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Osama bin Laden’s Death: Tips for Talking with Your Child

Posted on May 5, 2011 - by Suzy Yehl Marta

The news this week of Osama bin Laden’s death evokes countless emotions.  As I look back on the tragic day of September 11, 2001, I shudder with the memories of fear for our country and the immensity of how Rainbows For All Children could help the families who had loved ones die.  There’s also the generation that grew up only knowing a post 9/11 life, and as CNN said, they “learned as children that the world is a scary place where strangers with hatred in their hearts steer planes into buildings, grown-ups cry for days and everything can change in […]

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Grieving and Resilience

Posted on May 5, 2011 - by Susan Berger

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about a book by a Columbia psychology professor, George Bonnano, called The Other Side of Sadness (2009).  This book received many endorsements from the academic community claiming revolutionary thinking about how the bereaved experience and adapt to the loss of a loved one.  His main point is that the majority of those who grieve are able to handle their loss on their own, without professional counseling, because human beings are “naturally resilient.” “The good news,” he writes, “is that for most of us, grief is not overwhelming or unending.”  Since [loss] “is a […]

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Mother’s Day: Look for the Woodpecker

Posted on May 4, 2011 - by Gloria Horsley

With Mother’s Day quickly approaching, I would like to wish you all peace and harmony. If not peace, try distraction.  I am a golfer and a couple of weeks ago was watching a match.  After winning a sudden death playoff, one of the golfers was asked how he kept his focus under stress.  He said that his golfing coach had given him the tip of looking into the distance at the trees and trying to find a woodpecker. Well, today, folks,I was walking home from Starbucks with my coffee cup in one hand and of course my cell phone in […]

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A Mother’s Heart

Posted on May 4, 2011 - by Jean Williams

A heart grown weary, A soul shattered by loss. How can it be, that I still live, And yet my son does not. As mother Mary, “kept these things,” I pondered in my own heart. Did Mary know her Son would die? As surely, I did not. Mary cried, for her Savior Son. And I, for mine, We have a mother’s heart. Inspired by Luke 1:19, “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” (KJV) The poem above is rough, but it says much about how Mary’s situation kept me going after Joshua died by suicide. […]

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Room For Change: Changing Walls within Loss

Posted on May 3, 2011 - by Susan Reynolds

Walls are dividers.  Walls are providers.  Walls are low. Walls are high.  Walls are protectors. Walls are prisons. Walls with cracks fall down and can be rebuilt or replaced with something else. Moving through many changes after loss (the major one being the death of my spouse), I have moved my literal walls. In fact, I have moved three times within the last 6 years.  I have constructed walls from blue prints; I have adorned and painted them.  I have purchased a new home only to sell it 2 years later and rent after 30 years of owning my own […]

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Yes, another Mother’s Day….

Posted on May 2, 2011 - by admin

Mothers Day – 2011 There is no word in English to describe that parent who has lost a child. There is no such word in any language. I can only assume that is because it is the unthinkable. It is against nature, against all that should be. And yet it happens. It has happened to me twice. Both our son and our daughter died in their 20’s as a result of having Cystic Fibrosis. It is over thirteen years since the tragic death of our son. It will soon be eight years from that heartbreaking day when the wretched disease […]

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Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mom

Posted on May 2, 2011 - by admin

For a while I wondered if winter would ever leave, though the calendar said it had. However, the gorgeous weather of this past week is proof that spring has unmistakably arrived. The sights and sounds outside my window do not lie. The neighborhood children have shed their winter coats and I hear their gleeful laughter as they play in the cul-de-sac. The robin sings a chorus from a branch on Nina’s flowering tree that is beginning to bloom as it has every May for the past seven years. Soon the air will be filled with an overwhelming fragrance so intoxicating […]

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Writing Songs for Husband Helped Widow Heal

Posted on May 2, 2011 - by Paula Ezop

When my husband died, I felt a burning desire, a heartfelt need, to tell the world about the love that we shared.  I wanted everyone to know how I felt, and how our love would last forever and ever. I decided that I was going to write a song about the love that I held deep in my heart.  My love song would be a memorial to the man that I walked through life and death with. I’m not a musician nor am I a songwriter.  But, I was a writer who needed to express herself.  So, I researched the […]

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Remembering Buddy

Posted on May 2, 2011 - by admin

Five years ago, I lost my 2 1/2 year old son Daniel Jr., in a drowning accident. Five years later, though the pain is not as intense, I still feel the emptiness from his absence. He never got to grow up and everytime my older daughter gets to a milestone, I know, it will be the last time we get to celebrate the event. However, my good memories of him are clearer now and sometimes images of something he did will come forward bringing a smile. Though he was only here for a short time, his little footprints have forever […]

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Sudden Death vs. Anticipated Loss: Two Different Journeys

Posted on May 1, 2011 - by Chris Mulligan

Experience: The stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge Having experienced grief previously, I assumed I would be able to move on through life after the death of my mother in November 2010. I thought myself well prepared since I had spent the last ten years creating my new life after my son passed from injuries he sustained in an automobile accident. While caring for my mother, I convinced myself that becoming knowledgeable about Alzheimer’s disease, its progress, symptoms and behaviors would arm me with the necessities to flow through […]

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