What appalls me is that Jennifer Grey danced with a ruptured disc in order to win. Her doctors who probably should be sued for malpractice, gave her a nerve block so she could compete. Now she’s facing surgery.

And the response….accolades for her bravery and competitive spirit! Yikes! Does no one else have a problem with this?

Why are we making a virtue out of her stupidity and her doctors’ negligence?

And what does this have to do with grief? Everything.

Throughout my years of doing this work, I have often heard people talk about how they’re “trying to be strong”. With my Facebook Page seeing a lot of action these days, I’m hearing it again and again, and it’s just a totally wrong headed way to think about it.

Strong is Wrong.

Trying to be strong, trying to push through, trying to get on with it…all of these are ways we try to keep grief manageable. If grief were really manageable I’d say go for it…but it’s not. You can’t manage grief any more than you can manage your need for air to breathe.

Grief takes you on the ride of your life, and the more you fight it, the more you put on a strong face, the worse it gets. Not allowing the grief to take you where it needs to go always intensifies and prolongs the grief. It is a truly unpleasant reality but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Just like dancing with a ruptured disc surely made the situation worse for Jennifer Grey, trying to go on pretending that grief hasn’t touched you, makes it that much harder.

The irony is that when faced and, dare I say, embraced, grief heals and makes us stronger. It’s the trying to be strong when we need to fall apart that makes us weak and leaves us unhealed.

Jennifer Grey, What A Terrible Role Model is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Yet for a variety of reasons, normal grief can get well and truly stuck. Most of the advice offered in How to Survive Your Grief is designed to keep the flow open, but there are some (who haven’t read the book?) who get well and truly stuck in their grief.

In professional lingo it gets described as unresolved grief or complicated grief which are accurate enough. Sometimes it gets diagnosed as depression or PTSD. In some cases those diagnoses are correct but in many others they are just plain wrong. Grief is not depression and it’s not all PTSD either. Stuck grief can turn into depression. Some horrific losses do trigger PTSD, but most deaths do not. Most deaths trigger grief, an appropriate though extremely painful response.

Even if the diagnoses were accurate, they don’t really speak to the underlying issue which is the grief for whatever reason, has stopped moving.

but which don’t really speak to what’s causing the grief to be unresolved (aside from it’s not time yet) or complicated.

Having worked with grieving people for over 20 years, I have witnessed the fluid nature of grief over and over and over again. The grief that heals us is always moving and always moving in the direction of healing even when it doesn’t feel like it. I trust the process so completely I don’t even question it anymore. This is the nature of grief.

When someone dies, grief follows in order to heal us. I know it feels like a totally messed up system but there you have it.

Having worked with grieving people for over 20 years, I have come to trust and respect the grieving process as one of the miracles of our human design. Grief when followed without trying to manage it, direct it or deny it, is always moving in the direction of healing…always. It is also something that is constantly moving. When you listen to people in the first few months, they are bouncing around from tears to laughter, from sadness to bittersweet memory, from anger to depression and back again. The nature of grief is that it is all over the map, ie a fluid state that is anything but still, and the stories change. On the surface they sound the same but if you listen over time, new elements emerge, the emphasis changes and in time even the verb tense changes. When you’re the one who is grieving, it’s sometimes hard to see the changes as they happen over time but when you sit and listen to people in groups and individually over that first year or two, the movement is unmistakable. Every time someone shows up for a session their emotions are different, and what they’re talking about is different. Sometimes not dramatically different but always subtly different.

In contrast the person who is getting stuck shows up week after week after week with the identical emotions and affect, stories that have become rote recitations of their pain.

In normal grief the storytelling moves folks out of the ruts whereas in grief that’s stuck it’s like trying to get traction in a snow drift with the tire spinning and spinning deeper and deeper into the rut.

Unresolved Grief, Complicated Grief or Just Plain Stuck? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

http://www.surviveyourgrief.com/grief-and-loss/grief-and-loss-grief-is-not-the-enemy

Grief is not the enemy is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

I’m NOT asking if it’s better.

I’m NOT asking if you’re over it.

