Grief and loss therapy, without a timeline
Grief shows up in your sleep, your concentration, your body and your sense of who you are. Therapy gives it somewhere to go. We see people for every kind of loss, in person in Denver and online across Colorado.
- Sessions50 minutes, usually weekly
- Fee$175 per session
- WhereDenver office & online
- First stepFree 15-minute call
Grief is bigger than bereavement
When people hear the word grief, they think of a death. That is a large part of what we see, but grief turns up anywhere something important has been lost.
Death and bereavement
A partner, parent, child, friend or pet, including sudden, traumatic and suicide loss.
Divorce and breakups
Grieving the person and also the future you had pictured together.
Pregnancy loss and infertility
Miscarriage, stillbirth, termination and the paths that didn’t happen. These losses are often minimized, and they deserve to be taken seriously.
Illness and diagnosis
Missing the body and the life you had before, and adjusting to a future that looks different.
Ambiguous loss
Loss without a clear ending, like estrangement, a parent with dementia or an adult child you’ve lost touch with.
Identity and life changes
Retirement, a career change, an empty house, and the person you were before that chapter closed.
Grief tends to come and go
You have probably heard grief described as a set of stages you work through in order. Most grieving people find it messier than that. A model proposed by researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut in the late 1990s describes healthy grieving as a back and forth. Some hours you turn toward the loss. Other hours you turn toward the rest of your life, and that is grieving too.
- Crying in the car
- Looking through old photos
- Missing their voice
- Anger at how it happened
- Rereading old texts
- Going back to work
- Learning the bills they used to pay
- A real laugh with a friend
- New routines
- An afternoon you forgot to be sad
Early on
Many people describe the first weeks as foggy. You might cope better than you expected, then come apart over something small in the grocery store. Sleep, appetite and memory are often off.
Months in
The people around you often go quiet right when the loss starts to feel real. The paperwork is done and the meals have stopped, and you still reach for your phone to call them.
Years later
Birthdays, anniversaries and milestones can bring it all back, sometimes without warning. Over time most people find the grief changes weight more than it disappears, and there is room beside it for the rest of life.
None of this is a schedule. Some people feel the worst of it a year in. Some never feel the fog at all.
“Hospice taught me something I bring into every session: pain and loss deserve to be witnessed. It’s only then that there’s more room for healing, and eventually for joy.”
Jillian Corpora, LPC · Read her bio →
Signs grief could use more support
Grief is a normal response to loss, and you don’t need a diagnosis to benefit from talking with someone. It can help to come in when:
- You feel stuck in the same raw place many months later, or numb when you expected to feel something
- The loss was sudden or violent, or the result of suicide, and the images won’t leave you alone
- Your relationship with the person was complicated, and you are grieving that too
- Several losses have piled up close together
- You avoid anything that reminds you of them, or you can’t think about anything else
- The people around you seem to expect you to be over it by now
If you are having thoughts of suicide or of not wanting to be here, please call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time.
Room for the whole of it
We don’t rush grief toward resolution. Most of the time it needs to be witnessed more than fixed.
Some weeks you’ll talk about the person: who they were, how they died, the story you keep telling yourself about the last conversation. Some weeks are practical, like getting through a holiday, going back to work, or deciding what to do with their things. There’s room for the anger, the numbness and the waves that hit out of nowhere.
Grief can also get complicated. The loss may carry trauma, the relationship may have been painful, or the loss may reopen older wounds. When that happens we can slow down and bring in trauma-informed work, and we pay attention to depression or anxiety that sometimes moves in alongside grief.
Grief counseling in Denver and across Colorado
Jillian Corpora sees clients in person at our Denver office near Glendale and online. Before becoming a therapist she worked in hospice care as a grief counselor, and she works with the death of someone close, the slow grief of watching someone you love get sick, and the losses people don’t always recognize. Kirsten Adorno works online with individuals and families anywhere in Colorado, including grief that is tangled up with family and relationships.
Sessions are 50 minutes and $175. We’re out of network with insurance and provide a superbill you can submit for possible reimbursement. Appointments run Monday to Friday from 8am to 8pm and weekends from 9am to 5pm, which helps when grief has already taken up most of your energy. If you’re not sure grief counseling is what you need, individual therapy is a fine place to start too.
What people ask about grief counseling
There’s no set timeline. Some people find real relief in 10 to 15 sessions. Others want longer support, especially when grief is traumatic, layered with other losses, or tied to an old history. We go at the pace that’s right for you and check in along the way.
Not only that. Grief therapy looks at the full impact of a loss, including how it shows up in your body, your sense of identity, your relationships and your ability to get through the day. Each session starts with whatever is weighing on you most that week.
Yes. Grief that never had room to be felt doesn’t expire. Many people come in for a loss they’ve carried quietly for years, often after a new loss or a milestone brings it back up.
Grief brings up a lot of ‘shoulds.’ You should be over it, you should feel worse, you should be crying more or less. Therapy is a place to set those down and work with what’s actually there.
Yes. All of our therapists see clients by secure video anywhere in Colorado. Kirsten Adorno works online only, and Jillian Corpora sees clients online and in person in Denver. Many people find it easier to talk about a loss from their own home.
We’re out of network, so we don’t bill insurance directly. We give you a superbill after each session, and many clients get part of the cost reimbursed through their out-of-network mental health benefits. It’s worth calling your insurer to ask what yours covers.
Who to see for this
You don’t have to explain all of it first
A free 15-minute consultation is a quiet place to start, in person in Denver or online anywhere in Colorado.
Schedule a Free Consultation