The kind of understanding that lets the waves of grief come fewer and softer – and helps you feel like yourself again.
Therapy for adults across the San Francisco Bay Area
You didn’t come here for clichés. These are a few of the people I sit with – maybe one of them sounds like you.
She wakes and reaches for her phone to text her dad. Then she remembers. The same question comes the way it always does. Where is he? He’s been here her whole life.
Still hurting this much, months later, starts to feel like proof that something is wrong with her.
Another friend’s wedding, phone in his pocket, quietly doing the math on how many he’s shown up to alone. What’s wrong with me? Am I going to be single my whole life?
Underneath sits the thought he’d never say out loud: that maybe he’s simply unlovable.
The people he loves are right there. The things that used to light him up are right where he left them. He goes through the motions and waits to feel something.
He keeps hoping it will lift on its own. It hasn’t yet.
The people above are composites, drawn from many I’ve had the honor of sitting with. Their details are changed. Their feelings are real.
Still hurting this much doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
Whatever brought you here – the missing, the questioning, the private fear that you should be further along by now – all of it makes sense.
Grief moves in waves. It’s love that still has nowhere to go, and it doesn’t run on anyone else’s schedule. Over time, with the right support, you can learn to carry your person with you instead of being pulled under.
The waves come fewer. They land softer. And 3 a.m. slowly gives you back to yourself.
When the ache shows up in dating and relationships, the fear is usually quieter and older. I can help you follow that fear all the way down to the belief sitting underneath it, and then put that belief to the test against the evidence of your actual life. Most of the time, it doesn’t hold up.
Book a free 15-minute consultationBefore any technique, my first job is to make sure you feel seen, heard, and understood. The relationship we build does more of the work than anything else.
Seen. Heard. Understood.
Before I had a private practice, I spent my days at a hospice, sitting with people in the rawest and most tender season of their lives. That’s where I learned what helps someone through the hardest loss: being fully present with them, without hurry, so they feel truly seen, heard, and understood.
I came to this work because I love listening, and over time I realized my time was best spent understanding what matters most to the person in front of me. My style is collaborative, warm, and honestly a little playful, even when the subject is heavy.
With grief, much of the early work is understanding how it actually moves, in the body and over time. When the pain lives in dating and relationships, I help you trace the story down to its root and put it to the test, so you can show up as yourself.
I’ve been doing this work since 2016, and my approach hasn’t changed since day one. You come first. The rest follows.
More About MeWhatever brought you here, we start the same way – with understanding.
The same three people – a little further down the road.
She still wakes some nights, but reaches for the photo on the nightstand instead of her phone, and lets herself miss him without being afraid of the missing. The waves still come – fewer, and they land softer.
He’s at another wedding, and this time he catches the old story for what it is: just a story his fear likes to tell. He stays, and talks to someone new without rehearsing all the reasons it won’t work.
He notices a flicker one afternoon. A song. A joke from a friend. Something that lands and stays a second longer than it used to, and he believes more of it is coming.
Things don’t have to keep feeling this way. There is hope, and there is help.
There’s a version of 3 a.m. where the missing sits quietly beside you instead of swallowing the night. That version starts with one honest conversation.
