Open to Hope Articles
Do you want to read stories of others who have been where you are? Are you looking for bereavement help, and advice? Look no further. We offer over 3,000 articles written by our Open to Hope authors.
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Maintaining a Healthy, Healing Relationship after Death
February 5, 2012
Ken sat on the couch across from me, smiled and exclaimed, “I stopped it! The uncontrollable crying. I stopped it!” Just the week prior, I had been at a loss as the 59-year-old self-avowed “Momma’s boy” cried with an overpowering despair. He had been completely inconsolable over the death of his 82-year-old mother. As a fledgling bereavement counselor, I had walked away from his initial session wondering if I could ever be able to help Ken. His inability to see any reason for joy and hope had silenced me for almost the entire hour For all of Ken’s life prior […]
I lost my mom 5 months ago to cancer
February 2, 2012
Dear everyone: I am here looking for support and comfort. I lost my mother 5 months ago to MMMT cancer. I am having a hard time with grief, as my mom was my true best friend. I feel such an incredible sense of loss. I lost my support system, the person that made me laugh and made everything alright. She called me all the time and love me like no-one else ever did. I miss her every second of every day and feel so helpless and hopeless. I just wish I would get cancer too, so I could be with […]
Grief of a child.
February 1, 2012
“Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you are sorrowful…
January 7, 2012
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” Kahil Gibran.
Tomorrow’s Promise
December 5, 2011
Mary Elizabeth Robinson’s book, Tomorrow’s Promise, is available at her website.
Remembering the miracle of life
November 29, 2011
“You are a lovely link in the great chain of being Think how lucky it is to be born.” –Ruth Stone
‘Normal’ Grief is Unique for Each Person
November 29, 2011
Grief automatically throws us into a time of change. Some of us might regain a semblance of the life we once had, while others veer off into surprising, unexpected paths. Either way, where ever and whomever we used to be and everything we took for granted has changed. We tell people we’re “fine” mostly because we know that’s what they want to hear, but there is a part of us that really wants to believe it, too. We want our sense of normal back, that time in our lives when everything (no matter how much we might have complained at […]
The Gift that Keeps on Giving
November 15, 2011
Few of us are ready to assume the position and the responsibility that comes with our new role in the family when a parent dies, no matter what our age. My mother died of ovarian cancer, when I was a young mother. I assumed Mom’s holiday rituals and family duties because I thought she would have expected that of me. I really didn’t want to be in charge (the men in my family would protest but it‘s true). If life could have been normal again with Mom at the wheel driving us into that celebration frenzy that only she could […]
I lost my mother almost 3 years ago
November 13, 2011
I just feel so lost still. Here’s my story…. Wednesday, January 28th 2009 Is a day that changed my life forever. my mother was alcoholic for most of my childhood. My worst fear when i was little was my mother dying from drinking to much. Well somethime whem i was 12 my mother quit drinking! and found out my dad was gambling now… so oct 4th 2006 my mother moved out to her own house. But they are still married. She start taking xanax from the doctor for anxiety. My mother had always been a pack rat but now she […]
