Grief counselling in Marlow gives you a quiet, unhurried space to grieve — without pressure to be "over it" on anyone else's timeline. Grief is not a problem to solve. It is the slow, particular work of carrying someone you love now that they are gone.
I'm Keeley Taverner, a Psychotherapist, BACP Accredited, grief therapist and author of Why Love Hurts. Across 14 years as a psychotherapist I've sat with people through bereavement of every kind — a parent, a partner, a child, a sibling, a friend, a long marriage, a sudden death, an anticipated one, a complicated relationship that grief has now made even more complicated. This page explains how grief counselling and bereavement counselling work at my practice in Marlow and online.
What is bereavement counselling?
Bereavement counselling — sometimes called grief counselling, grief counseling or grief therapy — is a confidential space to grieve with someone trained to be alongside you while you do. The aim is not to "move on" or to make it hurt less on a timeline. It is to keep you company while grief does what it needs to do, and to help where it gets stuck.
Grief is not a single feeling and it is not linear. It comes in waves — sometimes ordinary, sometimes flattening — and arrives in disguises: anger, guilt, anxiety, numbness, exhaustion, sudden tears in the supermarket. None of that is failing at grief. That is grief.
People come for bereavement counselling at all stages — days after a death, months later when the practicalities have quietened, years afterwards when something has stirred the loss again. There is no "right" time to start, and no "too late".
Signs you might benefit from grief counselling
People I see for bereavement counselling in Marlow often arrive with one or more of these:
- You feel stuck — as if the grief has become the weather, not a season
- You can't bear to face it, and you can't function avoiding it
- You feel guilty for grieving, or guilty for not grieving "enough"
- The relationship was complicated, and the grief is too
- Other people seem to want you "back to normal" before you're ready
- Anniversaries, photographs or songs catch you off guard, hard
- Anxiety, depression or sleep problems have arrived alongside the grief
- You feel alone with it, even with people who love you around you
None of this is unusual, and none of it means anything is "wrong" with how you are grieving. It does mean you don't have to do it alone.
How grief counselling with me works
My approach is integrative and unhurried. I draw on person-centred, ACT and trauma-focused work, and pace it to what you actually need, which often changes week to week. In practice, bereavement counselling usually moves through:
- Telling the story — of the person, the relationship, the death and the time since, as fully or partially as you want.
- Letting the feelings arrive — making room for the waves, including the ones that don't fit the script (anger, relief, guilt, longing).
- Continuing bonds — finding a relationship with the person you've lost that fits the rest of your life, rather than a "letting go" that doesn't.
- Rebuilding around the absence — not replacing them, but reshaping a life that has space for both the loss and what comes next.
Grief doesn't shrink. We grow around it. Bereavement counselling is the work of finding out what shape that "around" wants to be.
Grief therapy for complicated loss
Sometimes grief gets stuck — when the death was sudden, traumatic or by suicide; when the relationship was difficult or ambivalent; when there was no chance to say what needed saying; when grief is layered on top of an earlier trauma or a long history of depression. Where that's the case we work more slowly, trauma-aware, and sometimes draw on EMDR for the specific frozen moments. There is no rushing this. There is only being kept company in it.
Bereavement counselling in Marlow & online across Buckinghamshire
I see clients in person at The Courtyard, 60 Station Road, Marlow SL7 1NX — a quiet, private space easily reached from Bourne End, Maidenhead, High Wycombe, Henley-on-Thames and the surrounding Buckinghamshire villages. If you've been searching for grief counselling near me in the Marlow area, this practice is a short walk from the town centre. Online therapy for grief by secure video is also available across the UK — useful when energy or travel feels like too much. Sessions are £250 and completely confidential.
The simplest first step is a free, no-pressure 30-minute consultation — a brief call to ask questions and see how it feels.
