Grief and Loss Therapy
Welcome Maddie Ritts (MSW, RSW)
I am thrilled to welcome Madeleine Ritts (MSW, RSW) to Juniper Wellness.
Maddie specializes in grief, bereavement, and death-related loss. Therapy can help you understand your grief and loss, learn to cope with difficult emotions, and find greater ease, meaning, and clarity. Maddie approaches her work with immense compassion and gentle curiosity, always guided by your pace and readiness. She is available on Friday mornings for virtual (video) psychotherapy sessions.
Read on to learn more about grief and exploring loss in therapy.
Understanding Grief
Our lives can be profoundly altered by grief and death-related loss, whether the loss occurred recently or years ago. The death of a loved one can tinge so much with grief: life milestones (holidays, birthdays), family or cultural traditions, and quiet moments in daily life. Favourite places, movies, sayings, scents, and recipes can bring back nostalgia and pangs of longing. Grief can involve a complex palette of emotions and experiences, such as: profound sadness, peace, anger, resentment, guilt, overwhelm, relief, grief-related anxiety (perhaps about health, safety, uncertainty in life).
Grief is far more complex and impactful than ‘sadness’.
The physical components of grief can be surprising. Grief commonly includes significant fatigue, brain fog, a ‘heavy’ feeling in your limbs or body (physically, not a metaphor!), and significant changes in sleep, appetite, energy, mood, and thinking.
Despite this, our society largely treats grief like a brief, uncomfortable interruption. A topic to dodge in a conversation. An issue that should be dealt with privately — and ideally, within three (3) bereavement days off from work.
Exploring Grief in Therapy
Given all of this, it is deeply understandable that many people feel uncertain about exploring grief in therapy.
Grief is often tied to so many hard feelings.
Have you had any of these thoughts, or heard similar comments from others?
“It happened so long ago. What’s the point of talking about it again?”
“I can’t change the past. It’s time to move on.”
“(Your loved one) would want you to be happy.”
“It could be worse. At least I have…”
For many people who are grieving, these sentiments are invalidating or unhelpful.
Your loss is unique to you.
Grief and loss can continue to affect our thoughts, emotions, relationships, sense of self, spirituality, and worldview — long after a death takes place. Although the past can’t be changed, your present and future can be intentionally reshaped. As Megan Devine, author and grief educator, says:
“Some things cannot be fixed. But they can be carried.”
Therapy can help you explore your grief and loss with gentle curiosity, at your own pace. Therapy can also help to uncover gems of wisdom, clarified values, and new priorities. Grief encompasses so much more than the heaviness of death.
It is never too late to explore the ways that death and loss transform our lives.
Schedule a free consultation with Maddie to learn more.
A consultation is an informal chat (10 minutes) to learn about our services and determine whether it could be a good fit to work together. After the consultation, you can decide whether you’d like to book a therapy session.
