Therapy for Ambiguous Loss & Grief in Alberta

Grief is not always about losing someone through death.

You can grieve a relationship that never became what you needed it to be. You can grieve the childhood you did not have, the parent you needed but did not have, or the sense of safety and belonging you spent years looking for.

You may also grieve after choosing distance from someone, even when you know that distance was necessary.

There can be relief and grief at the same time. You can know that something was unhealthy and still miss the person, the relationship, or the hope that things might someday become different.

These experiences can be complicated. There may not be a clear ending, and there may not be anyone around you who understands why you are grieving.

Therapy can provide a space to make sense of these losses without having to minimize them or explain why they matter.

Sometimes having words for what you are experiencing can help.

• Disenfranchised grief: Grief that is not recognized, understood, or supported by others, even though the loss is deeply meaningful to you.
• Complex grief: Grief complicated by layers of loss, trauma, conflicting emotions, or unresolved experiences.
• Ambiguous loss: Grief that comes from a loss without a clear ending, such as estrangement, emotional absence, or the loss of what you wished a relationship could have been.
• Grief after abuse: Grieving the harm you experienced, what was taken from you, and the relationship, safety, or childhood you needed but did not have.

• The loss of feeling safe in your own life
• The loss of being understood, protected, or emotionally supported
• Parts of yourself that learned to stay small, quiet, or hyper-aware
• The ease, experiences, or sense of normalcy you did not get to have
• Relationships that could not become what you needed them to be
• The time and energy spent trying to be seen, accepted, or understood

It can show up as:

• Emotional exhaustion
• Numbness or feeling disconnected
• Anger that feels confusing or difficult to place
• A sense that something is missing, even when life looks okay from the outside
• Feeling stuck or unable to move forward

When your nervous system has spent years focused on surviving, there may not have been space to fully feel what happened or what it meant.

You may have had to keep going. You may have had to function, care for others, stay strong, or make sense of what was happening around you.

So instead of having space to move through grief, you may find yourself carrying it.Sometimes it begins to surface later, when life becomes quieter, when you finally feel safer, or when something small unexpectedly touches a much deeper place.

This does not mean you are going backwards. It may mean you finally have enough safety to begin processing what you could not feel before.

In therapy, we can make space for the grief you have been carrying and begin to understand what is underneath it.

We can explore the losses you have experienced, the emotions that come with them, and the ways those experiences may still be affecting you today.

Depending on what you need, our work may include:

• Making sense of complicated or conflicting emotions
• Processing painful memories and experiences
• Working through the effects of emotional neglect, trauma, or unhealthy relationships
• Exploring the grief connected to estrangement or difficult family relationships
• Reconnecting with parts of yourself that had to stay small, quiet, or disconnected
• Learning how to move forward without feeling like you have to erase or deny what happened

Grief is not something you have to rush through or get over.

Sometimes healing means learning how to carry what happened differently, while making room for a life that is more connected to who you are now.

You do not need to know exactly what kind of grief you are experiencing or have the right words for it.

If you would like to talk about what you have been carrying, I invite you to book a free 15-minute consultation. We can talk about what you are looking for and see whether working together feels like a good fit.