If I Had 6 Months to Live, Here’s Where I’d Start

A therapist’s perspective on navigating the unimaginable

Let me begin by saying this clearly: I am not currently facing a life-limiting illness. How I would feel in that position, personally, I can only speculate.

I do not write this from lived experience of dying.

I write it from years of sitting beside people in grief. People facing devastating diagnoses. People losing partners, children, parents, futures. People learning — often against their will — how to live inside uncertainty, heartbreak, fear, love, and meaning all at once.

And over time, I’ve noticed something important:

The people who navigate profound loss with the greatest sense of peace are not necessarily the strongest, the most spiritual, or the most “positive.”

They are usually the people who slowly learn how to become more conscious inside the experience.

Not perfect.
Not fearless.
Not endlessly composed.

Just willing — eventually — to stop running from what is true.

When Grief Doesn’t Feel Heavy… But Still Feels Far Away

There’s a certain kind of person who doesn’t fall apart, even after losing something or someone they love, deeply.

Not because life hasn’t been devastating at times.
Not because they don’t feel deeply.
But because somewhere along the way, they learned how to stay together no matter what.

They keep going.
They function.
They take care of others.
They show up at work, in relationships, in life.

Even after loss.

When Is It Grief? And When Is It Trauma?

Sometimes people come to therapy carrying something heavy for a very long time before they ask the question out loud.

“Is this grief?
Or is this trauma?”

Usually, the answer is not simple.

Sometimes it is grief.
Sometimes it is trauma.
Very often, it is both, woven together so tightly that the nervous system no longer knows where one ends and the other begins.

Searching for the Best EMDR Therapist in Toronto?

What “best” really means when you’re looking for therapy

If you’re searching for the best EMDR therapist in Toronto, chances are you’re not looking for perfection.

You’re looking for care that feels high-quality. Thoughtful. Effective. You want someone competent, experienced, emotionally attuned, and capable of helping you create real change.

You want good outcomes.

You want to feel better—not temporarily, but meaningfully.

And if you’ve been struggling for a while, or carrying something heavy for years, it makes complete sense that you would want robust support. Therapy is an investment of your time, energy, money, vulnerability, and hope. Of course you want to choose carefully.

But here’s something important to understand:

The “best” therapist is not an objective ranking.

It’s a relational fit.

Why Grief Feels Heavy (and Why That’s Not a Problem to Fix)

Grief doesn’t just feel heavy in a metaphorical way. It often feels like actual weight—pressure in the chest, heaviness in the limbs, a kind of gravitational pull toward stillness or fatigue. People will say, “I feel weighed down,” or “I can’t move through this,” as if something in them has become denser.

And in a way, it has.

Not because something is wrong—but because something is happening.

Grief is not just an emotion. It is a whole-system response: emotional, physiological, energetic, and relational. It asks the body to slow down, to process, to metabolize meaning and loss over time.

“What’s wrong with me that I can’t move on?”

When grief turns into self-criticism

These are the kinds of questions that often don’t feel like questions at all. They feel like conclusions.

What’s wrong with me that I can’t move on?
Why am I so weak for still being affected by this?
Why can’t I handle things like other people?
How do I stop being stuck?

And underneath all of them, something very human is happening.

A person is in pain.
And instead of being held in that pain, they are turning toward themselves with judgment.

This is one of the most common ways grief becomes harder than it already is: it gets layered with self-criticism.

When life changes and the mind starts searching for answers

There’s a particular kind of moment that often follows loss.

It doesn’t always look like grief at first. Sometimes it looks like thinking. Replaying. Searching. Asking.

Why did this happen to me?
What is the purpose of suffering?
How do I find meaning after loss?
How do I rebuild my life after everything changed?

It can feel like if you just find the right explanation, something inside you will settle.

But meaning after loss doesn’t usually arrive as an explanation.

It arrives as something slower. More embodied. More lived than understood.

When holding it all together stops working

There’s a particular kind of woman this belongs to.

