What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 8pm Tuesday 8am - 8pm Wednesday 8am - 8pm Thursday 8am - 5pm Friday 8am - 3pm

Gina Moffa, LCSW, 30 West 86th Street Suite 1F, New York, NY (2025)

11/17/2025

Doesn’t it feel sometimes like the world keeps moving, even when you feel like you’ve stopped. Calls, messages, expectations…they pile up, and every interaction can feel like ‘too much’.

Grief makes ordinary life feel heavy, sharp, unfamiliar. Using the word, “boundaries” for this post, felt harsh, like a rule you “should” follow, a box you have to fit yourself into. So instead, I am using “capacity” right now as a way to look at what we have within us to give (and receive).

Capacity is simply the measure of what your heart, your mind, your body can hold today. It’s your cup, your breath, your safe amount of “yes” in a world that suddenly feels too big, too loud, too demanding. Some days, your capacity is a teaspoon. Some days, a river. Some days, it’s enough just to exist.

I tell my clients, “your capacity is your compass in this time”. It is your quiet rebellion against the expectation that life should feel “normal” again. It is the steady, sacred rhythm that keeps you moving, that keeps you whole, that keeps you yourself in a world that insists on rushing past your grief.

You are allowed to shrink, to pause, to walk differently. You are allowed to let some invitations pass, to step back from expectations, to carry only what you can hold. There is no shame in saying “not now,” no weakness in choosing silence, nothing wrong in creating the space you need in times you are just trying to figure out how to take another step.

Grief changes everything. It reshapes your days, your heart, your relationships. And yet, even in this altered life, there is room for tenderness, for laughter, for connection, if you honor the capacity you have. You are allowed to protect it. You are allowed to guard it gently, fiercely, lovingly. You are allowed to move through the world as a changed person, carrying less than you once could, and that is enough. That is everything.
🤍 Gina

11/15/2025

In my writing this short quote above, I wanted to honor the silence that surrounds so much of what we endure, so many of our losses unacknowledged... and the silence can get louder with each loss.

We all have losses that never make it into language …the almosts, the could-have-beens, the versions of ourselves we outgrew just to survive. We carry them quietly, like hidden bruises beneath our sweaters, tender to the touch but invisible to anyone passing by.

And, the world keeps moving, unaware of how heavy our unspoken grief can be.
How it changes the way we breathe.
How it shifts the way we love.
How it rearranges the interior of our life.

But, your heart knows.
Your body knows.
Your spirit knows.

Our losses don’t need witnesses to be real, or to matter.
They only need the quiet courage to whisper their names back into the light…
They simply ask to be held in the soft places where truth finally rests.

11/13/2025

Some days you’re not surviving just one thing.
You’re surviving everything at once, in a body that’s trying so hard to hold it all.

A lot of the time (and we don’t talk about this enough), grief arrives as weather that never breaks. Just, loss after loss after loss, each one pressing into the last before you’ve had time to surface. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between the death and the diagnosis, the ending and the eviction, the betrayal and the body that stopped feeling like home. It just knows: too much, too fast, no time to metabolize what’s been taken.

The losses pile up in your tissues…in the jaw you keep clenched, the shoulders that won’t drop, the breath that only reaches halfway down. You’re not just “sad”; you’re full. Full of all the things you’ve had to let go of while pretending to be fine, while still showing up, while the world kept asking for more.

And when people ask “what’s wrong”, there’s no single answer. It’s the cumulative weight. It’s allll of it. The secondary losses no one sees. The version of yourself you were becoming before everything shifted. The future you’d furnished in your mind that you have to dismantle, piece by piece, in the dark. Your whole identity shifted.

But, here’s what they don’t tell us when we are down: you can be shattered and still be here. You can be so full of loss that it rewrites your cells, and still wake up tomorrow. The body that holds all this grief is the same body that keeps breathing, that reaches for water, that somehow finds a way to continue.
You are not one thing breaking.
You are everything you’ve survived, and are still surviving.

11/07/2025

Grief doesn’t arrive in a single instant, but in these waves that overlap, in losses that bleed into one another before the first wound closes.

Your body becomes a library of all the things you’ve had to release: the people who left, the futures that dissolved, the versions of yourself you had to bury just to keep going. Each loss adds another layer to the ground you stand on, and after a while, you’re not sure if you’re building or sinking.

The heart doesn’t sort grief by importance or visibility.
It holds the death that shattered you, and the dream that quietly died, in the same tender space.
It carries the relationship that ended without ceremony, the home you had to leave, the body that betrayed you, the safety that evaporated.

These losses don’t announce themselves. They settle into your bones as chronic fatigue, into your mind as fog, into your chest as a tightness that never fully releases.

