Grief Therapy in
Kitchener-Waterloo
You don't have to carry this alone.
There is no right way to grieve. If you are here, something has been taken from you. A person. A relationship. A version of your life you thought you would have.
The weight of that loss is real, even if no one around you seems to understand just how heavy it is.
You may feel pressure to "move on" or "stay strong." You may be exhausted from performing okayness for the people around you while feeling shattered inside.
When you are ready, grief therapy can offer you a space where you do not have to perform. Where the full weight of what you are carrying can finally be witnessed. Where you can grieve at your own pace, in your own way.
This page is not here to rush you toward healing or offer you a timeline. It is here to let you know that what you are experiencing makes sense.
When the world keeps moving but you have stopped
One of the strangest parts of grief is watching the world carry on as if nothing has happened.
People go to work. They laugh at things. They complain about traffic. And you are standing still inside a moment that split your life into before and after.
You might feel invisible in your pain. Or you might feel like you are performing a version of yourself that no longer exists, just to get through the day.
Maybe you are functioning at a high level outwardly, showing up for your job and your responsibilities, while inside you feel like you are moving through water. Or maybe you have stopped functioning entirely, and even small tasks feel impossible.
Both responses are valid. Grief does not follow a script.
What often makes this harder is the pressure to "be strong" or to "get back to normal." But grief does not work on anyone else's timeline.
If this resonates, you are not broken. You are grieving. And that is not a problem to be fixed.
Grief is not a
straight line
You may have heard of the "five stages of grief." Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It is a framework many people know, and it was never meant to suggest that grief moves in a neat, predictable order.
Yet somehow that is how it gets used. As if you should progress through stages like checkboxes. As if reaching "acceptance" means you are done.
Grief does not work that way.
It is more like waves. Some days the water is calmer, and you can breathe. Other days a wave knocks you down without warning. You might be fine in the grocery store and then hear a song that undoes you completely.
The goal of grief therapy is not to make the waves stop. It is to help you learn how to stay afloat when they come. And to know that you are not alone in the water.
The many faces of grief
Grief is not limited to death. It is a response to loss, and loss takes many forms. Sometimes the losses that hit us hardest are the ones that society does not recognize as "real" grief.
These are sometimes called disenfranchised losses, and they can be deeply isolating because there is no clear space for mourning.
Grief After Death
The death of someone you love changes the shape of your life. Whether sudden or expected, recent or years ago, the absence is profound. Sometimes the relationship was complicated, leaving unresolved conflict, guilt, relief, or love all tangled together. None of these feelings are wrong.
Grief After a Relationship Ends
Divorce. Breakups. The end of a friendship. You are not only mourning the person. You are mourning the future you imagined. The shared routines. The way your life made sense when they were in it. There is often shame around this grief, but it is just as real.
Anticipatory Grief
Sometimes grief begins before the loss itself. If someone you love has a terminal illness, dementia, or Alzheimer's, you may already be grieving. You are holding two realities at once. The person is still here. And in many ways, they are already gone.
Loss of Identity or Life as You Knew It
Not all grief involves another person. Sometimes what you have lost is a version of yourself. A career that defined you. A sense of health or ability. Life transitions, even ones you chose, can carry grief. These losses are real even when no one died.
When grief begins before the loss
This kind of grief is common among those caring for a parent or partner with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. You watch someone you love slowly become less available to you, even while they are still physically present.
The person sitting across from you may not remember your name, or your history together, or the things that once made your relationship what it was.
You are grieving the loss of who they were, the loss of the relationship as you knew it, and the loss of the future you thought you would share. All while continuing to show up and care for them.
There is no funeral, no marker, no socially recognized moment to mourn. Just a slow, ongoing accumulation of small losses. The conversations you can no longer have. The recognition that fades from their eyes. The role reversal you never anticipated.
I have written a specific guide for this experience:
Read "Still Here: Grieving Someone Who Hasn't Left"
How grief lives in the body
Grief is not just emotional. It lives in the body.
You may be experiencing exhaustion that sleep does not fix. A heaviness in your chest. Headaches. Stomach pain. A feeling of physical hollowness.
You may notice brain fog, difficulty concentrating, or forgetting things you normally would not forget. Grief affects cognition. If you have found yourself walking into rooms and not knowing why you are there, this is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that your system is overwhelmed.
Some people feel physical restlessness. Others feel numbness, as if the body has shut down certain sensations to survive.
If anxiety has become part of your grief, you are not alone. Loss often brings fear with it. Fear of more loss. Fear of forgetting. Fear of what your life looks like now.
Related Support
Witnessing, not fixing
When you come to grief therapy, you will not be given a roadmap out of your pain. I do not believe grief is something to be fixed. It is something to be witnessed.
What does that mean? It means that in our sessions, you do not have to explain yourself. You do not have to justify the depth of what you are feeling or defend your grief against anyone's expectations.
