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Holistic Grief and Bereavement Counseling in Kansas and Florida


Grief is lonely. While everyone else just keeps living life, it feels like your life stopped the moment your person died. You desperately wish you could hit a pause button. Slow things down, even if just for a second. But life keeps moving forward. And people don’t seem to understand. Every day that passes feels like a day further away from what used to be.

People want you to feel better. To “move on,” to “heal.” But what you really need is somewhere safe to fall apart. To be completely honest about how badly this hurts. About how angry you are, and how you just want things to go back to the way things were.

Grieving as the “Strong” One


Grief and loss can be particularly hard for those of us who hold ourselves to very high standards. Learning how to grieve requires a certain amount of surrender. Surrender to what is, and surrender to our own unique grieving process. If you’re a perfectionist, an overachiever, or people-pleaser, surrendering to the messiness of grief can be particularly difficult. Grief can also be very difficult if you grew up in a family where emotional expression was avoided, punished, or repressed.

You might not be used to letting people see you cry. It might feel too vulnerable. Maybe you’re used to pushing through hard things, and getting praised for that, but this time it’s just too much.

You don’t have to do this alone, and if you want to be alone that’s OK too. You don’t have to be “strong,” and if expressing your feelings openly is too much, that’s OK too. There's no “right” way to grieve.


Grieving When You’re Highly Sensitive


Grief and loss can be particularly difficult and overwhelming if you’re a Highly Sensitive Person. Grief is painful for everyone, but because highly sensitive people feel emotions more intensely, grief can feel even more scary and overwhelming. Highly sensitive people process everything more deeply than the non-sensitive, including death and loss. Many HSPs experience anxiety around losing the people that they love (even when there is no imminent threat of this happening), because they can so vividly imagine the pain. This is called anticipatory grief.

My Own Loss, and What I’ve Learned

One of the biggest fears of the bereaved is that if they allow themselves to truly feel their grief they might never come back, might never stop crying, that they might not survive. I felt this way myself when I lost my daughter to leukemia, but I have discovered through years of midwifing myself through my own grief process that there is a bottom to even the very deepest of griefs. You will not be swallowed whole if you allow yourself to fully “go there.” The fear of grief is, in my experience, always worse than feeling the grief itself. 

I have come to trust grief. It is another form of love, and if you let it, it will guide you through to where you need to be every time. But you don’t have to do it alone, I'm here to help you.


Other Mental Health Services Offered by Sacred Circle Holistic Healing in Kansas


My Lawrence, Kansas counseling practice also specializes in providing therapy for highly sensitive adults, therapy for childhood trauma, therapy for low self-esteem, and therapy for anxiety. Through counseling I help people overcome shame and the fear of being their true selves. Breaking the cycles of people-pleasing and self-abandonment is possible, and I'm here to help.

I offer online therapy throughout the states of Kansas and Florida. Reach out today to schedule your free 15 minute phone consultation, I'd love to hear from you!