I am asking, has your grief changed?

During the first few months of a normal grieving process, it’s likely you have gone through many cycles of feeling better and feeling worse and feeling better and feeling worse again.

Each time will probably feel somewhat different…all different shades of grief. Some days are worse than others. Some aren’t so bad. There may even be some days when you feel more or less okay.

It’s also not unusual for grief to start feeling worse around 3-6 months. All perfectly normal.

If that describes you, in all probability you are doing just fine. You don’t even need to finish reading this post.

For the vast majority of you, the grief you’re experiencing even when it’s really, really hard, is not trauma.

However, if you are feeling exactly the same things and thinking exactly the same things over and over and over again for months on end, you may be experiencing trauma. It’s like the experience of this death has imprinted itself on your psyche to the exclusion of anything else.

Grief and trauma often co-exist and the treatment for trauma isn’t terribly different, but trauma is something that doesn’t always heal without assistance. When what you’re experiencing is trauma, it is imperative that you get help. Talking about the experience sooner rather later can make all the difference in your long term recovery.

There are no hard and fast criteria to help you sort this out, but there are experiences that are more common for trauma.

1. You witnessed the death.
2. The death was violent.
3. The death was accidental.
4. You found the body.
5. Your own life was endangered.

That’s not a complete list but it’s a good start. And now months after the death, the images of the event are still running through your mind, over and over and over again. These images are so pervasive that they are the predominant thought, as opposed to thinking about the person who died or even thinking about how much you miss them.

With trauma, the images of the death, and the situation that caused it, are frozen in time, and they don’t change, modify or come and go…and they’re often terrifying.

If any of this is sounding familiar, it’s time to get some professional help. The most effective treatment for trauma is to talk about what happened, and it’s been rather well documented that the sooner that happens the better.

I’m seeing an awful lot of people showing up on my Facebook page who have been traumatized by a death or the circumstances surrounding it. They’re calling it grief when in fact it’s trauma, and they are still feeling the horrific impact years…10, 15, 20 years…later.

That is not normal grief. That’s trauma.

Is it trauma? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Who are you?

Are you your work?

Are you where you live?

Are you the house you live in?

Are you your parents?

Are you your children?

Are you your church?

Are you your community?

Are you your clothes?

Are you your hobbies?

Are you your pets?

Are you what you hate?

Are you what you fear?

Are you the people you love?

Are you your grief?

Who are you? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the study of grief is best left to the poets and mystics among us.

Grief has more in common with love than with any diagnosable disorder. With every attempt to define grief with symptoms and timelines, we end up diminishing our understanding of the grieving process rather than deepening it.

Because it is so painful and because it makes everyone squirm, and because it mimics things like depression and anxiety disorders (but isn’t), it has largely fallen into the realm of psychologists and psychiatrists to define its nature and the interventions (how’s that for a clinical term) to ease it.

We’ve got an entire profession waiting for the DSM committee to make their proclamation in 2013, about what grief is and what it isn’t. From the look of things they will make it appear significantly more disordered than it actually is.

We love the checklists of symptoms and the linearity of the stages of grief because grief is so huge and so incomprehensible. Grief is a dark, brooding mystery so anything to make it feel more manageable is welcome. Anything that can make us feel like we can alleviate that dreadful pain, makes us feel less helpless.

The truth is grief does bring us to our knees. Grief does makes us feel helpless. Grief does shatter the sense of general well being we have as we go about our daily lives. Indeed, grief even shatters our fundamental sense of self. Grief is something we can’t fix. And grief certainly doesn’t fit into any sort of neat little cubby.

Grief is also an experience that will touch us all. Sooner or later we will all go through it no matter how hard we try to avoid it. If we’re lucky we get some practice with lesser losses before we go through a big one, but no matter how it comes, it will find us.

Like love each experience of grief is unique. No two losses are exactly the same any more than two experiences of love are exactly the same. No two recoveries are the same. No time frames exist that can tell us exactly when we”ll be through the worst of it. No list of symptoms exists to tell us whether we’re grieving normally or not.

