Grief therapy for the loss you didn't see coming.
Written by Gerry McNamara, LMFTLast reviewed May 2026
Online sessions across Oregon. Careful, paced work for the deaths, the endings, and the losses that don't have a funeral but still leave you somewhere different.
Request a free 15-min consultation →Grief without the rush to be done with it.
Grief work isn't about getting over it. It's about letting it have its actual size, and slowly building a life that holds what you lost without being defined by it.
The clients I see for grief have usually been told, in one way or another, that it's time to move on. From a partner, a family member, a coworker, a self-help book. Almost always with care. Almost always wrong. Grief that isn't allowed to take its actual time doesn't go away. It goes somewhere else and shows up as anxiety, depression, or a feeling that something is permanently off.
We work in a few directions at once: the loss itself (what it actually was, what you actually lost, which is sometimes more layered than it first looks), the daily life around it (eating, sleeping, going to work, holding relationships), and the harder question of what living forward looks like when you can't go back to who you were before.
Some losses are obvious: a death, a divorce, a child leaving. Others are quieter: a friendship that ended without a fight, a parent who's still here but no longer recognizable, a version of the future you'd been counting on. All of it is grief. All of it deserves the same kind of careful attention.
Paced work, no five stages.
Grief doesn't follow a script. The work is matching the actual shape of what you're carrying, not the shape a book said it should take.
Grief doesn't come in tidy stages. The denial-anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance framework was never meant to describe how grief actually moves; it was a description of dying patients in the 1960s. Real grief loops, surges, hides, and comes back. We work with the shape it actually takes for you, not the shape a book said it should.
I draw from psychodynamic work for the deeper meaning of the loss, cognitive behavioral therapy for the practical work of living through it, and an attachment-informed lens that takes seriously what this loss does to the relational fabric of your life.
I've been practicing for eighteen years. What I've learned about grief is that the people who are bad at grieving are often the people who've been good at taking care of everyone else. Slowing down enough to let your own grief be visible is part of the work.
Questions I get asked about grief therapy.
Is grief therapy only for the death of someone close?
No. Grief shows up around a lot of losses: a parent who's alive but no longer who they were, a marriage ending, a job or identity you didn't realize you were attached to, a future you'd been planning that isn't going to happen. All of these are real grief and they all warrant the same kind of careful attention.How long does grief therapy take?
Grief doesn't have a clean timeline, and therapy for it doesn't either. Some clients work with me for a few months around an acute loss. Others come in for the slower, harder work of unresolved grief that's been around for years. We talk early about what kind of grief we're working with and what realistic looks like.Is it normal to still be grieving after a long time?
Yes. The 'you should be over it by now' message is one of the more harmful pieces of conventional wisdom about grief. Some losses get integrated quickly. Others ripple for decades. Both are normal. We work with where you actually are, not where you think you should be.What about grief that doesn't have an obvious cause?
That's common, and worth naming. Sometimes grief is the body finally registering a loss it didn't process at the time. Sometimes it's anticipatory grief about something that hasn't happened yet. Sometimes it's the slow accumulation of small losses that suddenly feels heavier than it should. We sort out what's underneath together.Does insurance cover grief therapy in Oregon?
Yes, in most cases. Grief can be a clinical diagnosis (adjustment disorder, prolonged grief disorder) covered under standard outpatient mental health benefits. I'm in-network with most major Oregon carriers. The diagnostic side is something we'd talk through openly during the consult.
Related work I do across Oregon.
Mid-life therapy
Mid-life often involves grief that wasn't named as grief. The work overlaps in important ways.
Read moreDepression therapy
Grief that's been silenced for too long sometimes shows up as depression. Working both at once tends to be necessary.
Read moreTrauma therapy
Traumatic loss and ambiguous loss both need careful pacing. The trauma frame applies more often than people expect.
Read more
Ready to talk it through? Let's see if we're a fit.
Send a message, or set up a free 15-minute phone consult. You can reach me by email, call, or text. I'll get back to you within two business days.