Some Losses Change Everything

Healing Doesn’t Mean Forgetting it Means Learning to Carry What Happened Differently.

Grief and trauma therapy in Hermosa Beach and the South Bay, CA, with telehealth available throughout California

Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is an experience to be moved through -  slowly, honestly, and at your own pace.

Whether you have lost someone you love, experienced a trauma that shook your sense of safety, or are living with the quiet ache of something that was taken from you before you were ready, what you are feeling makes sense. Grief and trauma do not follow a timeline. They do not respond to logic or willpower. And they are not signs that something is wrong with you.

 They are signs that something mattered.

What Grief and Trauma Can Look Like

Grief and trauma show up differently for everyone. Sometimes they arrive as waves of emotion that catch you off guard. Sometimes they settle into the body as exhaustion, tension, or a numbness you can’t quite shake. Sometimes they live in your relationships -  in the distance that has grown, the irritability you can’t explain, or the difficulty letting people in.

You may be navigating the death of someone you loved. A sudden loss that still doesn’t feel real. A traumatic experience — an accident, an assault, a medical event — that your mind keeps returning to. Or perhaps a more complex grief: the loss of a relationship, an identity, a version of your life you had imagined. These losses are real too, even when the world around you doesn’t always acknowledge them.

What Therapy for Grief and Trauma Looks Like

In our work together, there is no pressure to move faster than feels right. You will not be asked to recount every detail of what happened or to push through what does not feel ready to be touched.

What we do instead is create space. Space to feel what you have been holding. Space to make sense of how this experience has shaped you — your thoughts, your body, your relationships, and the meaning you make of your life. Space to grieve fully, rather than around the edges of it.

I came to this work through my own experience with traumatic loss. I know firsthand that post-traumatic growth is real — not as a silver lining, but as something that is quietly, painstakingly built on the other side of surviving something hard. That understanding shapes every session I offer.

Types of Grief and Trauma I Work With

•  Traumatic and sudden loss — death of a loved one, accident, or medical crisis

•  Complex and prolonged grief

•  Childhood trauma and adverse early experiences

•  Single-incident trauma — assault, accident, or sudden loss

•  Complex or developmental trauma — repeated or relational harm over time

•  Grief related to divorce, separation, or the end of a relationship

•  Loss of identity, role, or life chapter

•  Trauma held in the body — physical symptoms, hypervigilance, shutdown

A Note on EMDR

For clients navigating trauma and grief, I also offer EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR is one of the most effective and well-researched therapies for trauma, and it can be particularly powerful for grief that feels frozen or stuck. You do not need to talk through every detail of what happened. You simply need to be ready to begin.

Learn more about EMDR and what treatment looks like EDMR.

If you are carrying something you have not yet been able to put down, I would be honored to sit with you in it. I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation — no pressure, just a real conversation.

They are signs that something mattered.