Jessica Sandoval
You’re the person everyone depends on—even while you’re grieving. You’re still working, parenting, caregiving, managing the details, and showing up for everyone else while carrying a loss that has changed you. I work with women who look like they’re functioning on the outside but feel exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, or disconnected underneath it all. Therapy gives you a place where you don’t have to hold everything together. I specialize in grief therapy for women who are carrying loss while still caring for everyone around them. Using ACT, emotional regulation, and practical tools, I help you make room for grief, manage overwhelm, and adjust to what has changed without expecting you to “move on” or leave your loss behind.
My experience in end-of-life care has deeply shaped my comfort with emotional intensity, ambiguity, and the parts of grief that don’t have clean resolutions. I also bring a grounded, relational presence into the therapy room.
You don’t have to “move on,” find the silver lining, or keep being the strong one here. Grief changes things, and you deserve somewhere to put down what you’ve been carrying. If you’re tired of holding it together for everyone else while struggling underneath, reach out. We can talk about what you need and whether I might be a good fit.
First session
In your first session with me, you can expect a calm, supportive space where you don’t have to show up with everything figured out. We’ll take time to understand not only what brought you to therapy, but the full story—your responsibilities, relationships, stressors, strengths, and what life has felt like behind the scenes. Many of my clients are people who have spent years being the one others rely on. They may look like they’re managing, but internally they’re exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected from themselves, or wondering how they got so far from the person they used to be. We’ll talk about what’s been hardest lately—whether that’s burnout, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, parenting struggles, grief, life transitions, or simply feeling like you’re not yourself anymore. I’ll ask questions to understand your experiences, but this is a collaborative process. There’s no pressure to tell your story perfectly or unpack everything at once. We’ll also begin exploring what you want to feel different. Maybe it’s feeling more patient with your kids, reacting less intensely, finding yourself again, navigating a loss, or learning how to carry everything you’re carrying without losing yourself in the process. When appropriate, I may introduce practical tools from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness, and other evidence-based approaches to help you understand your emotions, regulate your nervous system, and create more space between what you feel and how you respond. You can expect warmth, honesty, and a judgment-free environment. My goal is for you to leave the first session feeling heard, understood, and hopeful about what’s possible. Therapy isn’t about becoming a different person—it’s about reconnecting with yourself and building a life that feels more aligned, meaningful, and manageable.
Strengths
One of my greatest strengths as a therapist is creating a space where clients feel truly seen—while also helping them move toward meaningful change. I believe therapy is not about fixing what is “wrong” with you. It’s a place where you can bring the exhaustion, overwhelm, grief, uncertainty, and emotions you may have been carrying quietly for a long time. I’m especially skilled at helping clients uncover what is happening beneath the surface. Often, what looks like irritability, anxiety, shutdown, guilt, or feeling “stuck” is connected to deeper patterns, unmet needs, chronic stress, or major life transitions. I help clients put language to experiences that have felt confusing or impossible to explain. A key strength I bring is balancing emotional depth with practical support. Many of my clients—especially moms and caregivers—are used to taking care of everyone else while running on empty themselves. I help slow things down enough to understand what’s happening internally, while also building realistic tools that can be used in the middle of everyday life. I specialize in supporting clients through burnout, emotional overwhelm, anxiety, grief, and identity shifts—especially the changes that come with motherhood and major life transitions. I don’t view emotional reactions as failures; I help clients understand them with compassion and learn new ways to respond. My experience in end-of-life care has also shaped my ability to sit with difficult emotions, uncertainty, and loss. I understand that grief is not always a single event—it can show up through changes in identity, relationships, expectations, and the life you thought you would have.
Ideal clients
My ideal client is a mom who is carrying more than she lets on. On the outside, she’s functioning—getting the kids where they need to go, managing the household, maybe even working—but internally she feels overwhelmed, emotionally stretched thin, and often disconnected from herself. She loves her children deeply, but she also experiences moments of irritability, burnout, and guilt that leave her wondering if she’s “doing motherhood right.” She may be grieving something, even if she doesn’t always name it that way. It could be the loss of her old identity, the version of herself who had more freedom, patience, or clarity. It might also be the grief that comes with unmet expectations of motherhood, a difficult birth experience, changes in relationships, or the realization that life feels heavier than she expected. That grief often shows up as exhaustion, anxiety, or emotional reactivity, rather than clear sadness. She is self-aware and wants to do things differently, but feels stuck in patterns she can’t seem to shift—yelling, shutting down, or feeling overwhelmed by small stressors. She worries about how her emotional state is impacting her kids and deeply wants to break cycles, but doesn’t always know how to slow things down in the moment. What she really wants is relief, but also reconnection—to feel more grounded in herself, more patient with her children, and more aligned with the kind of mom she wants to be. She’s open to learning practical tools, but even more importantly, she wants space to process what she’s carrying without judgment.
Treatment methods
Acceptance and commitment (ACT)
I use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients make space for difficult thoughts and feelings instead of fighting them, while building skills to stay grounded in what truly matters to them. Together, we focus on creating psychological flexibility—learning how to notice internal experiences without getting stuck in them, and taking meaningful action aligned with personal values. The goal isn’t to eliminate discomfort, but to help you live a fuller, more intentional life alongside it.
Location
Virtual sessions
Identifies as
Top specialties
Other specialties
Serves
Doesn't specialize in
Licensed in
- MassachusettsLicense LMHC10004701