She’s been the one who holds it together for as long as she can remember. The steady one. The capable one. The one who knows what to do when things fall apart.

And somewhere along the way, it quietly became true in her internal world:

No one else has their shit together without me.

So she keeps going. She manages the work crisis. The family needs. The emotional load no one else seems to see. She solves what needs solving. She absorbs what needs absorbing.

Until one day… she can’t anymore.

How come I can’t control my emotions? How come my emotions are so big?

When I feel everything, and nothing explains it

There are moments when emotional experience stops feeling coherent.

You might find yourself asking things like:
Why am I crying all the time for no reason?
Why do I feel empty even though nothing is wrong now?
Why do I feel anxious and sad at the same time?
Why do I feel stuck in the past?

And underneath all of those questions is usually something very simple, and very human:

Why can’t I make sense of what I’m feeling?

“Why can’t I get over this person even after months/years?”

When I can’t move on, but I don’t know what I’m holding onto

These are the kinds of questions people often bring into AI, or search quietly at night when nothing else is helping.

Why can’t I get over them even after this much time?
Why do I still think about them?
Why do I miss them even though it ended badly?
How do I let go of someone who is gone?

On the surface, it can sound like you’re asking for a strategy. A way out. A way to finally “move on.”

But underneath those questions, something more tender is usually happening.

Not stuckness.

Not failure.

But attachment that hasn’t fully found a place to land.

“Why do I feel different since my breakup / loss?”

When something has changed in me and I don’t know why

There’s a particular kind of question that tends to show up after a loss. It doesn’t usually arrive all at once. It builds slowly. A sense that something inside you no longer feels familiar, but you can’t quite explain what it is.

Why do I feel different since my breakup?
Why don’t I feel like myself anymore?
Why does everything feel slightly off, even though life has moved on?

On the surface, it sounds like you’re trying to make sense of your experience. But underneath it, there is often something much more tender happening. A heart noticing absence. A system adjusting to change. A self quietly trying to reorganize around something that mattered.

Is ChatGPT Good for Mental Health?

As a mental health professional who also works closely with AI tools like ChatGPT, I get this question often—and the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

AI can be helpful for mental health. But it also has clear limitations. And how you use it makes all the difference.

Can ChatGPT Replace Therapy? A Therapist Explains What AI Can (and Can’t) Do for Your Mental Health

AI tools like ChatGPT are becoming part of how people think, reflect, and even cope. For some, it’s a late-night sounding board. For others, it’s a place to try to make sense of relationships, anxiety, or patterns they’re noticing in themselves.

And honestly—some of that makes sense. AI can be helpful. It can put language to things you’ve been circling. It can organize thoughts that feel tangled. It can even offer a kind of clarity that feels relieving in the moment.

But there’s something important to hold onto as you use it:
clarity is not the same as change.

Is EMDR good for highly sensitive people (HSPs)? Learn how EMDR can support emotional processing with gentle pacing.

Highly sensitive people experience the world deeply—emotionally, intuitively, and somatically.

Within the Conscious Living Framework, sensitivity is not something to fix—it is something to honour and support.

What happens in EMDR therapy? Learn what to expect in EMDR sessions, including phases, processing, and how it feels.

Beginning therapy—especially something unfamiliar like EMDR—can feel uncertain.

Within the Conscious Living Framework, therapy is not something that is “done to you,” but something we co-create at a pace that respects your nervous system.

EMDR for chronic illness and medical trauma. Learn how EMDR therapy helps reduce anxiety, process trauma, and rebuild trust in your body.

Chronic illness is not only physical—it is emotional, psychological, and deeply personal.

Within the Conscious Living Framework, chronic illness is often experienced as a rupture in relationship—with the body, with identity, and with a sense of control.

EMDR offers a way to repair that relationship.

What is EMDR Therapy and How Does It Help with Grief?
Grief is not something to “get over.” Within the Conscious Living Framework, grief is an invitation into relationship—with loss, with love, and with the parts of us that are learning to keep living.

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