Grief has a way of shifting the air between two people. Today, in a quiet pause with a grieving client, something in the room changed. Not because of what they said, but because of what neither of us did. A silence opened, the weight of their loss settled, and I suddenly felt the full truth of our shared mortality rise in my chest.Warm, heavy, unmistakably human.

I’m a highly relational therapist. I work in the space between people, trusting that attunement, curiosity and presence are just as therapeutic as any technique I learned in grad school. But every now and then, this work surprises me and today was one of those moments.

My tears came from recognition. A burning sensation in my chest, a heaviness in my heart, and simultaneously, a grounded awareness of the chair beneath me. It wasn’t a collapse of my nervous system; there was clarity. An embodied reminder: I see your pain, and I’m not afraid to meet you in its depth.

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I anchored myself by noticing their eye colour, giving them the full weight of my presence before moving to get a tissue. No interpretation. No intervention. Just two people sitting in the truth that grief does not discriminate; not by age, profession, or role.

They mirrored me, exhaled, and looked surprised. In that moment, something wordless passed between us. I won't pretend to know exactly what it gave them, but my best clinical intuition tells me this: perhaps they felt the universality of grief. That their pain was not too much, not too strange, not something to tidy up before letting someone else into the room.

For me, the moment offered a deepening of my own philosophy. A reminder that the work we do within ourselves is never separate from the work we do with others. Our own healing shapes the space we’re capable of holding. Our emotional range becomes part of the therapeutic container. It's the art of holding space.

Grief is a shared experience, but one that unfolds uniquely in every person. When therapists cry, it isn’t because we’ve lost our professionalism. It's because, for a brief moment, the boundary between two nervous systems softens enough to let truth move freely. Grief forces us to feel. Sometimes together.

And maybe that’s where the healing begins.

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Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash