Learning to Live Again Trauma & Grief Counseling

04/24/2026

Two years ago this week, we lost Steve.

He was my uncle, but that word never felt big enough for who he was to me.

Steve was my hero, my cheerleader, and in many ways, my big brother.

He was the family historian.
The wild man.
The comedian.
The storyteller.
The keeper of memories.

He could make you laugh, tell a story you never wanted to end, and remind you where you came from all in the same conversation.

Steve is one of the reasons I am a better grief therapist.

He would never have sat down with someone to talk through his own pain. That was not his way. But he always celebrated that I wanted to help people. He believed in the work I felt called to do, even if he might not have chosen it for himself.

He also used to say I was like his mom—my Grandma.

Spicy and loving.
Centered on serving others.
Deeply devoted to family.
And always, always holding the people we love to high standards.

Gosh, I miss her too.

That is the thing about grief. One loss often reaches back and touches another. We do not grieve in neat little boxes. We grieve people, stories, family roles, shared history, and the parts of ourselves that were shaped by those who loved us.

Life has a huge hole in it without Steve.

But his love is still here.

It is in the way I sit with grieving people.
It is in the stories I carry forward.
It is in the standards I hold.
It is in the service I offer.
It is in the name I refuse to stop saying.

Steve.

Loved deeply.
Missed terribly.
Remembered always.

04/24/2026

Three Lakes Labradors is where our therapy dog in training, Goose, was raised. They are amazing!! He just came home from basic and advanced training with them and is such a joy!!

I cannot recommend them enough for your service and therapy dogs AND their necessary training.

When I say we “specialize in producing service dogs” I mean it!AND we have the numbers to back that claim up!

Since our first litter was born in January 2022, we’ve produced 102 puppies.
TO DATE (4/24/26):
• 21 task-trained, working Service Dogs
• 13 Service Dogs in-training

That means a significant portion of the puppies produced within our program have gone on to succeed in real, working service roles—not just potential, but proven outcomes!
These are numbers pulled from within our own program. This does not include Service Dogs produced by our stud dogs with females outside our program.

In an industry where claims are often made without measurable results, Three Lakes Labradors believes in transparency and proof!
Our breeding program is intentionally built around producing dogs with the temperament, structure, and trainability required for service work—and our results clearly reflect that. The ONLY reason I became a breeder was to produce Service Dogs! We are doing that for YOU!

If you’re searching for a program, don’t rely on promises alone. Ask for real numbers. Ask for real outcomes. The difference is in what can be proven.

I am so proud of what I have built! And I am so proud of my puppy buyers and the success of their dogs! THIS is the reason I breed. YOU are the reason I built this!

04/16/2026

Today is Semicolon Day, a reminder that a pause is not the end.

A semicolon is small, but powerful. It represents a moment where a sentence could have ended… but didn’t.

In life, it stands for hope. For every person who has felt overwhelmed, for every quiet tear shed in the dark, for every heart that keeps going despite the weight—you are the semicolon.

Mental health struggles are real. They are not weakness, not attention-seeking, not drama. They are lived experiences that many carry every day—yet still find the strength to show up.

We don’t always see the battles people are fighting. Some smiles hide pain. Some “I’m okay” carry stories untold.

But today reminds us: even when life pauses, it does not have to end. You can rest, you can breathe—but you don’t have to give up.

Let’s check on one another. Let’s listen, stay, and be present. Sometimes, just being there can mean everything.

Your story is still being written. And it matters more than you know.

💜 Keep living; keep writing; keep choosing the semicolon. 💙

04/16/2026

Special thanks to Longview Heights Baptist Church for inviting me to speak at Broken Vessels Grief Support Ministry tonight.

Grief never ends. It changes. You learn how to carry it.

You can’t grieve wrong and there is no “normal” way to grieve.

You are allowed to feel whatever you feel. And, emotions are permitted to co-exist.

Keep sharing the stories! Say their names! Live on their behalf.

Love never ends. That’s why grief never ends.

04/15/2026

This is FANTASTIC information from The Emotional Intelligence Network!

Great information from The Emotinal Intelligence Network.

How often do you allow one negative moment to change your entire day? We do not has to be be emotional sponge or permit and upsetting piece of news to dictate our mood for the day.

It’s all about mindset!
…………………..

We've all had that moment. You hear something upsetting and before you know it, you're doomscrolling, replaying it in your head, and the whole day goes off the rails. It's all too easy, especially given the news these days.

Here's what's actually happening in your brain with this reaction route:
* You perceive a challenge that's bigger than your resources, you feel stress.
* Stress triggers your amygdala, and a flood of emotion-chemicals go pouring through your brain & rest of your body.
* That shifts ALL your systems. Thinking. Digestion. Muscles. Even immunity. It changes what you notice next & how you assess it. Your options narrow. Fight, flight, freeze.

That's why one bad headline can tank your entire afternoon.

But there's a different path. Emotional intelligence is basically the practice of interrupting that hijack 🧠

How? Sit with the feeling instead of running from it. Ask yourself what's actually in your control. Increase your resources (eg phone a friend!). Take that invaluable six second pause. Breathe.
--> Then choose your next move from that calmer place.

Same moment. Totally different day.

Big reminder: You don't have to let one spark become a wildfire 🔥❤️

What's your go-to reset when stress hits?

