Open to Hope Articles

Articles Home

Gaining Wisdom: Keep Trusting in the Process

Posted on September 16, 2013 - by Donna Miesbach

Recovering from a loss is a tough road and the only way to get through it is one step at a time. Even when it seems like we aren’t making progress, actually we are. If you look back to the time of your loss, you’ll see how you have made progress. We just don’t see it from day to day. Months from now when you look back to this time, you’ll see how much farther you’ve come. It takes a lot of deep breaths to get from here to there, but with each and every breath, you are just that […]

Study: More Than Half Would Be ‘Overjoyed’ to See Deceased Loved One

Posted on September 13, 2013 - by Piero Calvi-Parisetti

According to a survey by the Forever Family Foundation, 52% of the interviewees would be “overjoyed” and would “try to interact” if they were to see a deceased loved one while they were awake. It would be easy to dismiss this as a just a nice thought – the understandable desire on the part of a bereaved person to renew contact with somebody who’s passed away. In fact, things are not as simple. First of all, research tells us that some sort of interaction with the deceased is a very frequent phenomenon. According to the University of Chicago, for instance, […]

Bereaved Mother Conducting Research on Child-Loss, Seeking Participants

Posted on September 12, 2013 - by admin

Judy Hefren is a doctoral candidate at Florida State University, College of Social Work, whose only son died in 2007 at the age of 17. She is conducting research in hopes of gaining a better understanding of how and to what extent the significance that parents place on the belongings of their child who has died impacts the grief process. Her hope is that this research may in some way help parents make these difficult decisions about belongings following the death of a child. If you are comfortable in doing so, Judy would appreciate it if you would consider completing […]

Writing Your Book about Grief: Helpful Tips for Beginning Writers

Posted on September 12, 2013 - by Harriet Hodgson

I’ve been a freelance writer for 36+ years, focusing on health and wellness books. My latest book focuses on the steps I took to recover from multiple losses. Four family members died in 2007 and, thanks to grief work and introspection, I created a new life. So many people asked me how I managed to do this that I listed my recovery steps on paper. These steps became a talk and the talk became a book. My current publisher was interested in this grief resource, and I sent the manuscript to the executive director. The company has a collaborative agreement […]

How Do I Go On After Losing a Loved One?

Posted on September 10, 2013 - by Nicky C Jones

The other day, I received this question from one of my followers. She recently lost her husband and asked me, “How do I go on after losing a loved one?” When I read this question, I got a little bit tearful as I remember this feeling oh so well. This is a soul layer question and one I think will resonate with many of you. The quick answer that I usually give when people ask me how I went on is, “I did it because I had to. I didn’t have a choice.” The truth is, there is not one perfect answer; […]

Affirming Our Grief Experiences

Posted on September 9, 2013 - by David Roberts

A Balancing Act I was employed as a counselor for 27 years in the chemical dependency field, and several of my treatment approaches were based on a cognitive model of therapy. When any therapist deals with cognition as it relates to chemical dependency, they are usually addressing automatic negative thoughts that have contributed to continued relapse and otherwise destructive behavior. One of the suggested cognitive approaches to counteract negative thinking is the use of affirmations. Affirmations are positive self– statements that are consciously introduced into a person’s stream of consciousness. The belief is that if an individual uses affirmations consistently, that […]

Giving Love, Accepting Help: Keys to Grieving

Posted on September 9, 2013 - by Michael Nunley

I have a sister and a father, but I no longer need to buy them birthday cards. I don’t have their numbers in my address book and I don’t worry about running out of minutes on my cell phone plan when I tell them about my latest home improvement project. I still talk to them from time to time, but not when anyone else might be listening. I still love them and tell funny stories to other people about them and share memories with other family members, but mostly, I just miss them. I used to think the amount of […]

Multiple Losses: ‘Plowing Through the Pain’

Posted on September 8, 2013 - by Marsha Maring

Easter Sunday 2005 was expected to be like all other traditional Easters…church in the morning followed by the family gathering at my parents. We had anticipated this holiday to be extra special because our mother had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and not knowing the severity, we treasured each moment. Unfortunately the day did not unfold as planned. Tragically, the day started with an early morning phone call to my sister giving the news that her 23 year old daughter had been in a terrible car accident. This being the second catastrophic news to our family, we were almost […]

Man Who Lost Parents As a Child Speaks Through Art

Posted on September 6, 2013 - by Katherine Relf-Canas

If you have spent any time in La Jolla, California over the last decades, you might have seen Chris Canole in one of his many incarnations. This year, for the entire month of August, a series of drawn portraits and illustrations by this local polymath was on display as a one-man show at the Pannikin cafe. A playful conceptualization on the term retrospective, the artist used the show to look back on his life and inward as well. We all have key people for whom we are grateful, but Canole emphasizes that it’s doubly true for him. His parents died […]

Twenty Years After Child-Loss, a Mother Remembers

Posted on September 5, 2013 - by Fran Dorf

On October 22, 1990, I became the mother of two children. I will always be the mother of two children. Our daughter, Rachel, was already nine, but we’d been unable to conceive a second child after my husband’s shocking bout of cancer two years into our marriage, and so after several miscarriages and years on the artificial insemination rollercoaster, we’d arranged to adopt. It was a boy. He was a month early. We were thrilled. Bob and I flew to the birth mother’s southern city, made our way to the hospital, and stood at the nursery window. The 4-pound incubated […]