The truth is there are no objective criteria for understanding, evaluating and treating grief.

Do we treat love? Do we consider love a disordered experience? Just because one is generally considered pleasurable and the other not, does not make them terribly different. Grief like love is a matter of the heart and the heart knows how to heal from grief.

Grief is to be trusted not treated.

No amount of research is going to enlighten us. No amount of “treatment” is going to change the outcome. Grief is a mysterious process programmed into us for the purpose of healing.

Grief is a magnificent healer when we give it the time and space it needs to flow into all the nooks and crannies of our hearts when those hearts have been broken by profound loss.

Yes, definitely the realm of poets and mystics.

For more on trusting your grief, even through there worst of it, read the book, How to Survive Your Grief When Someone You Love Has Died

Like Love, Grief Belongs to Poets and Mystics is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Though The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss (George A. Bonanno, PhD) isn’t nearly as cynical and mean-spirited as The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss (Ruth Davis Konigsberg), both authors are tilting at windmills that simply don’t exist except within their own professional echo chambers.

One an academic researcher and the other a gotcha journalist, both doing battle with bereavement experts when in fact all they’re doing is shadow boxing with the propaganda being dished out within their own professions.

Had either of them spent any time interviewing grief support professionals with an open mind and a willingness to learn, they would have discovered that the vast majority of us have long ago left the stages of grief in the dust along with the idea everyone needs counseling.

It’s not that what these books say is so wrong. They are correct that there are no stages of grief (Lord alive, can we please put this one to rest, even EKR knew is wasn’t so), most people don’t need grief counseling and the vast majority of people are able to function in their daily lives relatively quickly following a death.

The real problem with these books is the conclusions they come to. Just because someone doesn’t go through the 5 stages, or doesn’t need grief counseling, or is functioning in their daily lives, does not mean that they aren’t grieving…and it certainly does not mean they don’t need support.

Despite Ms. Konigsberg’s assertion that those of us in the “grief counseling industry” are preying on the unsuspecting who would be doing just fine if we’d stop telling them how bad grief is, loss of a loved one and the grief that follows is one of the most difficult experiences any of us go through.

Going through it alone is even worse. Though counseling may not be necessary, people who are grieving do need support. They need the gift of compassionate hearts willing to listen and share the pain. If you’ve ever grieved you know this quality is in rather short supply.

In a culture that has largely abdicated its role in offering compassionate care to its fellow citizens, counseling professionals and volunteer group facilitators are the ones filling the gap.

As long as the friends and families of the bereaved continue to turn away in droves (and they do) and continue to say the most ridiculous and hurtful things (they do this too), people who are grieving are going to continue to turn to the people who understand and are willing to walk with them in their grief. Yes, just about anyone can do that but the sad truth is that they don’t.

By reinforcing the idea that grief is easy and short-lived, books like these do a huge disservice to the grieving by adding yet more myth to the general public’s understanding of grief.

In the end that means fewer people reaching out to be supportive, more pressure to “just get over it already”, and more of the bereaved seeking professional support because that’s the only place they can find what they need.

On the Subject of Grief, Academic Researcher and Journalist Are Just Tilting at Windmills is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Regrets In the Grieving Process is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

I am posting new videos every day or 2 (at least for now) so you might want to subscribe to Surviving Grief‘s YouTube channel

Stages of grief is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

The Depth of Grief and Healing is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Grief Takes Courage is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Still many don’t enbrace their grief and for any number of good reasons.

First, this is hard, hard stuff to deal with. Losing someone you love and who is an integral part of your life is devastating whether it’s a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend or a sibling. These losses are profound and life changing.

Because they’re so devastating and the path to healing is so full of unmarked trails, potholes and detours, it is virtually impossible to come out the other side of grief without some kind of support. Going it alone is just too hard for most of us. It can be formal or informal support, but support from someone else with the capacity to walk along side is vitally important.

But there’s more to it than just support. Here are the 5 key factors contributing to successfully healing grief.

