grief and loss
For What Doesn't Have a Name Yet
Grief has a ritual. There are flowers and condolences and a designated time to be sad. And then the world moves on, even when you haven't.
Loss often has none of that. No ceremony, no permission, no clear moment when you're supposed to have processed it. Just the quiet weight of something that mattered being gone, or changed beyond recognition, or never having existed the way you needed it to.
At Path of Purpose in Boulder, I hold space for both. The grief that has a name and the loss that doesn't. The acute and undeniable and the low-level ache that surfaces in unexpected moments years later.
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Grief: When Someone or Something Is Gone
Some losses come with acknowledgement. The death of a parent, a partner, a child, a sibling, a friend. A pet who was family. A mentor. A pregnancy that didn't continue. These are losses that other people recognize, that come with rituals and condolences and a socially sanctioned period of mourning.
And still, grief rarely moves the way people expect it to. It doesn't follow stages or timelines. It comes in waves that arrive without warning, sometimes years after the loss. It surfaces in the car, in a song, in an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. It changes shape over time but it doesn't disappear, and the pressure to be over it often does more damage than the grief itself.
Grief with support isn't about being fixed or moved through a process. It's about being accompanied. Having a space where the loss doesn't have to be managed or minimized or explained. That's what I offer.
The Losses Nobody Gives You Permission to Grieve
Not every loss comes with flowers. Some of the heaviest things people carry have no ritual around them, no social acknowledgement, often no language to name them clearly.
Estrangement from a parent, sibling, or child
The end of a marriage or long relationship, even one that needed to end
A friendship that quietly dissolved without resolution
Leaving a religion, community, or belief system that once held your life together
A career or creative identity that defined you and is now gone
A diagnosis, your own or someone you love, that changed everything about the future you had imagined
A version of yourself you had to leave behind to survive something
The family you never got to have, through infertility, estrangement, or circumstances beyond your control
A future you had counted on that no longer exists
The person you thought someone was, before you understood who they actually are
These losses are real. They deserve the same attention and the same space as the ones that come with condolence cards. If you've been carrying something that doesn't have a name, this is a place to bring it.
When Grief Gets Stuck
Sometimes grief moves. It waves, it shifts, it changes texture over time. And sometimes it doesn't. It becomes fixed, a permanent low-grade weight, or it shows up as something else entirely: numbness, anger, a relentless busyness designed to keep it at a distance.
Complicated grief often involves ambivalence. The loss of someone with whom the relationship was difficult. Relief mixed with sadness. Anger at the person who died or left. Guilt about any of the above. These layered emotional experiences can make grief harder to process because they don't match the version of grief we're supposed to have.
When grief gets stuck in the body, I draw from somatic and EMDR approaches to help what's been frozen begin to move again. When it's entangled with questions of meaning, identity, or what your life is now supposed to look like, Existential therapy holds that territory directly. The loss of someone with a complicated history often opens into relational patterns and unfinished business that Gestalt work is particularly suited to.
What It Means to Grieve With Someone in the Room
I don't try to move you through grief faster. I don't have a protocol for it. What I have is a genuine willingness to be present with you in it, for as long as it takes, without needing it to resolve on any particular timeline.
Naropa University trained me to slow down and stay curious, to trust that being fully present with something is itself a form of healing. That's the orientation I bring to grief work. Not fixing. Not reframing. Accompanying.
Some sessions we talk. Some sessions something shows up in the body and we work with that. Some sessions the most important thing is simply that the loss gets to take up its full space rather than being compressed into the time available before you have to go back to functioning.
This might be right for you if...
Existential Therapy
You're going through a major life transition and the old map no longer fits
You've done therapy before and feel ready to go deeper
You think deeply about life and sometimes feel there's no one to have those conversations with
You're less interested in managing symptoms and more interested in understanding yourself
You're grappling with grief, loss, or a sense of what could have been
You have a strong sense that your life is supposed to mean something, but you're not sure what
You're asking questions about identity, purpose, or what you actually want
You feel the weight of freedom and aren't sure what to do with it
Presence, Depth, and the Training Behind It
Grief work requires a particular kind of presence, and my training at Naropa University in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling gave me a contemplative foundation built specifically for that. Naropa's tradition understands that being fully with someone in their suffering is itself a form of support, not a prelude to intervention. That's the orientation I bring to every grief session in Boulder.
My certification in Existential Psychotherapy through Noeticus Counseling Center gives me specific grounding in the questions grief raises: meaning, identity, what remains when something essential is gone. My certifications in EMDR, Somatic Psychotherapy, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Trauma give me body-based tools for when grief is held in the nervous system rather than the narrative.
Sessions and Pricing
My approach is trauma-informed, justice-centered, sex-positive, shame-free, and proudly LGBTQIA+ affirming. Path of Purpose is located in, Boulder, Colorado and serve areas around Boulder. Sessions are $140 for 50 to 55 minutes. I'm private pay only.
start with a free 15 minute consultation
Discover your path forward...your next chapter starts here
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That's a completely reasonable place to be, and it doesn't mean therapy isn't right for you right now. We don't begin by going straight to the loss. We begin by building enough safety and trust that approaching it feels possible. Some clients spend the early sessions simply getting used to having a space where the grief is allowed to exist. That's valid work too.
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Time alone doesn't heal grief. Presence does. If your grief has become fixed or numb, if it's affecting your daily life or relationships, if you're carrying it alone without a space to put it down, those are signs that support would help. You don't need to be in crisis to deserve a space for what you're carrying.
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Yes. Grief that wasn't fully processed at the time doesn't disappear. It gets stored, often in the body, and surfaces later in ways that can feel disconnected from the original loss. Working with old grief is some of the most meaningful work I do. It's never too late to give a loss the space it deserved at the time.
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Sessions run 50 to 55 minutes and cost $140. I'm private pay only, which means the structure of our work stays entirely between us. A free 15-minute consultation is available before any commitment.
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You can reach me by calling (720) 663-0334, emailing jacqui@pathofpurpose.org, or booking a free 15-minute consultation through the website. Path of Purpose is located at 1895 Bluff Street, Boulder, CO 80304. Telehealth sessions are available for Colorado residents throughout the state.