1) Don’t try to make the grieving person feel better. YOU CANNOT. For many grievers it only serves to make them feel guilty or worse. Grievers MUST experience the pain of grief for healing to ultimately occur. 2) Don’t tell the griever to give it time. Time has stopped for the griever. Life proceeds in slow motion. Life is too surreal to be identified with time.
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1) Don’t try to make the grieving person feel better. YOU CANNOT. For many grievers it only serves to make them feel guilty or worse. Grievers MUST experience the pain of grief for healing to ultimately occur. 2) Don’t tell the griever to give it time. Time has stopped for the griever. Life proceeds in slow motion. Life is too surreal to be identified with time.
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1) Don?t try to make the grieving person feel better. YOU CANNOT. For many grievers it only serves to make them feel guilty or worse. Grievers MUST experience the pain of grief for healing to ultimately occur. 2) Don?t tell the griever to give it time. Time has stopped for the griever. Life proceeds in slow motion. Life is too surreal to be identified with time.
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“Then [I] dreamed…” (Genesis 28:12). About four months after our son died I wrote a booklet titled GRIEF. Two years later I received a letter from a publisher accepting it and saying they felt it would help many grieving people. What I remember about the afternoon I received the letter was a dream. I never took naps then; I worked part-time and was very active. But that afternoon our precious God put me to sleep and gave me a gift. I want to share this dream, for it convinced me that God does indeed communicate with us through visions.
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If you’re going through anticipatory grief you’ve probably heard of “grief work.” Health professionals may use the term without explaining it. Anticipatory grief is so draining and confusing you may not have a clear picture of your grief work. What is it? How can you accomplish it? “Grief work includes the processes that a mourner needs to complete before resuming daily processes,” according to The National Cancer Institute. This grief work includes mentally separating from the person who has died, adjusting to a different life, and forming new relationships.
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I can’t imagine a more difficult or trying period: coping with the death of a loved one. This is especially true when they are relatively young or not showing a sign of a previous illness or disease. Auto accident victims immediately come to mind because of their proliferation. But there are other ways and means to cut short a life. Yet, does it really matter in the end? The result is that friends, relatives, and other associates remain here on earth to deal with the tragedy. I feel somewhat qualified to write about this because it happened to me twice.
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I can?t imagine a more difficult or trying period: coping with the death of a loved one. This is especially true when they are relatively young or not showing a sign of a previous illness or disease. Auto accident victims immediately come to mind because of their proliferation. But there are other ways and means to cut short a life. Yet, does it really matter in the end? The result is that friends, relatives, and other associates remain here on earth to deal with the tragedy. I feel somewhat qualified to write about this because it happened to me twice.
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I would like to share with you a beautiful song that is comforting to the soul and powerful enough to heal the grief-stricken. My wife, Bobbie, brought this song to my attention one day in 1998. It was a year before Bobbie was diagnosed with what would later be terminal cancer. Sixteen months later, she passed away. I was torn to pieces. Since then, this song has meant more to me than any other song I?ve heard. It is very special to my heart and soul, because Bobbie introduced it to me. It reflects all my emotion, when I think […]
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Over the past several weeks there has been so much news of endings. End of tournaments, end of life, end of businesses, and end of relationships. All of these endings could cast a pall of depression over us. We wonder why things have to end.
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During the two years of my husband’s terminal illness, death was never far from my mind. We had been told he was dying and even a time in which it was supposed to happen. We had no idea of how it would happen. I was loathe to let him out of my sight incase he should suddenly die and not return to me and woke each day fearing that he may have died during the night. Towards the end of his illness I sensed that death was near, waiting in the shadows to steal my love from me and wrote […]
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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.