1. Support
This can be friends who get it, support groups, clergy, counselors. Sometimes family is good support and sometimes not because other family members are likely grieving too and may be in a very different place than you are without any emotional reserves to support you.

2. Education
Grief is pretty much unlike anything else you’ve ever experienced. Even if you’ve experienced less significant losses before, unless they were explained well and you got good support, there’s every chance you learned the wrong lessons about grief.

Let’s face it, none of us like death. We don’t like to talk about it and we all struggle with finding the meaning in it. Every last one of us struggles with this and avoids it for as long as we possibly can. So the chances of just happening upon a good education about death and grief are pretty slim.

3. Trust
Trust in the grieving process is essential, and that is mighty hard to come by. So much of early grief just feels downright crazy and crazy-making that trusting it feels like a mighty foolish thing to do, but trust in it we must.

The wisdom of grief is miraculous but is usually only seen in hindsight. This is why understanding the nature of grief and support from others who have survived is so very important.

4. Courage
It takes courage to follow where your grief leads especially when it’s your first significant loss or you have no one around to reassure you that what you’re experiencing is normal.

5. Time
Healing grief takes time. The death of someone you love, cuts deep to the very core of your being. Recovering is like trying to put a puzzle back together when significant pieces are missing. There is no way this can happen quickly. Sometimes we have to make new pieces or stretch others to fit a new life, and that takes considerable time.

As important as it is to allow yourself time, time alone is rarely enough. But time when combined with support, education, trust and courage, makes healing from grief not only possible but probable.

P.S. How to Survive Your Grief was written to support and educate. If you are new to the grieving process, or not so new, I hope you will check it out.

The 5 Keys to Healing Grief is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

And what does this have to do with grief? Everything.

The truth denied, suppressed, repressed, resisted or unacknowledged, has more control over you than the truth made conscious. There is nowhere this is more apparent than in what we often view as ‘negative’ feelings…fear, anger, guilt, sadness…and GRIEF.

The attempt to move on from grief without really acknowledging it fully, is probably the #1 cause of prolonged, complicated and unresolved grief.

I know that’s the last thing many grieving people want to hear, but having witnessed innumerable attempts to do so, I’ve got to say it just doesn’t work. Sooner or later, the grief will get to you.

In my group at Omega, it was not uncommon for people to show up decades after a death because the grief finally caught up with them. There were many reasons for the delay…

On the other side of things, I have witnessed grievers with the courage to embrace their grief. They don’t have an easy time of it. Embracing one’s grief involves more than a bit of struggle, but what I’ve observed is the people who are willing, fare much better over time than the folks who don’t.

This is what I’ve witnessed in this group…

In the report on students taking tests, writing was the method used for acknowledging their fears, and writing is one of the more powerful ways to explore one’s grief.

Though I recommend writing about grief, it doesn’t have to be writing. It could be sharing with friends, going to a support group or talking with a counselor, coach or clergy. Having your grief witnessed and acknowledged by others is powerfully healing too.

The good news is it’s not an either/or. You can write about your grief and share it with others too.

What matters most is that you acknowledge it fully, and not try to put it away too soon.






Source: Writing About Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom

On the fear of tests & healing grief is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

This truly has the power to transform that dreaded first Christmas (or second, third etc) into a much more joyous, though bittersweet, celebration.

I dreaded the first Christmas after Bill died. So I asked each of my grown children to write down a memory of a non-monetary gift given them by their dad. After we finished dinner, we read our notes out loud as dessert.

Everyone participated and a few stood out:

Please read Christmas, Lost & Found

My thoughts and prayers are with all who are grieving this holiday season.

Transforming the Dreaded First Christmas is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Are you ready for the holidays?

How often have you heard this question in the past week? The implied reference is “have your bought all the presents for family and friends for Christmas? Have you done the shopping, baked the goodies and decorated the house? You may not even celebrate Christmas and you are faced with this question as a means of casual conversation!

