I was watching a promotional ad on television recently for the show “Intervention” and saw a quote from Ernest Hemingway, which read: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Actually, this quote is a passage from Hemingway’s novel: “A Farewell to Arms.” Hemingway was one of the great American [...]
Found 25 results
Father Learns How to Deal with Holidays After Daughter’s Death
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December 9, 2011
4 Responses
In early grief, it is difficult to find any meaning in pain. After my daughter Jeannine’s death in 2003, the pain I experienced in early grief was raw and something that I feared. If I had a choice, I would have avoided it at all costs. However, as I have learned, we need to work [...]
Tragedy Connects Us All
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November 30, 2011
2 Responses
I had the honor of being interviewed by our local newspaper for a special section devoted to the tenth anniversary of the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks. Eight victims had ties to my community. The surviving family members of three of these families shared their journeys for this article. I was interviewed as a “grief expert,” [...]
Terminal Grief
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October 3, 2011
6 Responses
My life as I knew it ended on May 26, 2002, when my eighteen-year-old daughter Jeannine was diagnosed with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare, aggressive and incurable form of cancer. Jeannine died on March 1, 2003, at the age of 18, approximately ten months after diagnosis. When she was diagnosed, the experience itself was surreal. In [...]
Why Ask Questions About Your Grief Journey?
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August 9, 2011
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I recently had the honor of being the opening keynote speaker for this year’s national gathering of the Bereaved Parents of the USA. I spoke about the evolution of my grief and observations and lessons learned during the past eight-plus years that have helped me adjust to the reality of life without the physical presence of [...]
Pain May be an Ally in Our Grief Journeys
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July 12, 2011
6 Responses
I think if we all had a choice, we would want to live our lives without emotional pain. Considering that we do not live in a Utopian society, the avoidance of pain is impossible. Pain and loss is and always will be a part of our existence. Many bereaved individuals that I know have been [...]
Animal Energies Help Make Sense of Grief Process
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June 8, 2011
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Since my daughter Jeannine’s death over eight years ago, I learned that the only thing I could control was the present. Doing this made it easier to allow the universe to take care of my future. However, I have recently begun to discover the role of the past in enhancing my quality of life in [...]
Is it OK to Feel Joy During the Grief Process?
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May 16, 2011
8 Responses
The journey after the death of a loved one is emotionally draining and physically exhausting, particularly in the early stages of grief (which I see as minimally, two years). It is also easy to feel some guilt because of the moments of joy we do experience during early grief. We may question whether it is [...]
Does Time Heal?
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April 3, 2011
16 Responses
I discovered this quote from singer/songwriter Jack Johnson: And if they tell you love fades over time, tell them there is no such thing as time. His quote also got me thinking about the passage of time as it relates to our grief journeys. Many in our society believe that there is a set time period [...]
Peace in Eight: Friends, Rituals, Time Lessen the Pain of Child-Loss
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March 10, 2011
6 Responses
March 1st marked my daughter Jeannine’s eighth angelversary; on that date, Jeannine became forever eighteen. The last seven years have been characterized by intense grief during the days and months leading up to the date of her death. Since Jeannine died of cancer, I would consistently relive the excruciating pain of the last months and [...]
Sharing Pain is a Gateway to Hope
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February 12, 2011
2 Responses
After my daughter Jeannine died almost eight years ago, I examined and re-examined my existing values, beliefs and priorities. This process was made extremely challenging by the raw pain of my early grief. I am a different person, and in many ways, a better person as a result of my struggle with Jeannine’s death. I [...]
Grievers and the Chemically Dependent Have Similar Journeys
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January 11, 2011
2 Responses
Chemically dependent individuals, like everyone else, experience loss. Working with grief in chemically dependent clients is challenging, due to the fact that they use drugs, in part, to avoid pain. They may also experience delayed grief soon after becoming drug-free. Delayed grief means that the person experiences the intense pain of loss they suppressed due to [...]
Navigating Grief During the Holidays
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December 18, 2010
1 Response
The pain of grief tends to surface with great intensity during “milestone” events. Birthdays, anniversaries and holidays are typical events that are associated with our grief journeys. The intensity of grief is usually highest for many during the first year that these milestone events are experienced. However, people will experience pain of varying intensity during [...]
