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Death and Rebirth: Making a Home in Your Heart

Posted on May 7, 2018 - by Nina Impala

One of my favorite quotes about the grief journey comes from Rumi, a 13th century theologian and poet: Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom. I live next to a beautiful and very large cemetery that is more like a park than a cemetery; the grounds are meant to be park-like, no large headstones and the most gorgeous trees. People come to this cemetery for its museums, churches, gorgeous fountains, beautiful meditation gardens and statues. I walk in […]

Bitter or Better – A Choice

Posted on May 3, 2018 - by Harriet Cabelly

I have always been fascinated by how people deal with loss and adversity. I am continuously inspired by those who can go beyond their pain and live engaged, productive and meaningful lives. Therein lies the challenge: how to rebuild a live filled with meaning and joy despite loss and pain. Since we all know that inherent in life and the human condition is loss, the key is not in how to get through life without any pain, but rather, when pain and suffering come knocking on our door, how do we respond to it? Do we succumb and become […]

The Weaving of Love and Loss

Posted on May 3, 2018 - by Mary Jane Hurley Brant

When we open ourselves up to love, we open ourselves up to loss. That is why loss hurts so much – it’s connected to the greatest mystery of all: love. So it’s understandable that the deeper the love we felt for someone the deeper pain goes when they die and leave us. The death of a loved one shocks us physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. After those first four hits, grief arrives and is quickly followed by the mourning process. This process of grieving and mourning a loss is found across cultures. What does that mean? It means that […]

Grief Gift: How a Friend Can Help

Posted on May 3, 2018 - by Jane P. Williams

Our overwhelming feelings of loss during grief often make any grief gift hard to imagine. We search our inner world and wonder how we will put the pieces back together. What can possibly bring us any feeling of gratitude? Suddenly, our thoughts turn to our friend — the person who is with us, fully present, right now. This person can focus solely on our grief with no preoccupation or telling of his or her own suffering. Our comforter offers no platitudes and simply recognizes our need to be heard. We can tell our grief story over and over and our […]

Say What?! The Outrageous Things People Say to Grievers

Posted on April 23, 2018 - by Brenda Tobias

I used to keep a list of the most outrageous things people said to me regarding my husband’s death. At some point I stopped, realizing that it was not exactly the kind of collection I coveted. People say stupid things. I know I have. When it comes to grief and loss, we can all be a bumbling stumbling fount of misfires. Grief scares people right down to the core. Don’t even get me started on death…geez, the lengths we go to to avoid it! Grief and loss are just too radioactive to some. I can now laugh at my […]

Life After Loss the Afterwards

Posted on April 23, 2018 - by Laurel D. Rund

On February 11th, 2018 it was nine years since my husband, Marty, passed away. I saw a post on Instagram the other day which took my breath away because the words define “the afterwards” of life after loss. Ode to The Afterwards “Grief is not a task to finish and move on, but an element of yourself. An alteration of your being. A new way seeing. A new definition of self.” Up until the last year of my husband Marty’s life, I had been working as a businesswoman in the corporate world. Luckily, the Universe handed me the gift […]

Trauma/Heal The Body

Posted on April 17, 2018 - by Heidi Horsley

In episode 48, Drs. Gloria and Heidi Horsley interview Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. They also speak with Dr. Lyn Prashant, PhD, who uses yoga and massage in conjunction with her certification in grief counseling to holistically help heal the body after a trauma or loss in her Integrative Grief Therapy practice. Dr. van der Kolk explains that it’s not just fight vs. flight, but also elements of freeze and give up when the body faces a trauma. There comes a point when the body/mind […]

Death by Hospital Error: What are your rights?

Posted on April 2, 2018 - by Gloria Horsley

Reading several articles in the Wall Street Journal Health and Wellness section recently sent a chill through me as my husband of 57 years, Phil, is recovering from cervical surgery and recently survived some of the life threating health care facility acquired diseases mentioned in the article; all in the course of four weeks. He acquired pneumonia in the ICU, the flu in a rehabilitation center and a staff infection in a skilled nursing facility. In the February 17, 2018 article Hospitals Pneumonia Is a Lethal Enemy there were two quotes I found highly disturbing. One from Marin Kollef, Director […]

Moments of Silence: The Grief Process

Posted on March 30, 2018 - by Mike Russell

Deep within the crevices of our soul, we long for the moments of silence that can take us away from the sights, sounds and feelings that are bombarding us all the time. In grief, these bombardments seem to be heightened mainly because we don’t know how to turn them off. You are either too weak, lost, overwhelmed, angry, or rationalizing that you are super-human. There are so many bombs being dropped that it is hard to find a moment of silence. My experiences during these bombardments left me partially deaf. What I mean by that is I could sense people […]

There Was a Door…

Posted on March 29, 2018 - by Linda Freudenberger

I was on the inside perched on the comfy green recliner staring at our newly painted front door. I used to listen to music or the television while I played Word Chums on my iPad but now I sat quietly waiting for you to come home. We had the downstairs painted while we were on vacation. The painter finished the front door when we returned home so we witnessed how he painstakingly sanded the door and then applied 5 coats of the grey paint. He took great pride in his work. We had picked the lighter grey color because the […]