Grief therapy can be a lot of things at different moments. Many people talk about the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In fact, there’s a whole theory on the stages of grief by psychiatrist Kubler-Ross. She is famous for naming and outlining 5 grief stages.

This theory is great starting place to understanding grief, but it does not capture the multilayered experience of grief and loss

I remember several years ago, sitting with my coworkers, all cis-gender women, waiting for our work meeting to start. My coworkers were asking each other about their spouses and how their children were doing in school. I asked a couple of my coworkers how their heterosexual spouses were and how their children were. When the meeting started, I realized no one had asked me about my partner, how she was doing, what we were planning for the weekend. No one had reciprocated to acknowledge my family.

Invisibility.