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Grief & Loss TherapyGrief does not only follow a death.
Bereavement, yes — and also the quieter losses nobody sends a card for. Online, by phone, or in person in Vancouver.
Grief and loss counselling — the short version
- What it is
- Therapy for any significant loss, not only bereavement — relationships ending, career change, diagnosis, estrangement, infertility, relocation or anticipatory grief.
- Who it suits
- Anyone carrying a loss that others may not recognize, whether it happened last week or twenty years ago.
- What happens
- Space to say the things you manage around other people, regulation skills for the hardest moments, and ways to honour what you lost while rebuilding a life around it.
- Session formats
- Online video, telephone, or in person at the Vancouver office
- Where
- 204 – 5279 West Blvd, Vancouver, BC V6M 3W8, plus online across British Columbia and Saskatchewan
- Cost
- $50 CAD first session, then $150 per 50 minutes ($100 for veterans, healthcare workers and first responders)
- Counsellor
- Stephanie Hartfield, RCC, CCC, MA Counselling Psychology and Art Therapy
Written and clinically reviewed by Stephanie Hartfield, RCC, CCC,
Registered Clinical Counsellor and Canadian Certified Counsellor, MA Counselling Psychology and Art Therapy.
Grief and loss therapy addresses more than just the sorrow following a death. It also applies to everyday experiences like the end of a relationship, a job change, or a significant life transition.
Most people arrive apologizing. They say some version of “I know this isn’t as bad as what other people are going through.” You do not have to earn the right to grieve something. If it mattered to you, the loss is real, and it is worth bringing here.
What grief actually looks like
Grief is rarely the tidy five stages people expect. It arrives in waves, often at inconvenient moments — in a grocery aisle, halfway through a meeting, on an ordinary Tuesday months after everyone else has moved on. It can look like sadness, but it can just as easily look like anger, numbness, exhaustion, irritability, or a strange flat nothing where feeling used to be.
This type of therapy helps you process feelings of sadness, anger or confusion related to any kind of loss, allowing you to heal and adapt. By working through grief rather than around it, you can build emotional resilience and find new ways to move forward in your life.
The losses people bring
Bereavement is the obvious one, and we will take as long as you need with it. But I also work with people grieving:
- The end of a marriage or a long relationship
- A career that ended, changed, or never happened
- A diagnosis — theirs or someone else’s — and the future it rewrote
- Estrangement from family, which carries grief without any of the rituals
- Infertility, miscarriage, and the particular loneliness of grieving something that was never quite there
- A move, an immigration, the loss of a place and a version of yourself that lived there
- Anticipatory grief — mourning someone who is still here
How we work together
There is no schedule you are behind on. My approach is compassionate, client-centred and tailored to you rather than to a protocol. Early on, much of the work is simply making room — saying the things you have been managing around other people, including the parts that feel ugly or disloyal or irrational.
From there we look at what helps you carry it: practical regulation skills when the waves hit hard, ways to mark and honour what you lost, and gradually, a relationship with the loss that leaves space for the rest of your life. Where it is useful, I draw on DBT skills for the moments that feel unmanageable, and on art therapy when words run out — which, with grief, they often do.
Grief does not get smaller. You get steadier around it. That is the honest goal, and it is an achievable one.
What we might work on
The first weeks and months
When everything is loud and nothing makes sense. Stabilizing, sleeping, eating, and getting through the days without having to perform being fine.
The anniversary problem
Birthdays, anniversaries, the date it happened. Planning for them deliberately instead of being ambushed every year.
Grief nobody acknowledges
Estrangement, miscarriage, a relationship that ended badly, a loss your circle thinks you should be over. Grief without a casserole.
Anger and guilt
The feelings people are least willing to say out loud. What you did not say, what you did say, and what you felt relieved about.
Telling people
What to say at work, to children, to the person who asks how you are at the worst possible moment.
Living alongside it
Rebuilding a life that has room for both the loss and a future. Not moving on — moving forward, carrying it differently.
About grief and loss
Do I need to be grieving a death?
No. The end of a relationship, a job change, a diagnosis or a significant life transition all carry real loss and all deserve support. If it mattered to you, it counts.
It has been years. Is it too late?
No. Grief does not expire, and neither does the usefulness of working on it. People come to me decades after a loss, often because something recent has stirred it up again.
Will you make me talk about the details?
Never before you are ready. You set the pace entirely. Some people need to tell the whole story in the first session; others circle it for weeks. Both are fine.
What if I cry the whole time?
Then you cry the whole time, and that is a perfectly good use of fifty minutes. You do not need to hold it together in here.
How many sessions will I need?
There is no fixed number. Some people come for a handful of sessions around a specific event; others stay longer. We review it together and you are never locked in.
Start with one conversation.
The first session is $50 and there is no obligation to continue.