Licensed Psychologist | LGBTQ+ Specialized Grief Therapy | Online in Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah, & 40+ PSYPACT States
You knew losing someone would hurt. You just didn’t know it would feel like this.
Online grief therapy for LGBTQ+ adults in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin who are hurting, overwhelmed, and wondering how to feel like themselves again.
What if you could stop fighting with your grief and start living again?
I'm Dr. Weston Donaldson (he/him). I help LGBTQ+ adults who are hurting, overwhelmed, and trying to figure out how to move forward when life no longer looks the way you expected.
Sometimes the harder we try not to feel something, the more space it seems to take up.
So you stay busy.
You push it down.
You avoid the places, songs, conversations, photographs, or memories that might bring it all back.
You tell yourself: Don't go there. I can't deal with this right now. I just need to get through today.
And sometimes you genuinely do need to get through today. I'm not going to take that away from you.
But eventually, you may want something more than just getting through the day. You may want to be able to feel the sadness without being completely swallowed by it.
To remember without falling apart.
To let a hard day be a hard day without deciding that you're back at square one. To notice that grief is here without having to spend the rest of the day wrestling with it.
Loss changes everything, but it doesn't have to be the end of your story. I can help you write the next chapter.
Maybe You're Not Doing Grief Wrong.
You're getting through the day because you have to.
You're going to work, answering emails, returning texts, making dinner. Doing the things that need to get done.
People maybe even tell you that you're doing a good job of holding it together.
They don't see what happens when you get home.
When you're alone in your car.
When you reach for your phone before remembering you can't call them anymore.
Something completely ordinary can knock the wind out of you, and suddenly you're right back in it.
You're starting to wonder: How long am I going to feel like this? Why can't I just get myself together? Shouldn't I be doing better by now? When will I stop hurting so much?
Maybe you've been through loss before, and this feels nothing like what you remember. You thought you knew what grief looked like - you didn't expect this.
Grief Isn't always sadness. Sometimes it's anger, fear, shock and even relief. Sometimes it's all of those things before breakfast.
You can miss someone terribly and still be angry with them. You can love someone and not miss everything about the relationship. You can be relieved that someone is no longer suffering and feel guilty as hell about being relieved. You can be heartbroken about a relationship you had and the relationship you wish you'd had.
You can feel grateful for the good parts and furious about the bad ones. Both can be true.
There isn't a rulebook for this.
It can feel like everyone is waiting for you to be “okay” again:
Are you sleeping?
Are you working?
Are you socializing?
Are you “getting back out there”?
Are you doing better?
Maybe you've started wondering whether you're falling behind.
Here's the thing: grief isn't a race. There is no prize for being the person who “gets over it” the fastest.
You shouldn't have to explain your life before we can talk about your grief.
It’s important to me to help other LGBTQ+ people because our experience is complex for unique reasons. There's something different about sitting across from someone who already understands that your family may not look like everyone else's.
You may have had to build your family. Choose your people. Find your community. Figure out where you belonged.
Maybe some of your closest relationships have been with people who you weren't born to—but who were family in every way that mattered. When you lose someone from that circle, the loss can be enormous.
And sometimes the people around you don't understand why.
You shouldn't have to spend your therapy sessions explaining why that relationship mattered. You shouldn't have to explain why losing someone from your community can feel like losing a piece of your own history.
You shouldn't have to wonder whether your therapist is going to understand the significance of the life you've built.
As a gay man, I get it.
That doesn't mean our experiences are identical, because they aren't.
But it does mean you don't have to start from square one.
Pain is part of grief, but suffering doesn't have to become your whole life. Together, we can explore what moving forward looks like for you.
Grief can get messy.
Especially when the relationship itself was complicated.
What if the person who died also hurt you?
What if you were estranged?
What if you were angry with them when they died?
What if there are things you never got to say?
What if there are things you're glad you never have to deal with again?
You don't have to clean any of that up for me.
You don't have to turn someone into a saint because they died.
You don't have to pretend to only have the “right” feelings.
Together, we can tell the whole story: the beautiful parts, the painful parts, the embarrassing parts. The parts that still don't make sense. All of it.
So, who am I—and how can I help?
As a gay psychologist, I've spent much of my career working with LGBTQ+ adults through some of life's harder transitions. I’ve seen over and over that grief doesn't often fit into a neat little box.
And I've learned something along the way: You don't need me to tell you how you should feel. You need someone who can sit with you in the mess of it, help you make sense of what's happening, and—when you're ready—help you figure out what comes next.
That's how I work.
We'll talk about what's happening in your life right now. We'll notice what's helping and what's keeping you stuck. We'll look at the things you've been doing to cope and whether they're actually giving you the life you want.
Sometimes that means talking about the loss itself.
Sometimes it means talking about the relationship.
Sometimes it means figuring out how to get through the next birthday, holiday, family gathering, or Saturday night.
And sometimes it means asking a bigger question: “What do I want my life to look like now?”
I won't expect you to have an answer right away. We'll figure it out together.
If spirituality is part of how you make sense of loss, there's room for that here, too. I'm comfortable exploring questions about death, connection, meaning, and what might exist beyond what we can explain—including more metaphysical, unconventional perspectives. Your woo is welcome here.
You've probably already tried to handle this on your own.
You've gotten yourself through difficult things before.
You take care of business. You stay busy when things get quiet, telling yourself you'll feel better eventually.
You avoid the things that make you feel worse--going through their things, talking about what happened.
You put one foot in front of the other.
Maybe you can keep doing that, but how is it working for you now?
Functioning isn't the same as feeling okay.
You can go to work every day and still feel miserable.
You can answer every text and still feel completely alone.
