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Has Caregiving Changed You?

Posted on November 11, 2008 - by Carol O'Dell

Has caregiving changed you? Do you no longer feel like yourself? Has a part of you died? I know. I felt this too. I felt like I lost myself in some way. I lost my spontaneity, at times, my hope, and most days, my freedom. But I’m here to let you know that it won’t always be this way. Yes, caregiving disrupts your life. Yes, caregiving dumps stress on your life by the bucket load. Yes, caregiving will test every physical, emotional and moral fiber you have–and it hunts for frays and weak spots. But I’d still do it again. (I […]

What can Kids Hold Onto After a Parent has Died?

Posted on November 10, 2008 - by admin

By Harriet Hodgson It has been just over a month since my daughter was killed in a car crash. Every day has been a day of tears, some voiced, some silent. My 15-year-old twin grandchildren are so overcome with grief they are almost paralyzed. Both of them are looking for reminders of their mom, things they can hold onto, and my husband and I have given them things. The twins want to hear stories about their mother. But it is the values their mother instilled in them — values passed from one generation to the next […]

Prescription Drug Addiction Leads to Brother’s Death

Posted on November 9, 2008 - by Neil Chethik

By Rod Colvin – I wrapped my birthday gift and left it on the kitchen table. As I headed to work, I pondered where to take my brother Randy for his birthday. The upcoming evening was to be one of celebration. Not only was Randy turning 35, he had just completed his college degree in business. But around noon, I got a telephone call at my office. It was a nurse from a nearby hospital, informing me that my brother had just been brought in by rescue squad. He was in critical condition. Terrified, I jumped in the car and […]

Planning Helps With the ‘Firsts’

Posted on November 8, 2008 - by Susan Gilbert & Suzanne Redfern

By Sue Gilbert and Suzanne Redfern – The following is an excerpt from The Grieving Garden, authored by Suzanne Redfern and Susan Gilbert (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2008). In this excerpt, Susan Benveniste, one of the book’s 22 contributors, speaks of her family’s first celebrations, including Thanksgiving, without their daughter, Shelly. Enduring the “firsts” can be one of the hardest obstacles to face. Examples of the firsts are: holidays, birthdays, Mother’s or Father’s Day, and the death-day anniversary. These days can hit with a vengeance, like a blow to the gut. Planning in advance how to celebrate or spend these days […]

Alcoholic Families Create Legacy of Loss

Posted on November 7, 2008 - by Penelope Wesley

By Penelope Wesley — We usually don’t think of alcoholism as a loss, but it creates ripples of loss in every direction. My experience with alcohol and abuse consists of being raised with an alcoholic father and a mother who turned to drinking later and attempted to hide it, and my own struggle with drinking to drown out my memories. These memories included watching my mother being physically abused and being chased around the house by my father with a butcher knife. I grew up in fear of anger and became afraid to talk. I often feared that my father would go to […]

Obama Right to Interrupt Campaign

Posted on November 6, 2008 - by Neil Chethik

President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to leave the campaign trail to visit his dying grandmother may have been difficult in the short run: it came less than two weeks before election day. But the decision is almost certain to help him now as he comes to terms with her death. Research from The FatherLoss Survey, which I conducted for my book, FatherLoss, indicates that taking the time to connect with a dying loved one in the last days of his or her life promotes successful grieving. In the survey of 300 men whose fathers had died, only 40 percent said they had […]

Finding Your Way to a “New Normal”

Posted on November 5, 2008 - by Clara Hinton

By Clara Hinton — Grief is such a difficult journey, but it becomes especially difficult around the holiday season. Everywhere you look, there are reminders of family times, laughter and cheer, and times spent sitting around the table telling stories and eating a delicious meal together. For the person who has lost a family member, the holidays take on an entirely new meaning. There are thoughts of emptiness, loneliness, incompleteness and a fear and dread of facing the holidays without their loved one there. The family is no longer whole. Following the death of my 13-year-old sister, the holidays changed […]

Memory as Medicine: How One Heals After a Trauma

Posted on November 3, 2008 - by Norman Fried

By Norman Fried — A research study from a group of Chinese scientists reports a new drug that successfully erases memories from the minds of mice. The study reveals a molecular genetic paradigm through which a given memory, such as new or old fear memory, can be rapidly and specifically erased in “a controlled and inducible manner in the brain.” The experiment points to the possibility of the eventual development of a precise and quick method for manipulating people’s memories. In response to these findings, I offer some psychological thoughts. In particular, I write here about the human reaction to […]

Rebalancing After Loss

Posted on November 2, 2008 - by John Pete

I believe in some ways grief must be like losing a limb. In the aftermath, you have lost something you can never get back, and each new day thereafter, brings one sad reminder of your loss after another. You suddenly are faced with the stark realization that whatever or whomever is missing, was so necessary to your daily being; to a degree that you likely never had to contemplate before. In order to move forward after a profound loss, we must work to rebalance our lives. And in order to accomplish this we my painfully change the focal point from what is missing […]

Struggling to Survive Brother’s Suicide

Posted on October 31, 2008 - by Michelle L. Rusk

Janet writes in: I, along with my sister and now deceased brother, have always suffered from mental illness — hereditary-based and environmental. We grew-up in an immensely dysfunctional home, with a raging alcoholic father. My sister has bipolar disorder, and I suffer from depression. I knew my brother planned on killing himself and argued for my parents to look for him after they had had a terrible fight and he left our home in a rage. They said because he was addicted to drugs, he was on his own. He was missing for 2 weeks, until a reporter found him […]