Grief and Sorrow

We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own, live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan. Irving Townsend

Grief is not a problem to be fixed, a pathology, or a sign of weakness but our inherent life affirming capacity to create the conditions for not only coming to terms with the loss, but for fully appreciating the preciousness of the connection we had, and, ultimately, eventually rebuilding meaningful connection with others. Although grief is a universal experience borne by us all, we each experience it in our own, unique ways, tempered by the force of our own character, our history, nature of the loss, and our intellectual and spiritual understanding of it. I view my role as a counsellor as one of accompaniment, walking with the bereaved through the experience, honouring the force of grief as an act of nature and trusting in it as a profound healer. My work in grief counselling is informed by such writers as Therese Rando, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and Kenneth Doka. As part of my recent professional development, I have completed Therese Rando'sTherapeuptic Interventions in Grief and Mourning.