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The Road Back To Happiness After Spouse-Loss

Posted on April 17, 2012 - by Melinda Richarz Lyons

What if you woke up to discover that your happiness was completely gone? That happened to me one cold November morning. Sid, my husband and soul mate for almost thirty-eight years, had died suddenly in his sleep. I felt like my heart could not possibly go on beating without him. I remember lying alone in the dark that night, begging God to take me, too. But when the sun came up, I was still breathing. Even though I could barely function at the time, I knew deep in my shattered heart that somehow I would have to eventually figure out […]

How Grief and Winter’s End are Similar

Posted on April 16, 2012 - by Deb Kosmer

Have you ever noticed that it’s hard to tell when winter really ends and spring begins? Just when it seems all the snow has melted and that there hasn’t been any falling for awhile, we get hit with more. Sometimes, it’s just a little and hardly lasts long at all. Sometimes it’s a blizzard and that cold wet white stuff is everywhere. When it’s light and fluffy, we can remove it easily. When it’s heavy and compacted it is much more difficult. Sometimes, not long after another snowfall, we wake up and the sun is shining and the air is warm and spring […]

Counseling for Ambiguous Loss: One Expert’s Approach

Posted on April 15, 2012 - by Harriet Hodgson

Ambiguous loss is loss without closure. There is no body to view or bury, no death certificate, no inkling of what happened to your loved one. Uncertainty and worry become part of your days and seep into your being. Though ambiguous loss has many of the same symptoms as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), therapists and counselors treat it differently. Counseling hinges partly on how long you have been suffering from ambiguous loss and the strength of your support system. It also hinges on family structure. Several years ago, I suffered an ambiguous loss when a close relative died. I […]

Mother ‘Got My Hug’ from Deceased Son

Posted on April 14, 2012 - by Sally Grablick

My 19-year-old son, Ryan, committed suicide in June of 2002. He was a loving and generous person in life, and in the afterlife, all of those qualities remain. Ryan is a very active spirit. We communicate in various ways, but I really enjoy it when he “visits” me in my dreams. I can recall with complete clarity the first visit he ever made – that night, Ryan came to deliver the hug I had been asking for… In December of 2003, my younger sister Stephanie called to remind me of the “Worldwide Candle Lighting” held by The Compassionate Friends. This […]

A Question of Faith for Those who Mourn

Posted on April 13, 2012 - by Kent Koppelman

Faith is an important asset for those who mourn, and yet for some it is not enough. At a bereavement conference, a father described the loss of his son and admitted that he had lost his faith and did not believe in God. In the gospels, Jesus states that a person must have faith comparable to that of a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. What does that mean? I wanted to explore this question in a poem, and my first thought was that such a faith should be simple yet profound – seeing God in everything and seeing […]

The Feelings of Grief

Posted on April 11, 2012 - by Deb Kosmer

RAGE: This is an emotion we may feel when grieving but be reluctant to admit. When someone we love dies, we feel the raw wound of their absence. The raw emotions that cut like a knife. The raw gut wrenching pain. ANGER: The force of our anger may surprise us. We may be unable to contain it. We feel the anger that this could happen to us, to them. We may feel anger that it wasn’t us instead of them, at the unfairness of life. GRIEF: The paradox of grief is it is a kaleidoscope of feelings and feeling nothing at all. Grief exists in […]

Writing Mother’s Stories Helps Daughter Handle Loss

Posted on April 10, 2012 - by Beth Marshall

My career as a flight attendant included some intense training every year for “the unlikely event of an emergency.” One of the scenarios flight crews practice over and over is bracing for an emergency landing. Should this extremely rare situation occur, I felt confident that the crew was prepared and knew exactly what to do. The late night call about my mom’s death came with absolutely no warning or bracing time, and the impact was devastating. I felt completely unprepared and unsure where to go with the unpredictable emotions of grief. What would life look like without her, the #1 […]

Grief Can Cause Loss of Confidence; Spring Can Help it Rebound

Posted on April 9, 2012 - by Kim Meredith

All of us have it. But we can lose it temporarily. Yet, all of us have the power to find it again too. Confidence is the extra battery pack that fuels our inner spirit. It propels us to greater achievements and encourages us to walk through doors that we might otherwise avoid. We all need that extra boost when life challenges us. Walking in for our first job interview, we needed to make a good impression. Confidence gave us an edge. This positive inner force helped us to stand a little taller and to feel a little stronger. “Confidence comes […]

Have You Suffered an Ambiguous Loss?

Posted on April 8, 2012 - by Harriet Hodgson

I had never heard of ambiguous loss until my daughter, a licensed family therapist, told me about it. The term was coined by Pauline Boss, PhD, of the University of Minnesota. It came from her research and the clinical studies she has been conducting since 1974. What is ambiguous loss? Basically, it is loss without closure. There is no body or death certificate. You may be experiencing this loss now if a parent has Alzheimer’s, a sibling has chronic mental illness, a runaway child has never been fund, or a military spouse is missing in Afghanistan. According to Pauline Boss, […]

Grief and the Right Side of the Brain

Posted on April 7, 2012 - by Kevin Quiles

We often approach grief from a logical perspective. We listen, analyze, validate obvious emotions, and try to arrive at helpful conclusions. However, grief is much more complicated than simply identifying a loss, categorizing the pain, and discovering fresh themes on moving forward. Pain and suffering contain multifaceted undercurrents that transcend conscious awareness. Research (e.g., Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel) suggests that we live daily from two sides of our brain, each equipped with its own method of storing and utilizing information. Taken into discussions on grief, the concept implies that we grieve from two sides of the brain as well, the […]