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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Missing my Husband, Missing my Champion
October 22, 2013
When Eat, Pray, Love released years back, I read it. I enjoyed it and I even read Liz Gilbert’s sequel to it and enjoyed it too. When the movie came out, I wanted to see it. I never caught it in the theater, but remember watching it at home. I remember not really liking it too much. Oh well. Last night, in a pre-holiday stress bout with insomnia, I caught some of the movie on TV. As I enter my eighth holiday season alone, the stress fills me up and manifests in a severe lack of restful sleep. I’m familiar […]
Something’s Not Right: Remembering a Husband Near the End
October 7, 2013
During our twenty-eight years of marriage, whether we drove to a northern Minnesota resort for a weekend, canoed on a Boundary Water lake or flew to a faraway city, my husband John and I, enjoyed sharing time together. In 1999, when we flew to Carmel, California, where we spent our honeymoon in 1972, I never imagined less than a year later, John would be gone. While enjoying one of our favorite beaches along the central coast, I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t or didn’t want to see it. As I caught my breath after a jog […]
A Husband’s Voice Lives On
October 5, 2013
“Help me die!” Not a sound came out of his mouth, but I could magically decipher the startling message by reading his lips, the only body parts, along with his eyelids, that he could still move. My husband of fifteen years, David, lay motionless on white pristine sheets on a hospital bed that rocked back and forth while tangled tubes transferred nutrients and complicated machines whirled, forcing air into his dormant lungs to keep him alive. Two weeks prior, he was in a one car accident on his way home from a haircut and now, my partner was a quadriplegic. […]
Abel Keogh: Getting it Together After Loss
September 26, 2013
Abel Keogh is author of the memoir Room for Two, the story of the year of his life following his late wife’s suicide and the corresponding death of their unborn child. He is also the writer of the relationship guides Dating a Widower, Marrying a Widower, and Life with a Widower. Now remarried, he and his wife, Juile, are the parents of six children. https://media.blubrry.com/open_to_hope_1/audio.opentohope.com/2013/09/Abel-Keough.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Steve Harris: Men and Grief: Dating and Re-marriage
September 19, 2013
Steve Harris is the president of Creative Edge Communications, a production company in Southern California. He wrote and produced About Tomorrow, an hour-long CD full of encouragement for those in the first six months after loss, featuring interviews with real people who have been there, along with his own experience losing his wife to cancer. https://media.blubrry.com/open_to_hope_1/audio.opentohope.com/2013/09/Steve-Harris_02.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
How Do I Go On After Losing a Loved One?
September 10, 2013
The other day, I received this question from one of my followers. She recently lost her husband and asked me, “How do I go on after losing a loved one?” When I read this question, I got a little bit tearful as I remember this feeling oh so well. This is a soul layer question and one I think will resonate with many of you. The quick answer that I usually give when people ask me how I went on is, “I did it because I had to. I didn’t have a choice.” The truth is, there is not one perfect answer; […]
Hiccups: During Grief, We Really Feel Them
August 28, 2013
Since the end of last month, my world has been in a state of flux. Those last few weeks of July, I was feeling impatient, edgy, and frustrated. I didn’t have a classroom, but had an idea about a job at the school that I’ve worked at for years. I was feeling the squeeze of the door shutting on the upcoming school year with the jobs filling, but I was still without a place to call home. As is the story of my life in more recent years, in the final hours…voila…a great job appeared. I interviewed and was offered […]
Grief Marathon
August 22, 2013
Two weeks after her husband’s death on June 30, 2000, trying to get the grief behind her, Diane Dettmer accepted a new position as a literacy staff developer. Traveling with colleagues to training sessions in various parts of the country added more stress and did little to speed up the grief process. Diane and her husband, John, enjoyed twenty-eight years of marriage; the sudden loss of her loving husband devastated her. In the following excerpt from Diane Dettmann’s memoir, Twenty-Eight Snow Angels: A Widow’s Story of Love, Loss and Renewal, Diane shares insights into the grief she experienced a year […]
Panic Attack After the Death of a Spouse
August 21, 2013
I never quite understood what people meant when they said they had a panic attack. I remember thinking, “Oh, it’s all made up in your head. You can control it.” I imagined an anxiousness and fear, but had no idea how debilitating it could be until I became a widow and it happened to me! It actually happened to me on more than one occasion. You can read about another time, in my book, A Widow’s Pursuit. I think it’s a natural part of the grief process. Many of our emotions are out of our control. It’s not something we […]
