Grief and loss through a justice-informed therapy lens

“As counterintuitive as it feels, embracing grief in agreed-upon containers would bring so many treasures to this work. When we set down what is too heavy to carry, it creates more space to think in a flexible way, to orient from a place of love rooted in what we care about and how we wish to operate in integrity.”  (Barton, C. S., 2024)

I find myself increasingly challenged not only to understand theories of loss and grief but to examine who these models serve, whose voices are heard, and whose are missing. I have witnessed the profound pain of bereavement – both in my own life and in the lives of clients – and would like to explore how justice-informed therapy offers a lens to honour that pain fairly..

Traditional models like Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief (1969) or Worden’s tasks of mourning (2008) provide useful structures, but they often centre Western, individualistic, and ableist assumptions. They may not fully account for the layered grief experienced by people who are also navigating racism, poverty, disability, or displacement. My role as a developing therapist is to engage with these models critically, ensuring that my practice is not just compassionate, but is delivered through an anti-oppressive lens.

While the BACP Ethical Framework (BACP, 2018) encourages respect, autonomy, and justice, it often stops short of challenging the societal systems that create unequal grief experiences. Are ethical guidelines enough when considering a Black mother grieving her son killed by police violence, or a transgender person mourning the loss of familial ties due to rejection? A client who must battle systemic injustice while grieving may experience compounded trauma that traditional frameworks overlook.

Justice-informed therapy urges therapists to critically evaluate the ethical frameworks we work within. This, in turn, leads us to advocate, to hold space for collective grief, and to validate non-traditional mourning processes shaped by cultural, historical, and structural forces.

This idea echoes in the words of Black poets like Claudia Rankine, whose work in "Citizen: An American Lyric" (2014) lays bare the emotional and psychological weight of systemic racism. Rankine writes of the daily microaggressions and overt violence that shape Black existence in America, where grief is not always about death, but about enduring erasure, dismissal, and fear. Her poetry becomes an act of resistance – a space where grief is spoken aloud and given form.

Similarly, Warsan Shire, in her poem "Home”, explores the grief of displacement and exile, of mourning a homeland lost to violence. Her words highlight the type of grief that rarely finds space in traditional therapeutic settings: "You have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land." (Shire, 2009)

In integrating such voices into therapeutic awareness, we begin to honour a broader, justice-informed understanding of grief. Theories such as Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning provide structure, yet without cultural critique, they risk reinforcing dominant narratives. For a client facing the compounded grief of marginalisation, the task of "accepting the reality of the loss" might also require confronting a society that refuses to acknowledge that loss in the first place.

Justice-informed therapy, therefore, calls for a deliberate expansion of our ethical practice. It requires counsellors to:

• Question the cultural assumptions embedded in our theories and frameworks.
• Validate grief that stems from structural harm, historical trauma, and intergenerational loss.
• Recognise poetry, ritual, community, and activism as legitimate grief responses.

When we do this, we are not only respecting the client’s autonomy and dignity – we are participating in a form of ethical practice that is actively anti-oppressive.

Dominant counselling theories frequently position the counsellor as the “expert,” casting the client into a passive role as simply a receiver of knowledge. This dynamic becomes especially troubling in grief work, where counsellors’ preconceived notions about what constitutes “appropriate” mourning can marginalise expressions of grief that fall outside Eurocentric, middle-class, or individualistic standards.

Justice-informed therapy challenges this imbalance by fostering therapeutic environments that go beyond mere safety to cultivate bravery – spaces where every form of grief is not only accepted but deeply respected and valued.

In traditional Western models like Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning, grief is often framed as an intrapersonal process to be worked through rationally and quietly. But I ask myself what happens when a client's grief is political? Loud? Spirited? Disruptive? What happens when grief is inherited – passed down like memory through generations of systemic trauma?

I’m learning to step back from some of my training’s implicit scripts and instead lean into humility. To hold space for grief that is messy, cyclical, spiritual, or angry. I have found that real connection happens not when the therapy relationship stays neutral, but when it really resonates between myself and the client. I reflected to a client that I felt deeply the injustice that her son had encountered in life and in death, whilst also connecting it to her own injustice. We paused, and in that moment,t I felt such a tangible connection between us.