You can keep yourself busy from morning until night and still have the grief waiting for you when things finally get quiet.
So maybe the question isn't whether you can muscle through this. You probably can.
The question is: Do you want to keep feeling the way you've been feeling?
If what you're doing right now isn't changing what's happening underneath the surface, doing more of the same probably isn't going to change much.
Getting support doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you can't handle your own life.
It means you don't have to keep proving how much you can handle.
What might change?
Maybe someday you'll wake up and realize you aren't spending the first ten minutes of the morning thinking about what you've lost.
Maybe you'll make plans for next month without immediately thinking, What's the point?
Maybe you'll call a friend instead of isolating yourself.
Maybe you'll go somewhere you used to avoid.
Maybe you'll hear that song and cry—but you'll also be able to finish the song.
Maybe you'll laugh so hard that, for a moment, you forget you're grieving.
And maybe you'll notice that you're not forgetting them at all.
You're simply living alongside the loss instead of living underneath it.
The grief may still be there, but so are you.
Maybe you're thinking...
I'll start living again once this isn't so painful. I'm not going to promise that therapy will make your grief disappear. Honestly, I don't think that's the goal. The pain is there because the person mattered. You don't have to stop loving someone in order to live your life. You don't have to stop missing them. You don't have to forget. You don't have to put the loss neatly behind you. But maybe you don't want the pain to run your entire life, either. Maybe you're tired of avoiding things because you don't know what you'll feel when you get there. Maybe you're tired of isolating yourself. Maybe you're tired of pretending you're okay. Maybe you want to be able to think about them without feeling like you've been knocked back to square one. Maybe you want to laugh again. Make plans. Enjoy dinner with friends. Take a trip. Get excited about something. Wake up and realize you've gone an hour without thinking about it—and not feel guilty. You can have a good day without betraying the person you lost. You can be happy and still miss them. You can grieve and still have a life.
I just need more time. Maybe you do. Grief takes time. I'm not going to argue with that. But time passing and things actually changing aren't necessarily the same thing. You can wait another month. Or six months. Or a year. And still find yourself avoiding the same things. Feeling the same heaviness. Isolating yourself. Going through the motions. Wondering when you're finally going to feel like yourself again. Maybe you've been telling yourself: “I just need to give it more time.” “I should be able to handle this.” “Maybe I just need to keep myself busy.” “I don't even know what therapy could do.” And honestly? I understand why. You may not want to sit around talking about your grief. You may worry that talking about it will just make everything worse. You may think that if you can stay busy enough, eventually the feelings will quiet down. And sometimes keeping busy is exactly what gets you through the day. But if you've been doing that for a while and you're still hurting just as much underneath it all, maybe it's worth trying something different. You don't have to wait until you're completely falling apart before you're allowed to ask for help. Not because you're doing anything wrong. Not because you aren't strong enough. But because you deserve more than simply getting through the day.
Talking about it will just make me feel worse. Maybe you've been avoiding certain memories because you already know how much they hurt. You don't want to sit in a therapist's office and spend an hour making yourself miserable. Fair enough. I'm not interested in making you suffer for the sake of therapy. You don't have to tell me everything on day one. You don't have to dig into every painful memory just because it's there. We go at a pace that makes sense for you. Sometimes, what helps isn't talking about the loss more. Sometimes it's figuring out how to live your life while the grief is there. How to get through the dinner. The birthday. The holiday. The quiet Saturday afternoon. The unexpected reminder. The moment when you realize you've been thinking about them for the last three hours. You don't have to make the grief disappear. but you can learn that you don't have to organize your entire life around avoiding it, either.
Spending more time and money on this is selfish. Especially when you've spent so much time taking care of everything (and everyone) else. Maybe you've gotten used to putting yourself at the bottom of the list. Work needs to get done. Family needs you. Friends need you. There are things that have to be handled. And your grief? It can wait. Except it doesn't really disappear just because you've put it on the back burner. It waits for you. Sometimes self-care isn't a massage or a vacation or a bubble bath. Sometimes self-care is finally saying: “This isn't working anymore.” And then doing something about it. Partnering with a therapist can be one of those things. Not because there's something wrong with you. Not because you're incapable of handling your own life. But because you matter, too. Your grief matters. Your relationships matter. Your future matters. And the life you're living underneath all of this matters.
You don't have to take my word for it.
One client found that they could go to their loved one's gravesite, have a good cry, honor the person they lost, and then go on with the rest of their day.
The grief was still there.
But it didn't have to ruin everything else.
For another client, it wasn't that they stopped missing the person who died. It was that they learned they could live a fulfilling life while still missing them. They could see the relationship more truthfully. They could stop beating themselves up for having feelings. They could continue their own life without pretending the loss hadn't happened.
That is a very different definition of “moving forward.”
The loss didn't disappear. But life started to feel possible again.
You deserve support that respects the complexity of your life and honors who you are.
You don't have to know exactly what that future looks like. You don't even have to feel hopeful yet. You just have to be willing to consider that your life might still have something to offer you. Maybe reaching out for therapy is one small step toward finding out.
If you're tired of muscling through this, I'd be glad to talk with you about what you're going through and see whether we're a good fit.
Wondering What Happens When You Reach Out?
It starts with a free 15-minute video consultation, which you can book directly here. If you want to call or email to set it up, that's okay too.
In that video call, we'll talk briefly about what's bringing you to therapy, what you've experienced with therapy before, and what you're hoping will be different this time. I'll answer your questions and explain how I work so we can both decide whether we're a good fit. If we are, we'll schedule your first session.
No pressure. No commitment just because we talked.
It starts with a conversation: Give me a call or book a free 15-minute consultation.