Compounded grief is the exhaustion of having nowhere to set anything down. I, personally, call it “grieving in motion,” because stillness feels impossible to find. It’s the accumulation of sorrow that nobody sees, because you’ve learned to carry it quietly, to function through it, to answer “I’m fine”, while your nervous system screams that nothing has been fine for a very long time. It hasn’t.

And yet… you endure.
You wake into another day.
You search for footing in a landscape that keeps shifting beneath you.
This article here, is for anyone whose losses have become plural. For those living between what was and what will never be. For the ones who are weary of resilience, weary of the pressure to heal on someone else’s timeline, weary of pretending the weight isn’t crushing.
Your grief is not excessive….
The losses are.
And, recognizing that difference is where gentleness begins.
I’m deeply grateful we are here together.
🤍 Gina

Gina Moffa, LCSW

11/03/2025

We are meaning-making creatures.
When something ends without explanation, when someone leaves without a word, when loss arrives sudden and silent, our hearts don’t just break, they search. They scan every memory for clues, replay every conversation for missed signals, reach into the dark hoping to find something solid to hold onto. Over and over, we wonder what we missed, if we could go back to make it make sense.

Closure feels like it would be the bridge between the life we had and the life we’re left with. We believe that if we could just understand why, if we could just hear the words we’re aching for, we could finally cross over. We could finally rest. And, so we wait at the edge of that bridge, certain it’s being built somewhere, certain it will appear if we’re patient enough, good enough, deserving enough.
But, here’s the truth that no one prepared us for: Sometimes the bridge never comes.
Sometimes, we’re left standing at the edge of our own grief with no clear path forward and no way back to who we were before.
And, the cruelty isn’t just in our losses themselves, it’s in how the world expects us to keep moving when we don’t know which direction to walk.

The path forward isn’t about extinguishing the desire for closure, but learning that we can carry unanswered questions, and still put one foot in front of the other, and keep going.

It’s about discovering that we are not the empty space left behind, we are what grows in spite of it.
We are the ones who learn to walk without the bridge, who find our footing on uncertain ground, who make meaning, not from the answers we received, but from the strength we didn’t know we had.

Closure may never come from outside of us.
But, the ability to hold our own pain with tenderness, to honor what we’ve lost, while refusing to lose ourselves, that power has been ours all along. We are not waiting to be released from this grief. We are learning to carry it like medicine, bitter and necessary, the very thing that teaches us how vast our capacity for survival really is.
🤍gina

Gina Moffa, LCSW

10/31/2025

We don’t talk enough about the grief of who we have to stop being in order to become who we’re meant to be.

It’s the loneliness of standing in a room full of people who loved the version of you that always said yes. The version that twisted themselves into shapes to make everyone comfortable. The version that believed their worth lived in how useful they could be, how quiet they could stay, how much they could carry without complaint.

For years, you’ve been a river that learned to flow around everyone else’s stones. You changed your course so many times, you forgot what direction you were even meant to go. And now, slowly, you’re remembering. You’re finding your way back to your own banks, your own path, your own current.

It’s painful, because you’re leaving behind a version of yourself who worked so hard to keep everyone happy. And, they deserve to be honored. They kept you safe when you needed them. But, they don’t need to lead forever.

So now, you’re learning to safely set the weight down.
To speak when it would be easier to stay silent.
To say no when your whole body is screaming that love and safety will leave if you do.
This is the work no one talks about.
This is the hidden labor of healing:
the sacred grief of becoming someone who finally stands alongside themselves…
🤍

Gina Moffa, LCSW

10/27/2025

Many years ago, when I worked as a clinical director in substance use treatment, I always wondered why in the Serenity Prayer, grief was never mentioned. Most of what we endure, overcome, or accept, comes with deep grief in some way. It’s the unnamed bridge we must cross. Because you cannot genuinely accept what you’ve lost without grieving it first.

And, there’s a very particular kind of grief that lives in the space between fighting and accepting. It doesn’t always announce itself with tears or rage, or any fanfare, really. It moves quietly within us, like fog settling into valleys before dawn.

Sure, we call it “acceptance”, but I understand that word feels too clean, too final… because acceptance isn’t a destination you arrive at once and stay forever.
It’s something you do again and again, in different rooms of your life, on different days, wearing different versions of yourself.

The grief of accepting things you cannot change, is about the monumental strength required to stop breaking yourself against immovable things. To release your grip on the rope you’ve been pulling for months, years, Maybe a lifetime. Your hands are tired. Your heart is tired.

