work held alongside time away from daily demands. In those cases, grief work can also be supported within the trauma retreat in Italy.
If you’re unsure where to begin, you’re welcome to arrange a short call with me. It’s a chance to ask questions and see whether this way of working feels like a good fit.
