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What It’s Really Like When Your Child is Terminally Ill

Posted on April 20, 2009 - by Lisa Buell

By Lisa Buell — How could death possibly happen to a child? We all enter into an unspoken contract that our children will outlive us. It’s what gives us the courage to become parents in the first place. When that assumption is suddenly thrown into question because of a child’s illness, we find ourselves looking for reasons hidden in the unreasonable. We seek for clues to explain why this tragedy is happening to this particular set of parents, to gain understanding and to create distance as well. As parents of a dying child, we didn’t want to see ourselves as […]

Words of Wisdom: ‘Hold On!’

Posted on April 19, 2009 - by Luellen Hoffman

By Luellen Hoffman — His cell phone call came to me at 7:00 am and I knew right away something was wrong. My son had just driven up to Detroit with his girlfriend to attend the NCAA Final Four basketball games and was driving back Tuesday morning when they hit bad weather — snow and ice on the Penn Turnpike. His girlfriend was driving the car and they weren’t speeding, 64 mph when they hit ice and she lost control of the car. My son had been asleep, in the passenger seat, when he awoke to her screams and the […]

How to Help Our Friends Help Us When We’re Grieving

Posted on April 18, 2009 - by Joy Johnson Brown

By Joy Johnson, Centering Corporation — When the goddess emerged from the cave of her sorrow she wept anew for there was no one there to greet her. (ancient Greek myth) One widow said it well: “You find out who your friends are!” Many people think that illness, death and other tragedies bring people closer together. Actually, the opposite is more often true. Stresses build, relationships have changed, anger, guilt, sadness and all the other emotions that come with grief seem to attack everyone at different times and in different ways. Recognize that all your family and friends will be […]

Grief and the Global Economic Challenge By Patrick Malone

Posted on April 17, 2009 - by Markus Redding

Technically, grief is the intense emotion suffering cause by a loss. However, grief is relative to the worst loss one has experienced. If you are among those who have suffered the death of a child, spouse, parent or grandparent, you know an intense level of grief that is almost indescribable. However there are many among us today who are dealing grief due to a different kind of loss and for them it may be the most intense loss they have experienced. Over the last three decades we have experienced unprecedented economic growth not only in the United States but around […]

Let’s Stop Judging Others’ Pain

Posted on April 17, 2009 - by Alice Wisler

By Alice J. Wisler “Never criticize a man unless you have walked a mile in his shoes.” Many of us repeat this line, most likely when we have been criticized as opposed to when we are the ones with a differing opinion. Years after my four-year-old son died, I received an invitation that got under my skin. Missing my son, a little under the weather, and experiencing the realities of a damaged engine of our Lincoln Sable, I was not at my best. So I felt I had nothing left within me to cushion my feelings when a fellow bereaved […]

Little Lauren…

Posted on April 17, 2009 - by Eric Tomei

Kids have such a great way of putting things into the proper perspective in life. They really make you realize that the happy times are really happy and should be celebrated and that the sad times aren’t all that bad and they will get better. Once a month, I schedule a visit with my goddaughter, Lauren. I truly look forward to hanging out and bonding with her especially since she is approaching big-girl age of 3 in May. It is so fascinating the way kids change day by day. It was really a perfect day. […]

Slideshow and Music: Keepsake of Memories

Posted on April 16, 2009 - by Sandy Fox

by Sandy Fox A special project I did in memory of my daughter was a slide/music show on the computer. This is something you may want to do. You can look at it anytime, when the memories overwhelm you, or when friends and relatives come over who would appreciate seeing it. I started out by going through every album I have from birth to death and chose the pictures I thought represented her life through candid action shots of activities she was involved in, trips she took, boyfriends she had, honors she won, and of course, family posed pictures. I […]

Four Friends for the Grief Journey

Posted on April 16, 2009 - by Claire Perkins

During my journey through grief, here were four friends that never failed me: journaling, expressive arts, dreams and synchronicity. My book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, is full of examples of how these companions helped to guide me toward healing. Here is a brief overview of how you can bring these friends along with you on your own healing journey. JOURNALING When you’ve lost a loved one, all kinds of things go through your mind and heart. You feel many emotions. You may have regrets. You may be beating yourself up with the “if onlys.” There may be things you […]

When a Miscarriage Occurs After Fertility Treatments

Posted on April 15, 2009 - by Monica Novak

By Kira Copperman, LMSW – Being a patient at a fertility clinic brings moments of anxiety, hope, excitement, fear, and stress. The time and effort to become pregnant can feel like an emotional roller coaster and certainly a different route to conception than one may have imagined. A Harvard Medical School study showed that patients going through fertility treatments experience comparable levels of stress to patients who are going through treatment for cancer and heart disease. This is no surprise as patients experience the daily, weekly, sometimes hourly ups and downs as they are progressing through their treatment. The focus […]

Finding Grief Support Online

Posted on April 14, 2009 - by Marty Tousley

By Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT, DCC If you have access to a computer with an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips a wealth of grief information, comfort and support. The Open to Hope website offers an extensive array of resources. Other websites offer online chat rooms, discussion forums and message boards, where you can join a virtual support group, connecting with and sharing your experiences with others whose losses are similar to your own. The online Grief Healing Discussion Groups that I monitor and moderate is an example of such a site. Selecting from over a dozen individual forums, […]