Narrative therapy for grief and life transitions

Your life is the story you are still telling.

A scraped knee became a story about carelessness, or about courage. A love that ended became a story about what you're worth. Tell it often enough and it stops sounding like a story. It starts sounding like a fact.

What would you want yours to say?

No telling is final. Stories can be reviewed, retold, added to. Sitting together is how we find a truer telling of yours.

Sinda Rosenberg, LCSW · Telehealth across Illinois

Watercolour painting of an open journal with a fountain pen resting uncapped on the page, the left page written on and the right page trailing off into blank paper

Grief is the unexpected shadow that often falls across that story.

It's the dull ache beneath many of life's passages, and it can quietly narrow what you let yourself expect.

We typically associate grief with the death of someone we love. That's true, but it isn't the only source: grief can accompany many of life's changes.

The end of a career, or a job that filled your days with activity and social interactions
A divorce, or the collapse of a long-standing relationship
The death of a cherished pet
A child heading off to college, and a house that's suddenly much too quiet
A friendship that faded without a conversation
The slow goodbye of a parent or partner whose health is gradually fading

Each of these experiences represents the turning of a page in your story — a life transition often impeded by a lingering sense of grief. Identifying the source of that grief and then acknowledging it — that's where the work begins.

Sinda Rosenberg, LCSW
Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Illinois
Telehealth across Illinois
MSW, Loyola University Chicago, 2017
Fellowship in Bereavement, Rainbow Hospice and Palliative Care, 2017

I have experienced grief.

I lost both of my parents to cancer, my mother in my early thirties and my father ten years later. That experience changed me, and it changed how I understand grief and loss from the inside. It was also the beginning of a long journey of personal discovery.

I spent most of my adult life working with people as they talked about themselves: their lives and their choices; their wishes and preferences; their disappointments and regrets. I worked in bookstores and in fashion retail. I served as a sounding-board for my friends and as a Board Member and volunteer in a hospice center. Eventually I went back to school to obtain my Master's in Social Work. I wanted to offer other people something nobody had offered me at the time: a steady, unhurried companion through life's hardest passages.

I practice narrative therapy, drawing on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) when the work calls for them. Together we explore your story and the role that loss and grief have played in it: how they have shaped your past, and how they are preconditioning your expectations for the future. We untangle the guiding themes in your narrative. We can't erase what has happened, but sitting together, we can decide what it means and what comes next.

~~I'll never feel like myself again.~~ I'm learning who I'm becoming. This is the whole of it, really. The facts of a loss don't change, but the way you understand them, and the stories by which you define yourself and your future, can be changed.

What I want for you is two things: to set down some of the grief that accompanies loss or transition, and to move forward with it weighing less. That's why I do this work.

My hope is simple: that you leave our time together confident in your understanding of your past narrative, and excited about the chapters you have yet to write.

There's room on the bench.

The name of the practice is also my promise. Not someone sitting across a desk assessing you, but someone sitting with you, listening and offering perspective as you retell the stories that make up your life. We'll sit together for as long as it takes to shape the chapters that have yet to be written: a story that is lighter to carry, and still yours to tell.

Request an appointment

Getting started, simply.

Using insurance

The practice is in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois PPO. If you're a BCBS IL PPO member, sessions are typically covered under your plan. We'll confirm your specific benefits before we begin, so there are no surprises later.

Private pay

$185 per 55-minute session $225 initial intake

If you're out of network, or would simply rather not involve insurance, a superbill can be provided for possible out-of-network reimbursement.

The practice is based in Chicago and available to anyone living in Illinois via telehealth. Getting started begins with a short form — a few questions about what brings you here and how to reach you. Sinda reads every one herself.

Prefer to write first? Email info@sittingtogethertherapy.com.

Request an appointment

If you're in crisis or this feels like an emergency, please don't wait for a form. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or call 911. You deserve immediate support.