Bereavement and Grief

I work with many people as they navigate bereavement and grief. When a loved one dies, we lose a job or our health deteriorates the heartbreak, loss and hopelessness can become overwhelming. Loss can mean lots of things to us, loss of control, abandonment, being left with unresolved issues, resentment. Bereavement and grief reach back into our past and occasionally we find ourselves on a painful and unbearable path of trying to cope. Through counselling we can explore bereavement and grief to find new ways to cope with our feelings and find new meanings for what we have lost in order to survive.

Infant Loss
Infant loss can feel particularly impossible to survive and yet people have found ways to accept this very specific kind of loss and move forwards with their lives. Each story of infant loss or bereavement is individual and deserves the space and time to be told and to be heard.

‘Loss and grief are fundamental to human life. Grief can be defined as the response to the loss in all its totality – including its physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioural and spiritual manifestations – and as a natural and normal reaction to loss. Put simply, grief is the price we pay for love, and a natural consequence of forming emotional bonds to people, projects and possessions. All that we value we will someday lose. Life’s most grievous losses disconnect us from our sense of who we are and can set in train an effortful process of not only re-learning ourselves but also the world. For many the desire to ‘make sense’ and ‘find meaning’ in the wake of loss is central.’ – Christopher Hall