As Tonkin (1996) suggested in her "growing around grief" model, loss doesn’t disappear – it integrates into our lives, shaping how we see the world and how the world sees us. For clients whose lives are shaped by racism, poverty, exile, or ableism, the pain of grief often blends with daily lived injustices. Their loss is not just personal but political – and deeply relational.

The therapeutic relationship in justice-informed grief work is not about “fixing” or “resolving” grief. It is about validating it, understanding its roots, and walking beside clients as they make meaning in their own culturally and personally relevant ways.

We begin to co-create brave space when:

• We honour grief expressed through tears, silence, or song.
• We welcome anger, as well as sorrow.
• We resist pathologising mourning that does not fit mainstream timelines or aesthetics.
• We allow grief to be informed by faith, ancestors, protest, poetry, and more.

In mainstream counselling education, I encountered that grief has often been presented as a universal human experience – something we all encounter, process, and eventually “recover” from. Yet, I believe this framing risks ignoring a fundamental truth: grief is not only personal; it is profoundly political, cultural, and contextual.

I have found that my clients’ social location – race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, immigration status, faith, and more – shapes not only what they grieve, but how they are allowed to grieve. I believe justice-informed therapy calls on us to stop seeing these factors as just “diversity issues” on the sidelines and instead make them central to how we approach grief work.

For a refugee client, loss may encompass far more than the bereavement of a person. It might involve mourning a homeland, language, cultural practice, or sense of safety. Applying the Dual Process Model of Grief (Stroebe & Schut, 1999) simply would indeed acknowledge that grievers oscillate between attending to loss and restoring daily life. However, for refugees, restoration is often fraught with uncertainty, bureaucracy, and trauma – an ongoing struggle rather than a stable backdrop to grief.

Similarly, clients from the LGBTQIA+ community often experience disenfranchised grief – a term coined by Kenneth Doka (1989) to describe grief that is not socially acknowledged or publicly mourned. For example, someone mourning the loss of a same-gender partner may find that their pain is dismissed by family or society. The rituals that typically help us process grief – funerals, community mourning, memorials – may be denied to them altogether.

In such cases, if we are to align a client’s grief to Worden’s first task of mourning, “accepting the reality of the loss,” it quickly becomes complicated. How can someone accept a loss that the world refuses to validate? I believe working with justice-informed therapy challenges us to broaden our definitions of legitimate grief and to create space for what society erases.

For disabled clients, grief often emerges not from death but from exclusion and inaccessibility. They may grieve the loss of autonomy, the limitations of their bodies, or the isolation from community rituals due to ableist infrastructures. As Tonkin (1996) suggests, grief is something we grow around; for disabled people, this growth often happens in a world that continuously invalidates their experiences.

Justice-informed therapy demands that we move beyond “cultural competence” into active cultural humility and structural awareness. Many clients grieve in ways that reflect their spiritual or cultural traditions. In Afro-Caribbean communities, for example, mourning may include celebration, dance, collective lament, or ancestor reverence. But Western therapeutic models often position such expressions as “avoidance” or “denial.”

Poet and theologian Cole Arthur Riley, founder of Black Liturgies, writes of grief not only as pain but as connection: “Grief is not something to be fixed, but something to be witnessed.” (Riley, 2024)

Grief does not need to be “completed” or neatly integrated. It asks to be named, held, and dignified. I acknowledge that my role in the room is not just about understanding the client's grief, but understanding how the world grieves them – or doesn’t. It’s about recognising that grief is a form of social discourse, a space where inclusion and exclusion are negotiated.

Being client-centred is a foundational value in my counselling practice, but in a justice-informed context, it asks more. Following my learning on this course, I recognise that it is not enough to simply offer empathic listening or unconditional positive regard, though these remain vital. To truly walk beside my clients, especially those whose grief is shaped by oppression, I must question how I show up, whose needs I prioritise, and what assumptions I bring into the room.