Pieces of Me: Incorporating the Deceased into Ourselves
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November 15, 2010
4 Responses
My perceptions about grief and the way we deal with loss has radically changed since the death of my daughter Jeannine more than seven years ago. Prior to Jeannine’s death, I grieved the deaths of other people in my life for a specific period of time and eventually returned to life, as I knew it. [...]
The Importance of Adequate Support for the Bereaved
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August 24, 2010
6 Responses
In his book, The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved Parents, Dennis Klass, Ph.D., discusses the importance of bereaved parents maintaining connection with their deceased children in communities that support that connection. Our ability as bereaved parents to access and receive support from other parents who understand our pain is critical to us feeling less isolated in [...]
Grief Lessons from the Wal-Mart Truck
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July 27, 2010
5 Responses
I have used many analogies and metaphors to describe my grief journey in the seven years since my daughter Jeannine died. During my early grief, I frequently described feeling, on a good day, like I had been consistently pummeled with a baseball bat. On an excruciating day, it felt like two baseball bats were simultaneously [...]
Five Years After Child-Loss: Evolution of Grief
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June 28, 2010
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I am presenting a workshop at The Compassionate Friends national conference next month entilted: “The Bereaved Parent- Five Years Later.” Linda Findlay of Mourning Discoveries and I originally developed the idea for this workshop to discuss the needs of the later grief experiences of bereaved parents. We chose five years, because for many of us, [...]
Mother Taught Son How to Grieve With Dignity
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May 9, 2010
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My mother, Sadie B. Roberts, died on March 11, 1994 at the age of 77, due to complications arising from a massive bacterial infection. She died less than 24 hours after being admitted to the hospital. Her death left a tremendous void in my life. My mother raised me as a single parent, since I [...]
The Musical Journey of Grief
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April 6, 2010
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Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember; music has always helped me navigate major transitions in my life. After the death of my daughter Jeannine in 2003 due to cancer, music helped me put words to her illness and the aftermath of her death. Later in my [...]
Pets, Grief and the ‘Bootsy and Angel Effect’
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March 6, 2010
4 Responses
Many in our society do not recognize the impact that pet loss has on an individual. For many people, the loss of a beloved pet may be the first significant loss that is experienced in life. Pets see us through many significant milestones in life such as marriages, divorces, death and the birth of our [...]
Do I Ever Stop Being a Bereaved Parent?
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January 29, 2010
8 Responses
I was asked by a friend of mine if we ever stop being bereaved parents. My friend is also a bereaved parent. It was an interesting question, because approximately two years after my daughter Jeannine died, I decided that I didn’t want to be a bereaved parent anymore. The daily pain and suffering became too [...]
Connections to Daughter Abound Even After her Death
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December 3, 2009
2 Responses
I still have a powerful relationship with my daughter Jeannine six-and-one-half years after her death. I believe that my relationship with her extends to other people in my life. I have been an adjunct professor at Utica College since January of 2003. I love my students deeply. They gave me energy when I had none, [...]
Ghosts of Memory: Integrating Our Loss Through Remembering
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October 21, 2009
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I recently read a book called: Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, by Neil Peart. Peart is the lyricist and world renowned drummer for the Canadian rock band, Rush. His daughter Selena, age 19, died on August 10, 1997, as a result of a car accident and his common-law wife, Jackie died on June [...]
Deceased Daughter is Never Far Away
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September 21, 2009
2 Responses
Before my daughter Jeannine died in 2003, I was never one to believe in things that I could not see. My version of reality was defined by hard evidence, not by intuition or feel. Jeannine has given me signs of her presence in a variety of different ways since her death. As a result, my [...]
How to Help a Chemically Dependent Person Who Has Suffered a Loss
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September 14, 2009
2 Responses
I have been employed in an inpatient chemical dependency treatment center in Upstate New York since 1986. One of the many issues that chemically dependent individuals deal with is loss. There are losses specifically related to their drug use (i.e. jobs, friendships, family) and losses related to death. For chemically dependent individuals, their adjustment to [...]
