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This article summarizes the author's keynote address at the 2020 International Conference on Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society. It is a narrative of her 25 years of work with the bereaved, with the explicit goal of illustrating how her understanding of grief, her therapeutic approach and her views regarding the role of a grief therapist have evolved throughout her career. Factors in this evolution include the de facto, continuous collection of data on the grief experience that clinical work provides, and efforts to make sense of this data by turning, on a regular basis, to the literature on the roots of normative and complicated grief and on progress in addressing the needs of the bereaved. In this edited version the author considers the impact of the current pandemic on individuals and communities, and on the provision of clinical services to the bereaved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]