Open to Hope Articles

Articles Home

Meaning Making

Posted on October 6, 2020 - by Ruth Field

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. Meaning Making When I use the term “meaning-making,” I’m talking about the process of understanding or making sense of what’s going on in our lives. Many times the meaning of an event seems obviously unquestionable. In the case of bereavement, however, we are often left feeling empty because our dear one’s death will never make sense. Finding meaning in distress can be like turning on a light bulb in a […]

Adapting to a New Reality: Taking ‘Grief Breaks’

Posted on October 2, 2020 - by Ruth Field

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2 Keep Learning Our brains crave information and order. It’s natural to long for as much detail as possible about your particular situation, its effects, and how you’re coping. What specifics do you know about what happened? Who might be responsible? How will you go on? Could it have been avoided or prevented? If so, how? These are hard questions to ponder, and they come up whether we want them to or not. Just know this is […]

Accepting the Unacceptable

Posted on September 30, 2020 - by Ruth Field

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. Defining Acceptance The first step is to figure out what acceptance really means. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, acceptance is the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable, as in approval. It further adds, acceptance can mean to endure without protest or reaction; to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable; to recognize as true. When my heart is screaming “NO!” and rejecting every aspect of a situation, what would it mean if […]

Endings and Beginnings

Posted on September 27, 2020 - by Ruth Field

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. I used to think life was a series of beginnings. Birth is a beginning; starting school is a beginning. So is learning to drive; new love; a new home. All these firsts take us toward presumably better and more fulfilling experiences. Beginnings are filled with hope, promise, and expectation. Sometimes they’re exhilarating and scary in the most positive way. But I honestly didn’t consider the possibility that they also may follow endings. At least, not until […]

Soldier On: When Hope is Fading

Posted on September 25, 2020 - by James Sesnak

https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-James Sesnak/dp/1733872205/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28YNX3RJYSQO&dchild=1&keywords=soldier+on+sesnak&qid=1600520693&sprefix=soldier+on%2Caps%2C211&sr=8-1 “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.” C.S.Lewis C.S. Lewis’s memorable quote summarizes my life as I write these words. My thirty-year marriage ended when my wife succumbed to ovarian cancer. The initial surgery proved a success and the routine check-ups offered no cause for alarm. For many years the cancer simply remained a background noise and we lived as if nothing had happened. That abruptly changed when the last seven years of our life became a slow motion disaster. Cancer screamed in the background of every discussion but screeched even louder in […]

Griefspotting Losses For a Post-COVID Era

Posted on September 25, 2020 - by Gloria Horsley

As we have gone from days to weeks to months dealing with the Covid epidemic, I have become increasingly concerned that our unresolved issues around grief and loss are mounting. It occurs to me that it is not too early to address some of the issues that will plague us in the future by identifying them and intervening where we can in preparation for a postcovid world. I like to call this intervention Griefspotting. What, you may ask, is Griefspotting? Doesn’t it have something to do with Trainspotting and Heroin tracks? Not in my world. When I was a kid, […]

Excerpt from ROCK ON: Blessings in the Lessons

Posted on September 21, 2020 - by Susan Casey

This is an excerpt from Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief, which is available https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Mining-River-Sibling-Grief/dp/1732888892/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2V353DVSRK5ZL&keywords=rock+on+mining+for+joy+in+the+deep+river+of+grief&qid=1576002958&sprefix=Rock+On%3A+Mining+for+%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1 Chapter 10: Blessings in the Lessons Sisters Yvon Stokkink and Marissa Kerkdijk: interviewed in June 2015, Holland Mattijs Kerkdijk: 5/17/82-9/7/14 Cause of death: Suicide The day before his mother’s birthday, Mattijs received a text from his sister Yvon, who offered to pick him up the following day and bring him to his mother’s birthday party. My back is killing me, he texted back. Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, and I hope you feel better, Yvon wrote. I […]

Anxiety Over Fading Memories

Posted on September 20, 2020 - by Bob Baugher

This is an excerpt from the book: Coping with Grief: A Guide for the Bereaved Survivor by Bob Baugher. You can order it at: www.bobbaugher.com One of the most anxiety-producing features of death is that we will somehow forget our loved one. We fear that, with the inevitable passage of time, the memories of our loved one will be lost like tiny drops in the ocean of thousands of memories. As the weeks and months turn to years our lives have become bombarded with new experiences and numerous distractions. Events and people have moved in and out of our […]

Excerpt from ROCK ON: Losing Anger

Posted on September 19, 2020 - by Susan Casey

This is an excerpt from Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief, which is available https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Mining-River-Sibling-Grief/dp/1732888892/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2V353DVSRK5ZL&keywords=rock+on+mining+for+joy+in+the+deep+river+of+grief&qid=1576002958&sprefix=Rock+On%3A+Mining+for+%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1 Chapter 8: Losing Anger Jeneen Gallagher: interviewed in June 2015, Florida Ryan Gill: 7/25/79-3/30/13 Cause of death: Murder On a sun-drenched Saturday in Boynton Beach, Florida, thirty-three-year-old Ryan—a redheaded, blue-eyed ‘gentle giant’—had a bounce in his step as he finished his shift at a local restaurant. He popped into his apartment for a quick shower and a change of clothes and headed to the bar across the street to meet his co-worker for a bachelorette party. The bar was […]

Excerpt from ROCK ON: Be Brave

Posted on September 17, 2020 - by Susan Casey

This is an excerpt from Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief, which is available https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Mining-River-Sibling-Grief/dp/1732888892/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2V353DVSRK5ZL&keywords=rock+on+mining+for+joy+in+the+deep+river+of+grief&qid=1576002958&sprefix=Rock+On%3A+Mining+for+%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1 Chapter 3: Be Brave Early Friday morning when I saw Kevin’s number on my phone, I said another silent prayer before I picked up his call. “Tell me some good news,” I said. “Sue, it’s not good.” I wanted to slap my hands over my ears and scream, “Please stop talking.” “Setiawan left the hospital, and the doctor called her and told her to come back. His blood pressure dropped, and he wasn’t breathing on his own,” Kevin said. […]