Services · Grief & loss
Online psychotherapy for adults across Ontario, grounded in trauma-informed and attachment-based care. Sessions move at a pace your grief can actually hold.
Grief therapy at Anchor & Bloom is virtual psychotherapy for adults across Ontario who are carrying a loss, whether it is the death of someone close, a loss that has not happened yet, or one of the many losses that do not involve death at all. Sessions are offered by Registered Psychotherapists trained in evidence-based approaches including attachment-based therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and somatic-informed work.
The work is collaborative and paced. We do not push, and we do not ask you to set grief down before you are ready or move through it on anyone else's schedule.
What grief can feel like
A wave that arrives in the grocery store, out of nowhere. A morning that feels ordinary until you reach for your phone to tell them something. Tears that will not come, or that will not stop. A body that feels heavy and far away at the same time.
Grief shows up differently in different people. Sometimes it is loud and unmistakable. Sometimes it is a flat numbness that worries you more than crying would. In session, we work with whichever version is yours.
Common patterns clients describe in early sessions:
Grief after the death of someone close. A parent, a partner, a sibling, a friend, a child. The relationship shapes the loss, and so does the way the death arrived. We make room for the particular grief that is yours, not grief in general.
The grieving that begins before a death, while someone you love is living with a terminal illness or declining. It can feel confusing to mourn someone still here. It is real grief, and it deserves the same care as the loss it precedes.
Grief that stays acute and consuming well past the early months, or that feels stuck rather than slowly shifting. When daily life remains organized entirely around the loss, it can help to look at what is holding the grief in place.
A death that arrives without warning lands differently than one you had time to brace for. Sudden loss can carry shock and a sense of unreality. Expected loss can carry its own weight of long caregiving and slow goodbye. Both belong here.
Grief for a pregnancy, a hoped-for child, or a future that was being built. Often invisible to others and difficult to speak about, which can leave it without the acknowledgement it needs. See also fertility & postpartum therapy.
The death of an animal companion is a genuine bereavement, not a smaller one. For many people a pet was a daily presence, a source of comfort, and a witness to ordinary life. That loss is allowed to be heavy.
Divorce, the end of a marriage, a job loss, an estrangement, a move away from home. Losses that do not involve death still ask to be grieved, and often go unrecognized because there is no funeral to mark them.
Grief for a body, a capacity, or a future that a diagnosis changed. Chronic illness, disability, and major medical news can bring real loss alongside the practical adjustments, and that grief is worth tending.
The arc of the work
Most clients move through a rough arc, though no two courses of therapy look exactly the same. The phase boundaries below are illustrative, a way to picture how the work tends to unfold, not a fixed sequence. Some people stay longer in one phase. Some return to an earlier one. Pace is set collaboratively, and revisited often.
The first few sessions are about building enough safety to do the work. We make room for the story of the loss, who or what is gone, how it happened, and what it has been like since. We start to notice how grief is moving through the body and the day, which is often the first time clients have paid that kind of attention to themselves.
The middle of the work. We stay with the harder feelings as they come, work with the nervous system rather than around it, and tend to the guilt, anger, or relief that grief can carry. The relationship to what was lost often comes into focus here, and how it is changing rather than ending.
Finding a way to hold the loss while living alongside it. Working with the relationships, routines, and anniversaries that either support or strain the new shape of life. We also plan for the days that will be hard again, what clients carry with them, and what signs would bring them back.
The myth of the stages
The five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, came from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who originally described them in people facing their own dying, not in the bereaved. Over time the idea spread into a popular belief that grief moves through a fixed order toward a finish line. That is not how grief actually works.
The simple version: grief is not a staircase you climb and complete. It is closer to weather that moves through, sometimes in waves, sometimes in long flat stretches, sometimes circling back to a feeling you thought had passed. There is no correct sequence, and there is no point you are supposed to reach by a certain date.
Many people add a second layer of suffering by measuring themselves against the stages and deciding they are grieving wrong. They worry that they are stuck, or behind, or that something is broken because they are not at acceptance yet. Part of the work is releasing that pressure. Grief does not owe anyone a timeline.
In session this means we do not try to march your grief toward a destination. We pay attention to what is here now. We make room for it to change in its own way. When grief has space to be what it is, it tends to soften over time on its own terms, rather than being forced.
