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Crying Unexpectedly in the Middle of a Talk

Posted on April 29, 2012 - by Harriet Hodgson

I speak to national and local groups about loss, grief and recovery. Last week I spoke to a group of Elder Network volunteers in my community. It was a small group, a dozen people gathered around a central table. The hour-long talk was about anticipatory grief, something everyone goes through, and something many fail to recognize. My talk began with a summary of the nine years I spent caring for my mother, who suffered from progressive dementia. The stress of caregiving increased as my mother’s dementia progressed. “Each day, I wondered if this would be the day she died,” I explained. […]

Signs and Connections: Graffiti Offers Hope and Assurance

Posted on April 28, 2012 - by Debra Reagan

Our youngest son, Clint, died at the age of 20 in 2005. During the early times of my grief, a bereaved mom suggested that screaming was a good outlet for tension. She recounted her screaming sessions. Try as I might, I could not bring myself to scream. Almost 3 years after Clint’s death, I was on a long isolated drive in the west. My sister was on a Rim-to-Rim hike and it was my job to meet her on the other side of the Canyon. The trip took me through miles of roadway on which I never met another car. Suddenly out […]

Teen Mourns the Death of Her Best Friend

Posted on April 27, 2012 - by Marty Tousley

Question from a reader: When I was 12 years old, my best friend in the whole world died, one month before her 12th birthday. She was in the swimming pool playing that game—you know, who can hold their breath the longest—she was under but when she came up she inhaled a lot of water. She stood up and went over to the ladder and she was wheezing. She got up to the ladder and fell backwards, but her cousin caught her. They pulled her out of the pool and laid her down and ran for help. Her older sister was […]

Grief Support Group Helps after Child-Loss

Posted on April 26, 2012 - by Deb Kosmer

Without you, my world seems too big. I don’t know how to fill the space that was you. I only know sometimes I get lost in it. The space left by you seemed to mock me. It followed me relentlessly. It threatened to consume me. Well-meaning friends pretended not to see the space you left. Others tried to get me to ignore it to, to pretend it wasn’t there, or to fill it quickly with other people, other things. I tried to tell them it didn’t work that way. I tried to reason with them. They tried to reason with […]

Teen Loses Brother to Suicide, Learns to Cope

Posted on April 25, 2012 - by Kathryn Williams Raths

At the age of 16, Carl David suffered the loss of his 22-year-old brother by suicide. In his words, “The effects on myself and my family were devastating, beyond description. We had but two choices; to pull together or tear each other apart. We chose the former and used every bit of strength to rebuild our lives. The challenges were monumental as every day was day one. We had to start over with each sunrise because the after-effects were so persistent and the pain so ever-present that at times it seemed insurmountable. We wondered if we would ever be able […]

How Friends Can Help after a Suicide

Posted on April 24, 2012 - by Madeline Sharples

So many people get stuck when it comes to comforting someone who is grieving. They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do. So they send flowers, they bring over a casserole for the already filled to the brim freezer, they send a sweet card, or in some cases they just avoid the issue entirely, thinking maybe it will just go away. Even some of the people go away. Almost immediately after my son Paul’s funeral, people began to disappear. Perhaps they were threatened or couldn’t face the realities of my life. Maybe my loss and grief […]

Re-Writing our Grief Stories, Moving Past Fear

Posted on April 22, 2012 - by Susan Troccolo

Have you ever noticed how vivid our personal stories become in our minds over time? The more we tell them to others, the more we re-play those memories, the stronger they seem to become. We do a lot of that story-telling to heal. That is an important aspect of stories. But what happens when the stories themselves stop the healing process? When they only deepen a groove of hurt in our hearts and minds so profound that nothing new can enter? A few years back, I happened to meet a race car driver who worked as an instructor at the […]

The Storm, the Dove, Renewal

Posted on April 21, 2012 - by Laurel D. Rund

A week or two ago, a beautiful dove built a nest in a palm tree next to my house. It was nestled in a space where a palm frond had been, and there she sat on two white eggs. None of the activity of the house scared her away – lawn mowing, power washing the house, the pool generator. That mother dove centered herself on her nest in a tranquil and protective state as she waited for her eggs to hatch. She brought peace and optimism with her. My significant other –my love partner – and I would go outside […]

Shoes Bring Memories Years After Child’s Death

Posted on April 20, 2012 - by Deb Kosmer

Sometimes no matter how far we have come, a moment occurs when we are blindsided again or subtly reminded that grief does not end. A moment that no matter how hard we try cannot be ignored. A moment that will reoccur again and again until we acknowledge its presence. Or a buried memory that resurfaces, insisting we remember it once more. Who would have thought shoes could hold such significance? We were moving for the first time in thirty years. I knew we had a lot of stuff, too much stuff, but I found out how much when I began […]

Remembering Mom on the Occasion of her 90th Birthday

Posted on April 19, 2012 - by Luellen Hoffman

It is hard to believe that my mother would have turned 90 years old this month. I was thinking about my mom today and had so many great memories of her and here are a few of my favorite. 1. I remember when our family lived in Bethesda, Maryland in the early 60s, sometimes she would do a little tap dance in the kitchen on the linoleum floor, while making dinner and she was good. She just seemed happy like that. At 20 she had studied ballet in New York and was accepted into the “Rockettes” before she met my […]