A space to be exactly where you are
You can say the things you have not been able to say. You can cry, or not cry. You can sit in silence if words are not available. My role as your therapist is not to make you feel better. It is to be with you in the hard parts.
Integration, not erasure
Over time, I help you begin to carry this loss in a way that feels more sustainable. Not lighter, necessarily. But more integrated into the life you are still living. Grief therapy is not about forgetting or replacing what you have lost.
There is no formula
Bereavement therapy in Kitchener-Waterloo and across Ontario looks different for every person. There is only presence, patience, and a commitment to meeting you exactly where you are.
Traumatic grief and complicated loss
Sometimes grief becomes tangled with trauma. If the death was sudden, violent, or involved circumstances that were deeply distressing, you may be experiencing symptoms beyond typical grief.
Flashbacks. Nightmares. A sense that you are reliving the moment over and over.
This is not something you should try to push through alone. Traumatic grief often requires specialized support, and it is possible to heal without ever "getting over" what happened.
Complicated grief
There is also a form of grief sometimes called complicated grief, or prolonged grief disorder. This is when the intensity of the loss does not lessen over time. When the grief feels as raw months or years later as it did in the beginning.
If this sounds familiar, I want you to know two things. First, you are not grieving wrong. Second, this kind of grief is very treatable, and therapy can help.
Moving forward with,
not moving on from
One of the most harmful myths about grief is that the goal is to "move on." To let go. To reach a place where the loss no longer affects you.
That is not the goal of therapy with me.
The goal is integration. Learning to carry the loss as part of your life, not separate from it. Finding ways to honor what was, while also allowing yourself to keep living. This is not betrayal. This is survival.
You do not have to stop loving someone just because they are gone. Grief therapy is about expanding around the loss, not erasing it.
Practical details
Online and in-person options
I offer grief therapy in person for those in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, as well as online sessions for anyone in Ontario.
Online grief counselling can be especially helpful if you are exhausted, have limited mobility, or simply feel safer in your own space right now.
Insurance and fees
Psychotherapy services are often covered, at least in part, by extended health benefits. I recommend checking with your provider to see what your plan includes.
For full details, visit my Fees & Insurance page.
What the first session feels like
You do not need to have your story organized. You do not need to know what to say. In the first session, we will simply begin wherever you are.
You might cry. You might not. All of this is welcome. We go at your pace.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is completely normal to have questions before reaching out. Here are a few common ones to help you feel more comfortable.
If you are asking this question, you are probably feeling something that does not match what you expected grief to look like. Maybe you feel numb instead of sad. Maybe you feel angry at the person who died. Maybe you feel relief, and that relief is wrapped in guilt. All of these responses are normal. Grief has many faces, and none of them are wrong.
There is no timeline. Some people feel a shift after several months. Others carry acute grief for years. What matters is not how fast you move through it, but whether you have support while you do.
Yes. Grief does not expire. If something from your past is still affecting you, it deserves attention. Sometimes losses resurface when life circumstances change, or when you finally have the space to feel what you could not feel before.
Grief therapy is not just for bereavement after death. It is for any significant loss. Divorce. Job loss. A friendship ending. A health diagnosis. A move. A life transition. If you are mourning something, it counts.
Absolutely. Grieving someone who is still living is one of the most isolating experiences there is. You may feel like you have no right to grieve because the person has not died. But the losses you are experiencing are real. The relationship as you knew it. The future you planned together. The small daily moments of connection. Therapy can help you process these losses while also supporting you through the demands of caregiving.
No. We move at your pace. Some clients want to talk about their loss immediately. Others need time to build trust first. There is no right approach.
That is okay. Grief does not always show up as tears. Some people feel numb. Some feel angry. Some feel nothing at all, and that absence of feeling can be distressing in its own way. You do not have to perform emotion in therapy.
I will not give you a list of steps or prescribe activities to help you heal. Grief therapy is not about doing. It is about being with what is. Over time, you may find that things shift naturally. But I will not push you toward any particular outcome.
Grief and anxiety are closely connected. Loss can shake your sense of safety. You might find yourself fearing more loss, or feeling hypervigilant in ways you were not before. If anxiety has become a significant part of your experience, I can help with that too.
Yes. Many clients find that online therapy allows them to access support from the comfort and safety of their own space, which can be especially important when grief has left you depleted. I offer online grief counselling for anyone in Ontario.
If you are asking this question, some part of you already senses that support might help. You do not have to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. You just have to be tired of carrying this alone.
When you are ready
You do not have to feel ready to reach out. You do not have to have the words. You can come exactly as you are, messy and uncertain and exhausted, and that will be enough.
Grief therapy is not about fixing what is broken. It is about sitting with what is true. And you do not have to do that alone.
If you are looking for bereavement therapy in Ontario, or grief counselling in Kitchener-Waterloo, I am here. We can start whenever you are ready.
You do not need to have your thoughts organized. You can just show up.