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The Antique Iron Bed, a Source of Comfort

Posted on September 16, 2009 - by Harriet Hodgson

When my husband and I were first married, we didn’t own any furniture. We lived in furnished apartments for a few years and purchased a home when my husband was a resident at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Residents don’t make much money and our house was furnished with hand-me-downs. My mother and father-in-law gave us an antique, wrought-iron bed to help out. The bed was white and had small, fleur-de-lis decorations. These were nice, but the most unusual part of the bed was the mattress, which had a picture of a bed bug in the middle and the words […]

When Behaviors Don’t Make Sense

Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Stan Goldberg

More than 10 years ago, I saw a black and white photograph by Richard Avedon that I still vividly remember. It was taken of a young boy in 1947 in Sicily. He was in the foreground smiling broadly and wearing a suit that was too short in the arms and too tight in the waist. In the background—softly out of focus—was a tree with a symmetrical oval canopy and a fence that defined the boundary between sky and water. A seemingly bucolic scene unless you looked carefully at the boy. After starring at it for a while, I realized that […]

Dreamwork as a Healing Path Through Grief

Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Julie Lange

The only way to fully understand what your dreams are telling you is to observe them over time and slowly discover the landscape, the common themes and the inhabitants that populate your dream world.

‘I’ve Never Been a Crier,” But Now….

Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Nina Bennett

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.” Washington Irving Here they come again. I have no idea what triggered this waterfall. One moment I was driving to work, thinking of my schedule for the day ahead, and the next thing I knew, the tears were rolling down my cheeks. This is part of the new normal that is me since my precious granddaughter was born still more than five years ago. I’ve never been a […]

Grief and Degrief: When Theory Meets Reality

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Lyn Prashant

On the eleventh day of September 2001, I awoke to a crisp northern New York state morning, the best of blue skies and an audible fall crunch in the air. I am New York City-born, so I remember those fall days well. I was in Rochester, N.Y., to present my work on the “somatic aspects of grief”. It was 9:01 a.m. as I stood in front of my class. It was my first presentation representing the University of Arizona and I was in front of 75 health care professionals. I began to introduce myself and the contents of my Degriefing […]

A Moment of Perspective…

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Eric Tomei

Sometimes, it’s hard to put things into perspective becuase we are always so consumed about what we are feeling and how it affects us in our lives, that we don’t take the time to think that maybe somebody has it just a little bit harder than you. I was in a charity golf outing this weekend honoring one of our beloved family members, who I have written about earlier, who passed away from a 2 year battle with leukemia in March. Ironically, the golf outing was on 9-11 and it couldn’t have been more fitting since he was a police […]

Time Moves Differently When Dealing With Grief

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Harriet Hodgson

Four months ago my daughter was killed in a car crash. Her sudden death on a snowy night stunned her 15-year-old twins and sent shock waves through the entire family. Many of us are still in shock. I know I am. One moment, I know my daughter is gone. The next moment, I can’t believe it. Nobody can grieve for me and I am working hard on recovery. But my grief flares when well-meaning friends say, “Last year was a hard one for you.” Last year? It has only been four months since my daughter died. When friends say this […]

When and How to Use Medicine for Grief

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Richard Dew

It was a typical meeting of Compassionate Friends, the organization for parents who have lost a child. We were discussing what helped us cope with the death of our child. Joanna, a quiet lady who seldom spoke, suddenly blurted out, “I take Prozac. I couldn’t have made it without it, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.” After a few seconds of stunned silence, several others confessed to “using drugs.” As a physician, I have been uneasy with what seems to be an almost blanket disapproval of medication by support groups, psychologists and counselors. We are encouraged to cry, scream, […]

The ‘Inoculation Effect’ of Major Grief

Posted on September 14, 2009 - by Fran Dorf

My trusty Shorter Oxford English Dictionary includes this definition of the word “inoculate”: The deliberate introduction into the body of a micro-organism, especially in order to induce immunity to a disease; vaccination. In the fifteen years since my three-year-old son, Michael, died, I’ve found the idea of an “inoculation effect” a useful and even consoling way to think about my loss. I admit the analogy is imperfect, since no one would ever “deliberately” introduce an innocent to agonizing grief, or as I call it in my novel, Saving Elijah, “big time grief,” but I stand by it. So what does […]

Let Your Last Wishes Be Known

Posted on September 12, 2009 - by Yvonne Lancaster

Evelyn Rose was my mother. She was a devout Catholic born at the turn of the twentieth-century. She never questioned dogma, doctrine or the infallibility of the pope. She believed we were put here on earth by God for a short time and that our life was a test of our choices about good and evil. How well we did in our earthly trials determined our fate in the afterlife. She believed, with all of her heart, that the greatest peace and happiness one could ever imagine would be seeing the face of the Creator and reuniting with her loved […]