Winter holidays are more than gifts. For most, whether the celebration is Hanukkah or Christmas, even Kwanzaa, the spiritual and cultural meanings are still foremost in the celebration and can be a great source of comfort and tradition. However, once you’ve faced a significant loss, the holidays change, and there is an added stress of recalling memories about your loved one who died. How were they part of the celebrations? What role did he or she take in the meaning and traditions? “Missing” is a big word this time of year.

Starting as early as October, each special day of note – from Halloween to New Year’s – carries unspoken traditions, memories, family activities and pangs of loss. It’s no wonder that by the middle of December the pressure can be immense.

Holidays and “the giving season” may have already been emotionally charged for you. Now add the commotion of gatherings, “good cheer” and seeing others enjoy their families may just underscore that you have a hole in your life. As one young woman, whose mother died a short time ago, remarked, “Sometimes I just want to be alone. I don’t want anyone near. Am I normal?” Yes! And wanting to not be alone can be normal too! By voicing her concern aloud and learning that others have felt this way too, she was reassured. Most importantly, she asked and shared her worries. The changes after loss can wax and wane, and sometimes seasons and holidays bring out new, unexpected memories.
Take One Step at a Time, and Whichever One You Need

Silence is not golden. Reflection on your loss, identifying your fears and pain, and giving voice to memories can help you. Grief comes out in a combination of physical, emotional and behavioral changes. So coping solutions can also be found in all these areas, too.

As busy as you may be taking care of everyone else, be sure to give yourself time and room for your grief. Sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of acknowledgment and a deep breath to take one step farther on the long road toward healing. The first year is the most changed, but no year is ever the same. The holidays, like every week and every month, now become part of your new normal.

Storybooks For Healing extends best wishes to you and your family this holiday season and into the new year.

____________________________________________________

About the Author

Storybooks For Healing (SFH) is a program of remembrance for overcoming loss using Grief Reflection. SFH is offered by bereavement organizations in an 8 week group writing and discussion course. After the program, participants are prepared to publish a beautiful tribute storybook of their loved one, and are encouraged to join the SFH online community to share, teach and provide support to others in their grief journey.

*Just so you know, if you buy from Storybooks for Healing I do make a commission

Grief Doesn’t Take a Holiday is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Rather than add to the noise, I’ve scoured the web to share some of the better articles and lists on dealing with grief during the holidays.

What none of them say is that the anticipation of the holiday is almost always worse than the reality. The day itself is a day that can be hard but not nearly as hard as the string of days and weeks leading it up to it.

Good counsel: Grieving during the holidays

Keep things as simple as possible. Limit activities to the ones which are the most meaningful and enjoyable for you and your family.

While keeping some (or all) of your holiday traditions is comforting, you may also want to create new traditions that bring meaning to your life as it is now.

Don’t get caught up in the shoulds. In grief, there are no shoulds. What you should do is what feels best for you — even if it means going away for the holidays.

from Democrat and Chronicle

For the grieving, Christmas is hard work

The purpose and meaning of life events have changed. A new meaning must be born where new practices begin.

We grieve not only the person who has died; we grieve the life we lived with our loved one. There are many fears and much pain as the season approaches.

Fear of preparations such as shopping, the holiday parties, the cooking, the Christmas music, sending out the greeting cards and seeing friends can all be disturbing for the grieving person. If you are the parent of a child who has died, it is difficult but wise to maintain some of the traditions for the siblings, for you and for the grandparents of the child.

from Ottawa Citizen

Plain Talk on Grief – Coping with the Holidays

Memorialize the loss of our loved one. This tangible acknowledgement of their life can be very comforting. There are many ways to do this:
-Donate time or money to a charity in their name.
- Look through photo albums and/or create a scrapbook.
-Plant a tree.
-Prepare their favorite food.
-Visit the cemetery.
-Hang a memorial ornament on your Christmas tree.
-Light a candle.
-Have a prayer service.
-Write a letter to our loved one.
-Gather together family & friends to share stories and memories of our loved one.

Grief: Coping with the holidays

My favorite holiday story is that of a woman who told me she decorated her Christmas tree with her mother’s costume jewelry. That tribute must have been a spectacular and dazzling sight.

Here’s a list of suggestions we offer in the bereavement center.