Here’s what they don’t tell you: accepting what you cannot change doesn’t mean you stop wishing it could have. It means you’re finally brave (maybe exhausted) enough to redirect your finite, precious energy toward what can still grow.
Toward what still asks for your attention, tending to.
Toward yourself.
This kind of grief is holy.
It means you cared enough to fight, and now you’re honoring yourself enough to let it rest.
Some doors close.
Some stories end mid-sentence.
Some people and things stay exactly who and what they are.
Some situations don’t have a resolution we may wish for.
But, it doesn’t mean you have to carry the weight, and pain of it forever.

This instagram post is just a short conversation about the possibility that you can heal/work through/understand differently, something that’s held you in a painful place for far too long. And, that’s a really powerful new path to explore, with your own pace, in your own time…

Gina Moffa, LCSW

10/20/2025

Certain dates have a way of pulling grief back to the surface, as if the calendar itself holds memory. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, days of personal meaning, arrive carrying the full weight of what is missing. These days don’t ask permission. They simply come, and it feels we are along for the wild ride.

Sometimes, the anticipation in the weeks leading up feels even heavier than the day itself. There’s a peculiar ache to waiting for pain you know is coming. You might find yourself anxious, exhausted, or emotionally raw before the date even arrives, your body bracing for impact while your mind tries to convince itself it will be fine this year.
In some parts of the world, the change of weather itself becomes a trigger. The first cold snap of autumn, the smell of spring rain, the particular slant of winter light…these shifts can bring grief rushing back without warning. Your body remembers the season of your loss, and when the world shifts into that familiar climate again, your nervous system recognizes it before your conscious mind catches up.

What makes these days even harder, is how invisible they can be to others. People often forget the dates that feel sacred to us, or they don’t realize the weight they carry. That silence can feel like a second loss, and there is this strange loneliness in grieving, while everyone else moves through an ordinary day.

Part of what can help, is speaking the dates out loud, like letting a trusted friend know, checking in with your body, asking for support, allowing someone to check in. And, part of it is also giving yourself permission not to put any more pressure on yourself.
Sometimes, it looks like ritual, sometimes like rest, sometimes… just quiet remembering.

Grief doesn’t follow society’s timeline. It moves in spirals, returning to the same places over, because some losses reshape the landscape of our life permanently.

The dates that hurt are the dates that mattered, and your continued tenderness toward them is connection and love in its most enduring form, insisting that what was lost still deserves to be honored. For always.

(Save this for holidays and days you need this reminder)

10/16/2025

Grief teaches us what the heart already knows: that deep, beautiful connection is not extinguished by absence. It becomes woven into the body’s memory, alive in the involuntary gesture that reaches for a voice dissolved into silence, in the sudden warmth that floods through you when their laughter echoes from some interior distance. Memories resurface with our senses. We may think we see them in the grocery store or smell their familiar scent …

The brain continues its searching, tracing the pathways where connection once flowed, because we were never designed for severance. We are creatures built for continuity, and the rupture confounds our very nature.

The ache that lives in you is not a symptom to be cured. It is the echo of a bond that rewrote your inner landscape.
This is *not* pathology.
It’s humanity.

There is no timeline for this. No prescribed path you must follow. You don’t have to “heal” in any particular way or at any particular pace. The pain doesn’t need to shrink or soften on anyone’s schedule, but your own. Some days, it may feel lighter. Other days, it returns with the same crushing weight as the beginning. Both are valid. Both are part of the strange and surreal terrain of loss.

If/when it happens, the shift is so subtle you might not notice it at first. Grief may gradually transform from something that devours, to something that dwells. It may become less an open wound and more a presence, a quiet companion. But, there’s no pressure for this to happen. You can stay exactly where you are for as long as you need.

There is no arrival point, no moment when you stand at the top of a mountain and declare yourself finished or ready. You don’t have to transcend anything. You don’t have to grow or learn any big lesson.

The only truth that matters is this: grief is the measure of your capacity to connect fully, to let a connection become essential to who you are.
And… that connection remains, however you choose to carry it.

P.s. I know there’s no “moving on”. I wrote a book called, “Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go” as a sarcastic response to society’s insistence that we must “move on” — we can move forward *with* grief… not on from it.

10/13/2025

Some of us have been living through, or have lived through, what was a painful diagnosis of someone we love. Not a shattering of sudden loss, but something slower, like a sort of fracturing that unfolds in waiting rooms, hushed phone calls, and the space between their breath and yours when you’re both pretending everything is fine. Quite plainly: it sucks, and it’s terrifying.

Truth is, their diagnosis inhabits your nervous system, too. And, it stays a long time. Your brain registers their vulnerability as your own, because that’s what attachment does…their pain becomes a threat your body can’t ignore, a loss your heart starts mourning before anything has ended.

