Open to Hope Articles

Articles Home

The Ruby Connection

Posted on September 26, 2014 - by Alicia King

My mother died 2 months after she turned 48. Her boyfriend was suspected in her death, but he was never charged. This left me with no answers, no closure, and no mother. I think this emotional “lostness” created a need for connections to her that I may not have experienced otherwise, at least not at the same intensity. I clung to everything – her clothes, her books, and anything with her handwriting on it. That same circling script that signed my elementary school permission slips became a touchstone for me as an adult, reminding me of days spent in her […]

Already Among the Dead

Posted on September 25, 2014 - by Mark Liebenow

I walk among the dead. This began when my wife died in April 2001. So when the planes slam into the World Trade Center, my heart doesn’t move. The towers collapse, sending clouds of dust billowing into the sky, people stumble into the streets stunned, and I feel nothing. Why should I cry? Why should I grieve faces and names I don’t know? My heart’s silence tells me that I already wander among the dead. They would not have cared about Evelyn’s death if they had known. There are too many deaths in the world to care about each one. […]

Songwriter Helps Mother Let Son Go

Posted on September 25, 2014 - by Anna Huckabee Tull

Of all the songs I have ever been invited to compose, to assist with healing around a loss, the story of little 4-year-old Alex is the one that most deeply touched my heart. One day I got a call from Aimee, who had spent almost all of her family’s income on medical bills for her very ill little son Alex. When she called, asking me to compose a song for his memorial service (he had been given about a month to live), I somehow could feel in my bones that a month was more than we really had. No time, […]

Helping the Bereaved Parent Survive the ‘Season of Cheer’

Posted on September 23, 2014 - by Sheri Perl

Once you become a bereaved parent, events that you once looked forward to, you now dread. Everything from the start of the school year right through to Memorial Day is filled with memories that now evoke as much pain as laughter. For most of us, however, it is that period of time between Thanksgiving and the New Year, the so-called “season of cheer,” with its emphasis on families, that overwhelms us. We sigh and we wonder, “How will I get through this?” Something that is very healing is to take the emphasis off yourself and merge with others who stand […]

‘Würmchen is Dead’

Posted on September 18, 2014 - by Elizabeth Heineman

There’s an old pear tree in our back yard. It’s too close to the house. One of these days, a windstorm will blow one of the high branches onto the roof, and we’ll wish we’d had it removed earlier. Already, windstorms have taken down the three ancient apple trees that were on the property when I bought the house. The pear tree is very sick. The center is nearly hollow, and you can see the rot in the branches. It’s only a matter of time. But I hate the thought of chopping it down. It’s the last of the old […]

Jump-Start Your Resilience by Telling Your Grief Story

Posted on September 18, 2014 - by Harriet Hodgson

Resilience is a skill, perhaps an art, learned from life experience. When a loved one dies our resilience may disappear for a while. Much as we want to be resilient, we can’t seem to do it because we’re so mired in grief. At least, that is my experience. In 2007 four of my family members died within nine months. Though I’m a stable person, these successive losses brought me to my knees. Seven years have passed since my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law died. During this time I’ve told my story in articles, books, talks, and workshops. Today, with […]

The Terms of My Surrender

Posted on September 17, 2014 - by Maria Kubitz

From the moment you came into my life, I hated you. I despised you. You came on the heels of my worst nightmare come true – the death of my young daughter. I didn’t know your name at the time. I just knew that you brought with you all the horrible feelings and emotions I had spent a lifetime learning how to repress and ignore. You broke my defenses down like they were candles trying to stay lit in a hurricane. You pounded me with pain, panic, anger, confusion, hysterics, anguish…and too many more to list. Mostly you came in […]

Thoughts on 9/11: Holding onto Hope

Posted on September 12, 2014 - by Anne Hamilton

I feel so much loss. It’s September 12th, 2014, thirteen years after the terror attacks that I witnessed while living in New York City. I kept a media blackout in my home and my heart yesterday. I don’t want any more images of those burning buildings to flash before my eyes. I don’t want to remember. At the same time, it was a a day where everything in my life changed and deserves reflection. It turns out that my life has changed for the better. First, I survived what I could never have imagined – watching 3,000 people die before […]

9/11 Post-Traumatic Stress: Four Things That Can Help

Posted on September 11, 2014 - by Gloria Horsley

Where were you on September 11th, 2001? I was just getting ready to fly to Utah to speak at a hospice conference. I set out my breakfast and turned on the television news, as I did every morning, just as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Like everyone, I was confused and in shock. Of course, plans were cancelled as we spent days at home glued to the television set. Like so many others, that event would change my life in unexpected ways. At the time, I was living in San Francisco only miles from our daughter, Heidi, […]

When it’s Grief, Not Depression

Posted on September 9, 2014 - by Susan Casey

One sleepless night, I tiptoed down the stairs, slipped outside and stared up at the low-hanging moon, so close to me it looked as if it had been pinned against the black canvas with a thumb tack. I reached out a hand to snatch if from the sky, tuck it inside my heart, feel its warm steady glow burn through my body, filling the empty places my brother’s death left behind. Perhaps I’d be able float, or fly into the midnight sky, join him there in the crook of a star, swing our legs and whisper all that he gave […]