A justice-informed, user-centred approach means allowing the client to set the pace, define the meaning of their loss, and shape the direction of their healing. It involves humility, adaptability, and a willingness to sit with discomfort – mine and theirs.

Traditional grief models are often rooted in Western, individualist frameworks that prioritise internal processing, verbal expression, and eventual “closure.” But for many communities, grief is not meant to be private or completed. It is lived communally, spiritually, and cyclically.

Through the reading on this course and experience shared from past clients, I see that a decolonised approach to grief honours non-Western traditions, such as ancestral rituals, communal lamentation, spiritual storytelling, and ritualised remembrance. For example, in many Indigenous and African diasporic cultures, grieving involves music, dance, and collective ceremony, which serve as both healing practices and cultural survival strategies.

Being user-centred means choosing language that honours grief, rather than labelling it as “complicated,” “unresolved,” or “prolonged” when it simply doesn’t follow a linear, Western timeline. Consider again the Black mother grieving the loss of her son to police violence. Her grief may be spiritual, political, and restless. To reduce her mourning to a “stage” or “task” is to miss its depth. As poet Audre Lorde wrote, “Your silence will not protect you.” (1984). Grief, especially for the oppressed, can be a refusal to be silent – a form of truth-telling. I feel that healing is not a formula; it is relational, contextual, and deeply personal.

As a white, able-bodied, neurotypical counsellor, I am learning that self-awareness is an ongoing journey. I acknowledge that my social location grants me unearned advantages that can subtly, and sometimes overtly, shape the lens through which I view the world, including the therapeutic space. This understanding requires me to engage with every client thoughtfully and humbly, whilst also questioning my own assumptions that may arise.

Through personal therapy and reflective supervision, I’ve begun to challenge the internalised narratives I once held about what constitutes “appropriate” expressions of grief. I used to imagine grief as something quiet, introspective, and linear – concepts rooted in dominant cultural norms. I now understand that grief can be loud, cyclical, messy, or rooted in collective struggle. When a client’s anger has unsettled me or their grief takes the form of protest or public mourning, I pause to examine my own privilege. I remain mindful not to unconsciously prioritise my emotional comfort over the client’s authentic experience.

Justice-informed practice starts with humility, but it requires ongoing commitment through purposeful action. It involves not just being receptive to feedback, but actively pursuing it. It calls for listening openly and without defensiveness when harm is identified or blind spots are brought to light.

This work is both deeply personal and inherently political. It challenges me to engage in honest self-reflection and then use those insights to break down obstacles to care, connection, and dignity. Only by doing this can I move toward a practice that is genuinely affirming, freeing, and just.

While I value both person-centred and integrative models for their emphasis on empathy, collaboration, and responsiveness, I believe that any therapeutic framework must also be flexible, critically engaged, and rooted in justice. In my work with clients – some of whom navigate experiences shaped by cultural displacement, structural violence, generational trauma, and disenfranchised grief – it has become increasingly important that my practice not only honours individual narratives but also situates them within broader social and historical contexts.

To meet this need, I am actively deepening my integration of narrative therapy (White, M., & Epston, 1990), liberation psychology (Martín-Baró, 1994) and community-based grief support. These approaches not only support clients in telling their stories but also affirm the legitimacy of their emotions in the face of systemic erasure.

For example, narrative therapy helps clients externalise and deconstruct dominant cultural scripts – such as "you should be over it by now" – which often silence or pathologise prolonged grief, especially in marginalised communities. This therapeutic stance empowers clients to reclaim authorship over their grief, allowing for meaning-making that aligns with their lived realities, identities, and values.

Liberation psychology assists to centre clients’ experiences of oppression and resistance, recognising that healing is not only personal but collective. In practice, this might look like naming the social conditions that complicate mourning – for instance, the impact of racism on access to ritual, or the invisibility of queer grief in heteronormative spaces.

Meanwhile, community-based grief support reminds me that loss is relational and that many clients benefit from spaces where grief can be held communally, not just individually. Alongside this course, I have been undertaking group facilitation training to complement my private practice. I am hoping to create online and in-person spaces to hold people safely and bravely in their grief. I’ve witnessed how powerful group work is when I’ve facilitated groups of mothers who have been bereaved by loved ones with addictions. The sense of collective grief, whilst honouring the individual’s journey, is so impactful and meaningful for these women and for me, as I sit beside them.

