Grief, Loss and Bereavement Counselling

Take The First Step

In Ivybridge, the South Hams, and online across the UK

If you are here because someone has died, or because you are losing someone, I am sorry. And if your loss is of another kind, an ending, a diagnosis, a life that has changed shape, this page is just as much for you. Whatever has brought you here, you are welcome, and there is no right way to be doing this.

Grief does not follow a timetable. It can arrive all at once or seep in slowly. It can be recent or years old. It can sit quietly underneath a life that looks like it is carrying on as normal. Some people come to counselling soon after a death. Others come a long time later, when everyone around them has stopped asking, and the loss is still close. Both make complete sense to me.

Loss is not a sideline in my work. It is the centre of it.

The many shapes of loss

Not all grief follows a death. People come to me carrying the loss of health, after a diagnosis that has changed what the future looks like. They come while caring for someone who is dying, holding a grief that has already begun. They come after endings: a marriage, a career, a role that held their identity together. And they come with the quieter losses, the ones nobody sends cards for, like the slow disappearance of a life you expected to have. If something has gone from your life and the weight of it has stayed, that is loss, and it belongs here.

Why this is my work

Before training as a psychotherapist, I spent more than twenty years in health and care, much of it in hospice and end-of-life work, including senior NHS roles. I have sat with people who were dying, and with the people who loved them, through the days nobody prepares you for. That time taught me that grief is not a problem to be fixed or a stage to be completed; it deserves room, not a schedule. It also means you do not have to soften anything for me. The thoughts that feel too dark to say aloud can be said with me.

How we would work together

There is no method or ideas I will push you through and no stages I expect you to follow. We start with whatever feels most important, and go at your pace. Some sessions might be about the person you have lost, and some might be about everything else; the family fallout, the exhaustion, childhood memories, unsaid words or the question of who you are now. All of it belongs in our sessions.

Sometimes a loss stirs up more than itself. Old wounds, earlier losses, and patterns from much further back can surface when life changes. If that happens, there is room for it. Some people come for a few months, to get through the hardest stretch. Others stay longer, to understand what the loss has uncovered. Both are welcome, and we will find what is right for you as we go.

Practicalities

My private therapy room is on the edge of Ivybridge, with free parking and no shared waiting areas
Online sessions are available across the UK
Daytime and evening appointments
Sessions are £55
We start with a free initial conversation by phone, with no obligation, so you can get a sense of whether this feels right

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