Grief Therapy in Asheville and Online in NC
“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”
-Oscar Wilde
Grieving in a troubled world
We live in a grief-phobic culture, one that has conditioned many of us to suppress our sorrow, hide our struggles, and rush back to functioning before we've actually felt what happened. My understanding is shaped by Francis Weller's work on grief as a communal, ritual practice, and Martín Prechtel's teaching that grief and praise are sisters, two halves of the same devotion to what we've loved.
What makes an experience traumatic isn't only the pain itself, but the absence of something strong enough to hold it. Part of this work is building that container together, growing a felt sense of safety in your body so grief has somewhere to land instead of staying stuck. When grief is held rather than only endured, it becomes a force that moves you and changes you. This is the territory of soul: a place where, whether we like it or not, we are changed.
Depending on what feels right for you, our work together might include self-designed ritual, dreamwork, deep imagery, parts work, somatic and embodiment practices, writing, or solo practices on the land.
Just to be clear: You don't need to get over it, or be done grieving, ever. This work isn't about arriving somewhere and being finished. It's about finding a way to carry what you carry, and to let it reshape you into who you're becoming.
Navigating Grief and Loss in its many forms
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Someone you loved is gone, and the world you knew went with them. The role you had, the future you expected, the version of your life that included them, all of it is gone too, and you're left standing in what's left. It's exhausting. You may not be able to function as the person you were, and you're not sure yet who you are now. Maybe it happened without warning, and you're still living in the moment the phone rang. Or maybe you've been losing someone slowly, watching them fade with dementia or Alzheimer's, grieving someone who is still, technically, here. Both are real loss and both shatter a world you knew.
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Maybe you've lost more than anyone should have to. You may have stopped letting yourself feel any of it fully, just to keep functioning. That exhaustion is real, and so is the toll of holding it together for everyone who needed you to. You don't have to keep doing that here.
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Not all grief comes from death. A breakup, a separation, a diagnosis that changes your body or your life, can mean grieving a future you were already living inside of. That future is just as real, and its loss deserves just as much room.
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Sometimes grief doesn't move, no matter how much time passes. It's not that you haven't tried. It might be that it hasn’t had enough space, ritual, or witness it needed to actually shift. If it feels like you're stuck exactly where the loss happened, even years later, that's not a failure. It just means the grief is still waiting to be met.
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Some grief isn't only personal. It's grief for a planet in crisis, for species and forests disappearing, for languages and ways of life being lost. It's grief in response to war, to injustice, to the ache of watching harm repeat itself in the world. This grief often goes unnamed, because there's no single moment to point to and no obituary to write. But if you feel the weight of what's happening beyond your own life and carry it in your body, that grief is real, and it's welcome here.
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This is grief for a body that can no longer do what you hoped, trusted, or needed it to do. An illness, an injury, aging, a diagnosis, infertility, a body that used to carry you through your life and now can't in the same way. This loss is often invisible to everyone but you, and it deserves as much space as any other.
Connect with me
Grief shatters the world as you knew it. The role you had, the future you expected are gone, and you're left standing in the wreckage of what was supposed to happen. It's exhausting. Many people find they can't function as the person they were before, and can't quite locate who they are now either. All of this is real, and none of it means something is wrong with you. If you desire support and have read this far, I invite you to reach out.