Fit matters
A good fit for
Not the right primary fit for
If you are unsure whether grief therapy is the right next step, the free 15-minute consultation is a good place to ask.
How therapy helps
We give the grief a place to be spoken, in its full size, without rushing it or tidying it up. Being met in the loss is often the first thing that helps it move.
Practical tools for grounding and regulation, used between sessions and inside them. Grief lives in the body, and the body is a real part of the work, not an afterthought.
Approaches drawn from grief research help you stay connected to what was lost in a way that supports living, rather than feeling you must let go of it entirely.
A typical course
Signs the work is taking
Progress in grief work is rarely a clean disappearance of pain. It looks more like a slow widening of the life around the loss. Some of the shifts clients tend to notice, in their own words:
Therapy does not aim to remove grief or return you to who you were before. The aim is a different relationship with the loss, one where it can be carried alongside a life that keeps going.
What we draw from
We do not work from one orthodoxy. Different parts of grief respond to different approaches, and most courses of therapy blend several. Below are the frames that most often come into play with grief and loss work specifically.
Grief is, in large part, the rupture of a bond. Looking at the relationship that was lost, and at how you have learned to hold connection and separation, helps make sense of how the loss is landing now.
Working with the emotional core of grief, the love, the longing, the anger, the unmet needs. Helpful for staying with feelings that are intense or contradictory rather than pushing them away.
Less about arguing with painful thoughts, more about making room for grief while still acting in line with what matters. Particularly useful when avoidance has narrowed life around the loss.
Drawn from contemporary grief research, this frame supports an ongoing, changed relationship with what was lost, rather than a clean severing. Many people find more relief in connection than in letting go.
Including the body as a real part of the conversation, tracking breath, posture, tension, and fatigue. Grief lives in the body as much as the mind, and the work belongs there too.
A framework for how the nervous system shifts between calm, activated, and shut-down states. Used in session to pace the work so the system is not pushed past what it can metabolize.
For grief that overlaps significantly with unresolved trauma, see trauma therapy. For grief tangled with low mood, see depression therapy, and for loss tied to a major life change, see life transitions therapy.
Who offers this
Registered Psychotherapist, CRPO #10340
Founder of Anchor & Bloom. Trauma-informed, attachment-based grief work for adults and couples. Modalities include EFT, ACT, and somatic-informed approaches.
About KatelynRegistered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #19387, supervised under Katelyn Matias
Affirming grief work for adults, neurodivergent clients, and people navigating loss alongside major life change. Modalities include EFT, ACT, somatic therapy, and mindfulness.
About DaniellaWe work with bereavement after the death of a loved one, anticipatory grief while someone is still living, complicated or prolonged grief, and non-death losses such as divorce, job loss, a health diagnosis, miscarriage or fertility loss, and the death of a pet. We do not diagnose or treat severe acute conditions that require psychiatric care or medication management.
It varies, and grief has no timeline. A common pattern is weekly sessions for the first 6 to 12 weeks, then biweekly as things settle. Some people work with us for a season, others for a year or more. We talk openly about pacing at each stage.
No. Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario do not prescribe medication. If medication is part of the conversation, we collaborate with your physician or psychiatrist while we focus on the psychotherapy side.
Yes. Research from the Canadian Mental Health Association and the American Psychological Association supports the effectiveness of virtual psychotherapy for bereavement and grief, with outcomes comparable to in-person care for most adults.
No. The idea of fixed stages is a common myth. Grief does not follow a tidy order, and there is no point you are supposed to reach by a certain date. We work with the grief you actually have, in the shape it actually takes.
Individual sessions are $160 to $180. Most extended health benefit plans through Canadian employers cover Registered Psychotherapist services. Confirm with your insurer before booking. Psychotherapy is exempt from GST/HST as of June 2024.
For plan-by-plan coverage details, direct billing notes, and how to submit a claim, see Fees & Insurance.
Further reading
For general information on grief, loss, and coping, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Canadian Mental Health Association are good starting points.
For information on the regulation of psychotherapists in Ontario, see the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario.
A 15-minute consultation is a low-stakes way to ask questions and see if the fit feels right.
Sessions are virtual province-wide, with local support for:
Toronto · Mississauga · Oakville · Burlington · Hamilton
