Center for Grief and Trauma Therapy

06/02/2026

There is a quiet myth that almost every griever inherits without realizing it. The myth that grief has a finish line. That if you just do the work, cry the right amount, read the right book, see the right therapist, you will eventually arrive at a place called done.

I am here to tell you that place does not exist. And the sooner you stop looking for it, the sooner you can actually start healing.

For decades, the world taught us that grief had five neat stages. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. As if loss could be mapped like a recipe. Modern grief research has dismantled that model almost completely. Dr. Lois Tonkin, Dr. George Bonanno, and grief educators across the field have shown that grief is not a staircase you climb out of. It is a room you learn to live in. It expands and contracts. It softens and sharpens. It changes shape across years, sometimes across decades, and it never stops being part of you.

That is not bad news. That is freedom.

Because the moment you stop trying to finish your grief is the moment you can finally start building a life that holds it. You stop punishing yourself for crying in year five. You stop apologizing for the wave that hit on a regular Tuesday. You stop measuring your healing against a calendar that was never designed for love this deep.

Here is your step for today. Take one piece of pressure off yourself. Find one rule you have been holding about how your grief should look by now, and let it go. Maybe it is the idea that you should be over it. Maybe it is the belief that you should not still be crying. Maybe it is the guilt of laughing at something funny and feeling like you betrayed them. Whatever rule is sitting on your chest, name it out loud, and release it. Even just for today.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are getting acquainted with a love that refuses to leave.
What rule about your grief are you ready to release today? ❤️
-Joey-

Thanks to Paula P. Griffith

06/02/2026

: Grief & the Expressive Arts ~ Activating the Creative Imagination
WHEN: June 12, 2026, 9am-12:30pm (PDT)
COST: $99US or $124 with CE Credits
Registration and more details here:
https://portlandinstitute.org/trainings/grief-expressive-arts
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This collaborative & creative PI webinar is Co-Presented by
Shoshi Keisari, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Haifa

Barbara E. Thompson, OTD, LCSW
Professor Emerita, Russell Sage College

Stacie A. Yeldell, MA, MT-BC, AVPT
Adjunct Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies
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Significant loss, including but not limited to bereavement, can disrupt our practical identities, dislodge relationships with others, and alter our experience of belonging in place and time. Adaptive grieving involves reconstructing a world of meaning that is enacted in the physical and social environment and shaped by cultural scripts. Aesthetic activities are embodied and help orient mourners in space and time, providing tangible ways to navigate the paradoxes of presence and absence and integrate changes in relationships with self and other. Engaging the creative imagination to shape loss experiences can create opportunities for emotional awareness and expression, symbolic communication, self-regulation, creativity, and new perspectives, in service of meaning-making and renewed vitality. This module will focus on the use of the visual arts, music, and drama with grievers. It will include theoretical and empirical support for the expressive arts in grief, along with experiential practice. Cultural considerations and strategies will also be addressed.

05/31/2026

One of the most unhelpful things people hear after a loss is that it has been long enough. That it is time to move on.

Grief does not work on a schedule. For many people, significant losses continue to be felt in real ways long after the world expects them to have moved on.

This is not a sign that something is wrong. It is often simply a reflection of how meaningful the loss was.
Individual grief therapy offers consistent, compassionate support without any expectation of where you should be in the process.

05/29/2026

Grief and trauma can feel profoundly isolating. The sense that no one quite understands what you are carrying is one of the most painful parts of both experiences.

Group therapy offers something individual therapy cannot fully replicate. The experience of being witnessed by others who are navigating something similar. Of offering and receiving understanding in equal measure.

Many people find that hearing their own experience reflected in someone else's words is one of the most healing parts of the process.

If you have been curious about group support, it may be worth exploring.

05/26/2026

Complex trauma often does not announce itself clearly. It shows up quietly in the patterns of daily life.

In relationships, in the way the body responds to stress, in the stories we tell about ourselves and whether we are safe or worthy of care.

Many people carrying complex trauma have learned to function well on the outside while something much heavier is present underneath. That experience is real, and it deserves attention.

Trauma-informed therapy works to understand these patterns with compassion rather than judgment, and to support healing at a pace that feels safe.

05/22/2026

Trauma is often misunderstood as the event itself. But the event is only part of the story.

What trauma actually refers to is the impact. The way an experience overwhelms the nervous system's ability to process and integrate what happened. The way it can shape how we see ourselves, others, and the world long after the moment has passed.

Understanding this distinction can be the first step toward approaching your own experience with more compassion.

If something has happened that still feels present in your body or your daily life, that is worth paying attention to.

05/20/2026

New episode of Phoenix Rising with Dr. Z is out now! New episode of Phoenix Rising with Dr. Z is out now.

Tune in as Dr. Christina Zampitella and Dr. Jenn Rapkin explore the connection between grief, trauma, emotions, and the body.

05/20/2026

05/18/2026

There are experiences that resist language. Grief that feels too large to describe. Trauma that lives in the body rather than in memory.

Art therapy creates space for those experiences to be expressed in a different way. Through image, color, and form, people are often able to access and process what has been difficult to reach through words alone.

This approach is not about the end product. It is about the process of expression and what it can open up.
At the Center for Grief and Trauma Therapy, art therapy is one of several ways we support healing.

05/14/2026

Hear what our founder Dr. Christina Zampitella has to say about grief, caregiving, and making space.