Grief counseling is a supportive therapeutic process that helps individuals navigate the emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and relational challenges that follow a significant loss. Rather than moving through grief in a linear or predictable set of stages (Kubler-Ross’s theory), people tend to experience grief in waves—sometimes feeling moments of acceptance or peace, and at other times revisiting sadness, anger, or disbelief when a memory or event brings the loss back up. Grief is often lost love looking for a place to settle within the body.

In counseling, clients are guided to make sense of their loss, integrate it into the present, express and allow their bodies and minds to process the grief, and develop coping strategies that honor both their own need to move forward with the loss and the significance of what or whom they’ve lost.

Heartache is one of the most profound forms of grief—especially the loss of a romantic partner as this represents a painful attachment rupture that can ignite wounds from childhood and often requires us to realign our vision of the future. Heartache also makes individuals question their self-worth, ability to be loved or find love in the future, and does not always leave one with satisfying answers for why a specific relationship ended. Moving through this process—regardless of how long the relationship was—can take months to even years to resolve.