Together, these frameworks allow me to hold space in a way that is both trauma-informed and culturally responsive. They provide a coherent yet adaptive structure that enables clients to locate themselves in narratives of survival, strength, and ongoing transformation.

I've come to experience supervision as a deeply vital and productive space – one that goes far beyond case discussion. It’s where I’m challenged to reflect critically, stay ethically grounded, and continue growing in meaningful ways. Supervision gives me the chance to pause and look closely, not just at the work itself, but at the assumptions and biases I carry with me into the room. It's where I begin to unlearn some of the internalised norms that have shaped how I show up as a therapist. For me, it's also a space to explore power – how it moves between therapist and client, and how wider social and political forces shape the therapeutic encounter.

I’ve come to value supervision as a space where honest dialogue and mutual vulnerability can coexist – where there’s room not just for support, but for challenge. I actively sought out a supervisor who was willing to question therapeutic practice, who brings self-awareness to identities and biases, and who is grounded in a shared commitment to justice and anti-oppression. This kind of relationship stretches me. It invites me to keep widening my perspective, to sit with complexity, and to stay humble in the face of all I don’t yet know.

Professional development is an equally indispensable strand in this lifelong learning journey. Rather than viewing CPD as a box to tick, I engage with it as an intentional, value-driven practice. I prioritise CPD opportunities that amplify and centre the voices and experiences of people from marginalised and historically excluded communities – racialised individuals, queer and trans communities, disabled and neurodivergent people, migrants, and others whose lived realities often challenge mainstream clinical narratives. These trainings, workshops, and dialogues deepen my understanding of intersectionality, cultural humility, and systemic oppression. They enrich my capacity to hold my clients’ diverse identities and experiences with greater nuance, sensitivity, and political awareness.

For example, a recent webinar delivered by Black Psychotherapy underscored how justice-informed and decolonised therapy is far from a static model or a checklist of actions to complete. Instead, it is a living, relational, and evolving practice – one that demands responsiveness to the shifting social, political, and personal landscapes that shape my clients’ lives as well as my own. This approach calls for continual reflexivity, a willingness to be challenged, and the courage to sit with discomfort and uncertainty as necessary parts of ethical clinical work.

Ultimately, supervision and professional development are not peripheral or secondary elements of clinical practice; they are central pillars that sustain the ethical integrity and transformative potential of the work. They ensure that my practice remains anchored in justice, humility, and adaptability – honouring both the complexity of my clients’ experiences and my ongoing commitment to learning and growth as a practitioner.

Grief is never just personal – it is shaped by history, culture, and power. As a therapist, I’ve come to see that my role is not simply to support clients in processing loss, but to honour the full context of their grief: who they are, what they’ve endured, and how the world responds to their pain.

Justice-informed therapy offers a framework that centres this complexity. It asks me to practise with humility, to hold space for grief in its many forms – messy, political, ancestral, and sacred – and to recognise healing as a collective, relational process. This work demands ongoing reflection, discomfort, and growth. But it also brings me closer to the kind of practice I believe in: one rooted in dignity, solidarity, and justice.

Citations

• BACP (2018). Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions. British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
• Barton, C. S. (2024). Tending grief: Embodied rituals for holding our sorrow and growing cultures of care in community. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
• Doka, K.J. (1989). Disenfranchised grief: Recognizing hidden sorrow. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
• Kübler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York: Macmillan.
• Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press.
• Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a Liberation Psychology. A. Aron & S. Corne (Eds.). Harvard University Press.
• Rankine, C. (2014). Citizen: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press.
• Riley, C.A. (2024). Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human. New York: Convergent Books.
• Shire, W. (2009). Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth. London: Mouthmark.
• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
• Tonkin, L. (1996). Growing Around Grief: Another Way of Looking at Grief and Recovery. Bereavement Care, 15(1), 10.
• White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. Norton.
• Worden, J. W. (2008). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner (4th ed.). Springer Publishing Company.