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Why Do I Feel Worse Now Than I Did Right After My Husband Died?

Posted on October 9, 2023 - by Melinda Richarz Lyons

The Shock of a Sudden Death Grief counseling was invaluable to me after I lost my husband, Sid. He was only 56 and died very suddenly. There were so many feelings during the grief process that seemed to come out of nowhere. Of course it didn’t make my loss less painful, but just having my feelings validated seemed to help a tiny bit. In our group session one night, our counselor explained the difference between a sudden loss and an anticipated loss. In an anticipated loss, it is as if you are standing on a beach and you see a […]

Finding Hope While Grieving the Planet

Posted on October 2, 2023 - by Ken Breniman

The Weight of Planetary Grief In an era shadowed by the threat of environmental crises and a profound sense of planetary grief, finding reasons for hope can be a daunting task. We live in a time when the weight of ecological degradation, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity bears down upon us like a relentless storm. Yet, hope persists, emerging from the cracks of despair, and it is in our hands to nurture and cultivate it. The term “planetary grief” encapsulates the profound sadness and collective mourning that many individuals experience witnessing the degradation of our planet’s ecosystems. It’s […]

Doctor Recalls After-Death Experience

Posted on October 2, 2023 - by Kim Pierce

Doctor Recalls After-Death Experience Chief was a friend I met through Facebook, someone struggling to share his extraordinary experience of dying, then returning to life, in 2007. “I died, I lived again, and my life was forever altered,” he wrote in his book draft. He’d asked me to read it because I had written a novel that touched on the afterlife. “The experience profoundly changed my life,” he wrote. “It changed my religion (at least my spiritual views). It even changed my politics.” And Chief was adamant: This was not a near-death experience. Rather, he called it an After Death […]

Grief-Induced Fear of Joy

Posted on October 2, 2023 - by Colleen Friesen

Grief-Induced Fear of Joy Early this week as I drove home from work, I was listening to my “Really Great Day” playlist. The songs are positive, and up-beat and I found myself truly happy in a way that I haven’t been in years. As I bopped to the music in the driver’s seat of my car I began having a strong, “I’m missing something, or I’ve forgotten something” sense of wrongness. I thought for a moment if there was something I forgot at work and couldn’t come up with anything. I kept driving and kept hips-up dancing, but the sense […]

Follow Your Heart When You Have a Chance to Comfort Bereaved

Posted on October 1, 2023 - by Monica Novak

Follow Your Heart with the Bereaved My friend Wendy recently told me this story. On her way out of church that morning, she saw an older woman sitting in the pew crying. It’s a large congregation, and Wendy didn’t know the woman, but something inside Wendy told her to stop. She followed her heart and walked up to the woman to ask if she was okay and could she do anything for her. The woman wiped her face and told Wendy that her 2-month-old granddaughter had just died, and she had to go help her son and daughter-in-law through the […]

Ten Common Signs that the Deceased Send to Loved Ones

Posted on October 1, 2023 - by Karen Noe

Ten Common Signs that the Deceased Send to Loved Ones After our loved ones cross over, they are very anxious to let us know they are okay and are aware of what is going on in our lives. If we are not able to feel them around us, they will often give us signs that we cannot ignore. The person who is given the sign usually knows he or she is receiving a message from the other side. I always tell my clients that they do not have to look for signs – the signs will come to them. How […]

Widow Fears Sharing Thoughts of Suicide

Posted on October 1, 2023 - by Marty Tousley

Widow Fears Sharing Thoughts of Suicide Question from a Reader I know I’ve heard plenty of times that it is normal for ‘grievers’ to feel despondent and wish to be with their spouse who has passed on. But, it doesn’t feel like it’s normal to me because I don’t want to live any more, although I am not going to do anything to harm myself. In fact, I am on a healthy food plan and I am doing whatever it is I need to do to live from one day to the next. I stay in for days at a […]

Gratitude Amid the Unfairness of Loss

Posted on September 18, 2023 - by Ken Lefkowitz

After losing two children, Carolyn and Matthew, and then having two more children, Kim and Danny, my wife explained a recent experience. Holding Child After Death She said: “The other night when you were gone on a business trip, I was watching television after I put Kim and Danny to sleep. Our kids are so wonderful. A nurse on a news show was demonstrating how mothers whose babies died were allowed to hold the small lifeless bodies in order to say goodbye and get some feeling of closure. Most of the mothers spoke very positively about the experience. As each […]

Reconnecting with Mom Through Plant Medicine

Posted on September 18, 2023 - by Ken Breniman

Losing Mom as a Teen I was only 18 when my mother succumbed to pancreatic cancer. However, in the following two decades, I persistently avoided the profound pain of being a motherless son. Though I maintained a façade of functionality, pouring my energy into my career and globetrotting adventures, my heart limped along, unable to foster any lasting or meaningful relationships. I had constructed an emotional barricade around myself, but it exacted a heavy toll in the form of escalating anxiety and a relentless yearning for reconciliation. If only my mom and I could have figured out a different way […]

An Old Testament-Grief Connection

Posted on September 18, 2023 - by Colleen Friesen

In recent months, I have been struggling with what I have come to see as a different stage of my grief journey. I wrote about that challenge in my last article. Writing that article, I thought I had turned a corner. I thought I had grasped purpose and was ready to move forward but the winds of hopelessness scoured my resolve from me and left me groping for … something. Direction through Grief As I looked around me; at work, at writing, at yard or housework, the same lost echo would reverberate back to me… “what’s the point?” I found […]