Writer and widow Elaine Williams examines the yearning for touch following the loss of a spouse due to death, divorce or physical separation. She’s trying to be patient, she writes, but some days are hard.
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I’m Carol D. O’Dell, and I hope you’ll check out my book, Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir, available on Amazon I Think I’m Depressed– Have you had this thought but couldn’t say it out loud? Caregiver depression doesn’t always look like depression. That means it can go undiagnosed for a very long time. Caregivers can’t (or don’t) stop. They don’t lock themselves in darkened bedrooms for days on end. They don’t necessarily cry or stop eating. They keep on caring for their loved ones. They suffer in silence. So, what does caregiver depression look like? It can be […]
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By Norman Fried In her front page article in Wednesday’s New York Times, Anemona Hartocollis reports on the current lives of some of the survivors of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. “Maimed on 9/11, and Trying to be Whole Again” highlights several men and women who were critically wounded, partially paralyzed, and emotionally transformed as a result of the events of that day. But her article is also a treatise on the human will to survive and to “rebuild a harbor,” as poet Yehuda Amichai once said, long after the ship has gone down. According to […]
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Printed with permissions and courtesy of Dr. Henya Shanun-Klein, Ph.D. When Grief drags us down, leaving us breathlessly beat at the bottom of bottoms – we are confronted with a dilemma: should we stay ‘down under’? Or should we make an effort to surface, to breathe again? Staying ‘down under’ means to, eventually, die of suicide. Question: Is that what our living or dead children want or would have wanted us to do? If the answer is “no!” then there’s only one true option: Re-learn to breathe, re-learn to live, learn to find new meaning in life. As described in […]
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By Jenny Hander One of the greatest tragedies in losing a baby is that you don’t get the chance to form enough memories to carry you through a lifetime of living without them. It isn’t that you forget to remember; it is that you don’t have many memories to recall. Though I think of my sweet daughter every day, there are some days I feel as though I created her in my own mind. I ask myself, “Was she ever really here?” I know that she was, but she was here such a short time and so much time has […]
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My prayers started the moment Steve was diagnosed with esophageal cancer: “Please God, please, send a miracle. Let him be in the 15% of those who statistically beat this cancer. God, I beg you to restore Steve to health, please heal him completely, as you have so many times in the past.” This and similar fervently issued prayers were to continue even up to the day Steve died, exactly six months later. Those of us who have lost our spouses despite prayers such as these have experienced first-hand one part of how grief and loss affects […]
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Dearest Mothers, In the beginning, it mattered to me the hows and whys of Clint’s death. My heart and my head argued. My heart keep saying, “He can’t be gone, we still have so much love to give him.” In a strange unfair twist, this love was even greater because it was not hindered with all the stress and chaos involved with dealing with someone struggling with mental illness and drug addiction. This wasn’t fair. I became angry. I had done everything I thought was right. I had been a stay at home mom up until middle school. We were […]
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Susan of Texas asks: My son died in a car accident, and I find comfort from holding a piece of glass from my son’s demolished car. My friend thinks this is strange. Is she right, or do other people do what I do? Dr. Bob Neimeyer responds: It sounds like your friend is not a bereaved parent. Many people find solace in maintaining contact with their loved one through cherished “linking objects,” whether these are a child’s favorite toy, a husband’s sweater, or in this case, a piece of broken glass. At the core of grief is the urge […]
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By Norman Fried It is a widely accepted belief that, as time passes, mourners’ responses to loss and trauma change. We understand that the physical reactions of grief, including psychomotor retardation, disorientation, fatigue, and panic seem to lessen. We know that spiritual growth and religious connections develop for some mourners as time begins to pass. And we agree that many who have suffered a loss find themselves more mobilized as time marches on, devoting their energies to fund-raising or consciousness-raising programs in honor of a loved one who died. But the question remains: Is there really a “shelf life” for […]
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If you’re a caregiver/son, daughter, please read this post. You need to put yourself in their shoes. But I don’t want to live with my adult children! Me neither. (And I wrote the book, Mothering Mother–and my mom lived with me the last (almost) three years of her life!) That’s my point–my mother lived on her own–with Parkinson’s and early dementia until she was 89 years old! We’ll all be in this predicament one day–if we live that long–so we need to be empathetic. My kids are grown, responsible, and we all love each other–and I still don’t relish the thought […]
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Open to Hope is an online community offering inspirational stories of loss, hope and recovery. We believe hope is the bridge between loss and recovery.
