Grief and Loss
You’re Waiting for the Next Shoe to Drop
Something happened that you never saw coming, and now you know that things like that happen.
So you brace.
The phone lights up with a number you don’t recognize and your whole body answers before you do.
What now, what’s next: that’s what runs underneath everything else you do all day.
Whatever You Lost, You Belong Here
Your husband died, and you’re learning to be a widow in a version of your life nobody prepared you for.
You lost your mother, and overnight you became the oldest generation in your family.
A child died, which I think is the worst grief there is, and I’ve sat with parents in the middle of it.
You and your partner lost the same person, and it turns out you grieve on completely different schedules.
Whichever of Those You’re Carrying, You’re Not Grieving It Wrong
Somebody has already suggested you should be further along than this.
Somebody else has let you know it’s time.
There’s no right way through this and no correct pace, and I’m not going to hand you one.
This is a process of redefining and allowing, and it takes the time it takes.
Early On, the Work Is Getting Your Body Back
We start with eating and sleeping, because a body doing neither of those can’t do much else.
Early on we’re not making meaning of anything, just getting you back inside yourself.
Progress at this stage is small and countable, like the week you notice you cried three times instead of every day.
Then Your Questions Change
Once your body settles, what you’re asking shifts from what happened to who you are now.
My postgraduate training at Johns Hopkins was in existential and spiritual counseling, and this is the part of the work where it earns its keep.
We’ll look at what your life still means and what you still want out of it.
I’ll also ask you to find one person outside this room you can talk through the trash with.
Late in the Work, You Rebuild on Purpose
Re-engagement is deliberate, and it’s the part most people don’t see coming.
You’ll make an actual plan to get back to the people, the places, and the ordinary things that remind you you’re alive.
Most of my grief clients work with me for about six months, and some stay a year.
It’s hard before it gets easier, and you’ll hear that from me at the start rather than find it out on your own.
The Horses Are There If You Want Them
Some of this work happens outside with the horses, and plenty of it doesn’t.
The Equine Assisted Psychotherapy page walks through what that involves.
You’ll Finish This and Still Miss Them
It’s never going to be the same.
But you can do this.
Finishing means the loss has a place in your life instead of being the whole of it.
The door stays open after that.
People come back months later just to tell me what they’ve been up to.
Start With a Call
I see grief clients in person at my farm in Red Lion, Pennsylvania.
Reach me at (717) 873-1836 and we’ll set up a free consultation.
Email works too: patti@peacellc.org.
Nothing about that conversation will ask you to be further along than you are.
Find Your Breath Again
Finding your way out of the darkest corner of your life can feel lonely and frightening. When there’s a light to focus on, or a line to grab onto, the way starts to clear.
I’m here to be that light, that line, one step at a time, toward the place you want to be.
Take this as your opportunity to move toward hope and purpose.
Give me a call at (717) 873-1836, or send an email to patti@peacellc.org.
Let’s begin that journey.
160 Bahns Mill Road
Red Lion, PA 17356