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Educating Merna

Posted on June 13, 2009 - by Alice Wisler

A few excruciating days after my four-year-old son Daniel died, I got a phone call from Merna, an elderly woman in our church.  “Just think,” she said,  “God needed another flower in his garden and he chose Daniel.” I felt something sour in the pit of my stomach and my swollen eyes widened in disbelief.  Too numb to say a word, I let her continue, telling me I’d be fine and to carry on with my life and family. By the time I got off the phone, anger had risen within me. “God needed another flower!” a fellow-bereaved mother spat […]

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Unfinished Motherhood

Posted on June 13, 2009 - by admin

By Clara Hinton When child-loss occurs, a mother goes through a difficult time of emotional turmoil and questioning. “Am I still a mother?” “Does my child still have a birthday each year, or does time stand still?” “Can the mother/child relationship continue to grow, or am I now an ‘unfinished mother’?” Losing a child often places a mother on a road that begins a lonelier journey than ever expected, one that can never really be explained. There was a beginning, but with the death of the child, there is no middle and no end. Everything seems unfinished. Hopes and dreams […]

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How a Daughter Helped a Dad Who Had Lost a Child

Posted on June 13, 2009 - by Clara Hinton

By Clara Hinton — I only remember two times in my life that I saw my father cry:  the day he realized all of his hair was falling out at age 30, and the day my 13-year-old sister died.  The sight of seeing my father slumped over on the footstool sobbing with his face in his hands after my sister’s death has remained with me for over 50 years now.  The day she died, part of my father died, too. Because my sister died on June 5, Father’s Day was only a few days away, and I was worried about […]

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Book Review: Sea Changes by Gail Graham

Posted on June 12, 2009 - by Abel Keogh

Ever since my late wife died, I’ve had a hard time reading fiction where the main character is a widow or widower. Though the authors try hard, most of them don’t do a good job of capturing what it’s like to lose a spouse. Oh sure, most of them do a good job describing the sense of loss and grief that accompanies the death of a spouse, but when it comes to the internal emptiness that comes with it, most of them fall short. So when I learned that Gail Graham’s latest novel, Sea Changes, was about a widow living […]

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Take me out to the ball game…

Posted on June 12, 2009 - by Eric Tomei

The famous song that signals that summer is here.  One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to go to a baseball game.   I love going on a summer day or night and just being outside, smelling the fresh cut grass, seeing fans with their baseball gloves, and smelling that wonderful aroma of hot dogs and onions cooking.   It is an experience that I enjoy more and more as the years go on. My hometown team is the Detroit Tigers, but I have never really been a fan.   I don’t hate the Tigers, I […]

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Grief Goes to Work: Part II

Posted on June 12, 2009 - by Patrick T. Malone

By Patrick T. Malone — In the last installment, I told you about the deaths of my two sons, Scott and Lance, and my work experiences related to the grief associated with those deaths. We ended with my reaching out for help from others fully expecting the world was coming to an end. Well, as many of you probably know, the world does not end when you reach out for help. As a matter of fact, the relationships and interactions in my work environment improved immensely after my explaining exactly what would help. As I moved further along, I have […]

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Getting Through Multiple Loses

Posted on June 11, 2009 - by admin

by Harriet Hodgson, Search the Internet, browse a bookstore, and you find hundreds of books about grief. You will find personal stories, tributes to the deceased, grief poetry, text books, work books, and memory books. When I looked for a book about coping with multiple losses I could not find what I needed. As it turned out, friends were my “book” and they comforted me in many ways. Though I remember little about 2007, I remember it as the year of death. My daughter and father-in-law died the same weekend. Eight weeks later my brother died. Six months after that […]

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Writing to Heal: A Personal Journey

Posted on June 11, 2009 - by admin

By Linda C. Wisniewski — Take a walk through any bookstore, and you’ll see that memoirs are among the most popular books being sold today. People from all walks of life are putting their stories together for their families, for friends and for publication. We love to read real-life inspirational stories. But did you know there are very tangible health benefits to writing such stories? In the 1990s, Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin found that people who wrote about emotionally traumatic events showed reductions in blood pressure and heart rate and improvement in conditions like […]

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Kim McLean and Paula Prime: Finding Peace and Light After Loss

Posted on June 10, 2009 - by Monica Novak

From Healing the Grieving Heart radio, May 14, 2009 Listen to radio show archive: MP3 Link First  Guest: Kim McLean is a mainstream artist whose music is used often for comfort and hope of the bereaved.  Although that was not her initial intention, people have sought her out because of the healing quality of her songs and vocal presentation filled with inspiring music. Second Guest: Pamela Prime is a mother, grandmother, spiritual director and author of When the Moon is Dark We Can See the Stars.  She has survived the loss of two children, including an infant daughter to SIDS, […]

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Welcome to My New Column and First Posting

Posted on June 10, 2009 - by Monica Novak

Dear Friends, Welcome to the first post of my new weekly column, A Mother’s Thoughts. I’ll be sharing stories from my own experience, stories told to me by others, and any topics I come across that are relevant to pregnancy loss and infant death. I welcome your comments, questions, and your own personal experiences, for it is in sharing that we find healing and meaning in our own lives.  Blessings, Monica Choosing to Live By Monica Novak Three weeks after our daughter Miranda was stillborn, shattering my Marsha-Brady-like-existence, my husband Al and I attended a Share pregnancy and infant loss […]

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