When Taylor first walked into the counselling room, she felt a mix of hope, nervousness, and vulnerability.

Will my therapist really be able to understand what I'm going through? Can they help me find a way through this overwhelm?

Perhaps you can relate to Taylor’s mixed emotions when you think of starting therapy. Starting counselling with a new counsellor - whether it’s your first time or you’ve been before - often brings up nervousness, hope, anticipation, or uncertainty. That’s completely normal.

In this blog, I hope to demystify what counselling and grief therapy with me might look like, so you can feel more prepared as you walk into your first session.

As a griever and grief therapist, I resonate with the quote, “I am not here to fix every broken thing. Some things just need a soft place to land” (Anonymous). In grief therapy, I hold space for people to speak about their person and their grief in ways they cannot anywhere else.

Grief is rarely so freely expressed outside of therapy. In everyday life, people often feel the pressure to hold back their grief rather than fully express them as they really are. The truth is, not every moment of sadness needs to be fixed or “cured.” What if we simply witnessed grief? (Bella Grace, Autumn 2025).

When my person first died, it suddenly felt like nothing else mattered. The things that once felt urgent no longer held the same weight. 

My whole world stopped, and I just didn’t care about certain things as much as I used to.

If you’ve ever felt like life has no point after losing someone you love, please know you’re not alone. As a grief therapist who have walked alongside many grieving hearts, this is something I hear often. 

In this blog, I write about my reflections on grief and meaning and suggest questions to reflect on as you process your grief.

Have you ever caught yourself laughing, smiling, or having a good day after loss—only to feel a wave of guilt wash over you?

Maybe you noticed you weren’t spending every moment thinking about your person, or you sought out distractions from the heaviness of grief.

In my own grief journey, moments of lightness sometimes felt like a betrayal. How could I allow myself to feel joy when my person’s life was cut short?

It is important to know that it is a common experience in grief to feel guilty for not being immersed in sadness all the time.

“When are you going to get over it?” That was the question someone asked me—just two weeks after a significant and traumatic loss. I was too stunned to answer. I don’t remember how I responded, but I’ll never forget how wrong that question felt.

This moment reflects a common misunderstanding about grief: that there’s a set timeline for “moving on.” That eventually, we should reach acceptance and stop expressing pain or sadness.

The five stages were originally intended to describe the emotional experience of people facing their own death. Over time, the model became widely applied to people grieving the loss of others. But it was never meant to be a universal roadmap for grief.

Since I was a child, I have asked questions about death. I’ve always been a deep thinker — some might say an old soul. I’ve never known a time when I wasn’t aware that death could come at any moment.

Maybe you’ve felt something similar — that quiet, uneasy knowing in your daily life, alongside the love you carry for those around you. Or maybe you’re carrying grief as you care for a significant person in your life, in their final days. This experience of grieving before a death occurs can feel confusing and complex — it is called anticipatory grief.