There’s no ritual for this kind of grief.
Many people just don’t get it.
You’re living through trauma, where life becomes more unpredictable…

Your brain keeps trying to categorize it: safe or unsafe, lost or still here. But, it can’t. So your amygdala stays activated, flooding you with cortisol, keeping you in a low-grade state of alert even when things seem calm. Your prefrontal cortex (the part that plans and reasons) goes offline. You’re running on vigilance and hyper vigilance that’s indistinguishable from fear.

Then, anticipatory grief, which I just spoke about in my last carousel post, inwardly rehearsing goodbyes, living through imagined losses that haven’t happened yet. Your body responds to each one as if it’s real. You’re grieving in the future tense, and it’s quietly exhausting you. You’re witnessing changes that can shake your world.

People have expected you to stay strong. But, sometimes you’re angry at the unfairness, resentful of what’s been stolen, guilty for every feeling that isn’t gratitude. And, beneath all that, you’re breaking. Quietly. In cars, in showers, in the middle of the night when the grief feels too real to contain. It’s not weakness. It’s your nervous system releasing what it’s carried alone…

If you recognize yourself in this right now or before your significant loss, know this:
You don’t have to perform hope or strength.
You’re allowed to sit in the dark and admit this is devastating.
Sending so much care to anyone walking this impossible edge. 🤍

10/09/2025

Anticipatory grief can feel like living in two realities at once….
Part of you is here in the present, showing up, and holding on. Another part, is already mourning what has not yet been lost. It’s confusing to carry this in the same breath.

Guilt often weaves into this kind of grief. You may feel like you’re betraying the present by grieving too soon. But, this guilt usually reflects how much you care. Your nervous system senses what’s ahead and tries to protect you by bracing early.

In these slides, you’ll learn how anticipatory grief shows up in the body and mind. You’ll see why waves of sadness, anxiety, or guilt often arrive before the actual loss. You’ll also learn how this grief can feel isolating, as though you’re carrying a secret no one else can see. Naming it helps soften that loneliness.

Anticipatory grief is complex, because it stirs both past and future. Old wounds may resurface. Your mind may rehearse goodbyes, as if practice could soften the impact. It can’t erase the pain, but acknowledging grief early can make you feel less alone inside of it.

Grieving in advance does not mean giving up hope or presence. It means honoring that some endings stir something deep in us long before the calendar catches up.
You can cry, and still laugh.
You can fear goodbye, and still lean into closeness…
even if it all feels like contradictions.
This is what it is to be human..

If this is you, nothing about your process is strange or wrong.
Let yourself be tender with the ache, and also receive the moments that remain.
Both are part of the story.
Both deserve compassion.

10/06/2025

Grief has a way of showing you the architecture of your relationships. Who builds with you, who watches from a distance, who surprises you by arriving with their hands ready. And who steps away and goes radio silent.

And listen, this isn’t about keeping score or pointing fingers at the people who couldn’t show up. It’s not their fault if they don’t have the capacity, the tools, or the emotional bandwidth to hold space for your pain. Sometimes, people are doing the best they can with what they have, and what they have just isn’t enough for this moment. That’s not blame. That’s just truth.

But, here’s what else is true: you deserve support and caring. You also deserve to see clearly who can meet you in the depths and who needs to love you from the shallow end. Not because anyone is bad or wrong, but because your energy is precious and your heart needs tending.

Grief will strip away every illusion you’ve been holding about your connections, and while that hurts, it also hands you the most honest map you’ve ever had.
Use it.
Let the people who can’t hold your grief teach you about boundaries.
Let the ones who show up imperfectly remind you that love doesn’t have to be perfect to be real.
Let the unexpected anchors show you that support and kindness and compassion live in places you haven’t even looked yet.

This is an acknowledgment letter to everyone who’s ever felt alone in their pain, even while surrounded by people.
You’re allowed to observe who shows up and who doesn’t, to feel all you need to, and to let that information guide you toward the relationships and support that can hold you when you’re at your most vulnerable and in need.

We need to be witnessed.
Share our experience.
Share our emotions.
Share our stories.
Share our person.
Share our grief, and all that comes with it.
No matter the loss, this is the way.
To be comforted and supported and seen.
This is the path forward.

Gina Moffa, LCSW

11/17/2025

11/15/2025

11/13/2025

11/07/2025

11/03/2025

10/31/2025

10/27/2025

10/20/2025

10/16/2025

10/13/2025

10/09/2025

10/06/2025

Address

Opening Hours

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category

Monday	8am - 8pm
Tuesday	8am - 8pm
Wednesday	8am - 8pm
Thursday	8am - 5pm
Friday	8am - 3pm