04/14/2026

Grief is never just about loss.

It is also shaped by culture, identity, family, faith, community, and lived experience. And yet, too often, grief is still understood through narrow expectations of what mourning should look like, how emotion should be expressed, and when healing should be visible.

As counselors, that should give us pause.

When we rely too heavily on dominant grief frameworks without examining their cultural assumptions, we risk misreading pain, overlooking meaning, and unintentionally pathologizing responses that may be deeply normative within a person’s cultural context.

Multicultural grief calls us to something more thoughtful.

It asks us to slow down, listen with greater care, and approach each grieving person with cultural humility. It reminds us that grief may be expressed through story, silence, ritual, spirituality, responsibility, emotional restraint, or communal coping that does not always align with mainstream clinical expectations.

This is not a peripheral issue in counseling practice. It is a clinical, ethical, and human one.

I recently adapted part of my dissertation literature review into a practitioner article on multicultural grief, and the message feels especially important: grief care must be culturally responsive to be truly compassionate and clinically sound.

People deserve to have both their grief and their cultural context understood.

04/13/2026

Let's talk about grief! It's not negotiable. It's never-ending. And time does not heal it; it changes it.

04/13/2026

There are many things in life we can negotiate.

We can push back, problem solve, and work toward a different outcome when something feels unfair or unbearable.

Grief is not one of them.

Grief does not negotiate. When loss enters our lives, grief comes with it. We cannot outrun it, outthink it, or wish it away.

That is part of what makes grief so hard.

Over time, grief often becomes part of life as we now know it. It may shift. It may soften around the edges. But it does not simply disappear. We learn to carry it.

Some days grief is loud.
Some days it hums quietly in the background.
Other days it rises suddenly through a memory, a date, a song, a scent, or a moment you did not see coming.

Grief touches every part of us emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

And still, healing is possible.

Not because grief goes away, but because over time you begin to breathe again. You find moments that feel less heavy. You find steadiness, meaning, and even joy alongside the pain.

Life may never feel the way it did before the loss. But that does not mean it will never feel okay again.

There is no rushing grief.
It needs to be felt.
It needs to be heard.
And it deserves compassion.

Your grief matters.
Your pain is real.
And your feelings deserve to be seen, held, and validated.

04/11/2026

First responders don’t just experience trauma.

They carry grief.

Grief for the calls that didn’t end the way they hoped.

Grief for the people they couldn’t save.

Grief for the parts of themselves that changed along the way.

Grief for the emotional distance that sometimes follows.

Grief for the cumulative weight of witnessing suffering.

This is cumulative grief — loss layered upon loss, call after call.

For many first responders, trauma and grief are intertwined.

They don’t just remember what happened.

They remember what was lost.

They stand beside others in their hardest moments.

They should never have to walk through their own alone.

We must recognize and honor their grief, support their healing,
and help them learn to live again.

04/10/2026

Let’s talk about First Responder Grief.

As a grief and trauma specialist working extensively with first responders, it is vital to recognize the overwhelming presence of grief, particularly non-death loss, in their service.

First responders experience grief over systemic challenges as they navigate the conflict between what they believe should happen and what the system dictates. They grieve the idealistic views they held when entering the profession, expecting appreciation and justice to prevail, only to face threats, attacks, and rejection, witnessing the system work against the justice they believed in.

They also grieve the inability to save everyone and the emotional numbness that results from constant exposure to unimaginable situations. The cumulative exposure to suffering adds to this grief.

Trauma produces grief, and for first responders, the two are intertwined. They carry the weight of moments that most people never witness—the calls that linger, the faces they remember, and the outcomes they wish had been different.

This is not a sign of weakness; it is a human response to repeated exposure to loss. Supporting first responders means acknowledging that grief is part of the job, but they do not have to carry it alone.

Let us work to eliminate the stigma surrounding first responder mental health and stand beside them as they learn to live again.

04/10/2026

One helpful way to understand grief comes from Lois Tonkin.

Tonkin’s theory challenges the idea that grief fades, resolves, or disappears with time. Instead, it suggests this: grief stays the same size, but life grows around it.

In the beginning, grief can feel all-consuming. It takes up everything. Over time, new experiences, relationships, routines, and moments of meaning slowly expand the space around the grief. The pain doesn’t vanish. It’s just no longer the only thing present.

This matters because it removes the pressure to “get over it.”

If your grief still feels heavy years later, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck.
If moments of joy coexist with deep sorrow, that doesn’t mean you’re betraying your loss.

Grief doesn’t ask to be erased.
It asks to be carried, alongside a life that continues to grow.

Both can be true at the same time.

04/09/2026

Sometimes grief doesn’t show up in the big moments.
It shows up in the small ones.

The song on the radio.
The smell that takes you back.
Grocery shopping.
Folding laundry.

Reaching for your phone… then remembering.

These are called secondary losses. They are the quiet reminders of what life used to look like.

They don’t seem significant to others,
but they can feel deafening to the one carrying them.

If you find yourself crying over something small,
it’s not small at all.

It’s grief.

I am Tonya Andrews, a licensed professional counselor and certified advanced grief counseling specialist.

With a committmet to grief education, and changing societal grief culture. My goal is to help you navigate your grief journey and learn to live again.