• human(e)

It is my firm belief that when we find ourselves thrashing against the grips of grief what is needed is not intervention or professional interference, advice or unsolicited opinions. What is needed is a place where the body and heart are welcome exactly as they are; a place where they are not asked to do what they cannot. A place where your real lived experience is believed and held without the silver linings and platitudes that only serve to silence and shame. A place where you can be with another who knows the weight of grief inside skin and bone. A place where it is understood that loss changes your very experience of being human and that returning to who you once were is no longer possible. How could it be? A place where you and only you know the way through, and you are trusted with your own innate knowing, and still you are not alone.

• non-pathologizing

Despite spending years working as a clinician, and teaching in the institutions that claim expertise, this is not how I come to this work or to this space. I refuse to corroborate the narrative that says only those who have accessed higher education- with all of its barriers and gatekeeping- are capable of skillful grief work. In fact, in my own lived experience, the exact opposite has often been true. That those with letters after their names, those who claim authority and take on the role of expert, are often those whose rigid theories leave no room for those of us whose lived experiences lie outside the limits of their own understanding. I refuse to legitimize a diagnostic guide (DSM-5-TR) who at one point in history claimed my love to be a mental illness, a pathology. I fiercely reject this same guide’s current claim that those of us who still long for those we have lost beyond six months are disordered. For what can be more human than to carry those we have lost within us forever? I come to this space as someone who has never gotten over, or let go of, or moved on. I come here unapologetically as one who will continue to grieve and love, flail and fail, attach and lose for as long as I remain. I come here as I hope you will come - spectacularly and irrefutably human.

• for humans grieving both death and non-death related loss

Grief is not a response to death, but rather a response to loss. Loss being defined as the severing from something or someone to whom we have held great attachment. While it is true that sometimes we attach to people who die and take pieces of ourselves with them. It is also true that we attach to a great many things both tangible and intangible: pets, homes and jobs; roles and responsibilities; identities and capacity; dreams and hopes for what may be. There are so many ways that loss comes in and changes the very shape of things. We attach because we are human, and when we lose - or are severed from these attachments- we grieve. It really is as simple as that.