• Plan ahead.
• Do what you want, not what you feel you should do.
• Surround yourself with those who are supportive and understanding.
• Lower your expectations during the holiday season.
• Allow someone else to do the baking, cooking and decorating this year.
• If you go to an event, take your own car so that you can leave when you choose.
• Shop using catalogs or the Internet or don’t shop at all this year!

I have always encouraged folks to take their own car to events throughout the year so they can make an early departure. Now I add, park in the street so your car doesn’t get blocked in the driveway. There’s nothing like trying making a quick getaway when you have to ask 3 people to move their car!

Winter, Grief and the Dark Night of the Soul

The following are some suggestions for turning in to our pain and finding growth and spiritual union:

• Journal – This act of expression can be powerfully helpful in pushing out the swirling confusion of emotions so that they become workable.
• Engage in meaningful ritual – Light a candle in honor of your loved one, set an extra place at the holiday table, go to your loved one’s resting place, make a donation in your loved one’s name or any other activity that helps guide you toward peace.
• Take care of your health – This time of year, with the added burden of grief, can be extremely stressful, and it is important to attend to our physical health.  Make sure to drink lots of water and eat healthy food.
• Move your body – Take a walk in the fresh crisp air, do yoga or any other physical activity that engages your body and mind.
• Practice mindful walking – notice each step and connect to Mother Earth.  Notice your breath, breathing in peace and nourishment, breathing out stress and pain.  Feel that sense of peace and nourishment and letting go of stress and pain first for yourself, and then for all others (which is everyone!) who are experiencing pain and suffering.
• Give yourself a gift that your loved one wanted for you, whether a material gift or a gift of relaxation, such as a massage.
• Spend time in nature, with compassionate friends, and schedule “dates” with yourself, treating yourself kindly as a friend.

Dealing with grief, loss during holidays

Finally, give yourself permission to be happy. It’s OK to feel good. Feeling good and laughing is your body’s way of letting you relax and let go of stress. This is a normal, healthy reaction. If you enjoy yourself at times, you are not being disrespectful to the memory of your loved one.

Be well,



P.S. Need help during the holidays…and everyday? It’s not too late to order How to Survive Your Grief When Someone You Love Has Died

Dealing with Grief During the Holidays is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Of all her close survivors, I expect John Edwards will have the hardest time of all. Yes the kids are without a mother, and they are so very young. Having already grieved a sibling with seeming grace, Cate will probably be a support and role model for the younger ones, and that will help.

The real difference, however, is that the kids probably aren’t carrying around a bag full of guilt, remorse and self loathing. Yes, I’m projecting a bit here, but I don’t think John Edwards is without feeling or so self centered, despite his behavior, that he feels justified in the damage he caused his wife, himself, and their marriage.

Maybe she forgave him in the end. For his sake and hers, I hope so. That he was there says something, but even if she did forgive him, John Edwards is going to grieve, and grieve hard.

Why?

It’s always the loss of the most difficult relationships that create the hardest bereavements. Being a snake of a husband made for an impossible marriage and will make for an equally difficult bereavement.

From all reports, they had a deep, deep bond. I suspect his dependence on her and his terror about losing her, actually led to the affair. So you combine the love, the bond and the betrayal, and you have the set up for a very messy grieving process.

He’s not just grieving the actual loss of Elizabeth. He’s grieving the loss of a marriage he can no longer redeem. He’s grieving his own behavior, and I expect he is struggling to forgive himself.

When we’re grieving, everything about the relationship gets tangled up in the grief. Yes, we grieve for what we had and lost, but that’s only part of the story.

We also grieve for the relationship we wanted and never had. We grieve for the relationship we had but didn’t want. We grieve out of anger and guilt. We grieve over what we said or didn’t say. We seek self forgiveness that somehow eludes us, and we seek the even more elusive forgiveness of the person who has died.

You and I have no way of knowing what transpired between John and Elizabeth during those last few days and months. We can hope that both found some measure of peace and forgiveness, but we’ll never know for sure, nor should we. Some things are meant to be private.

A Grieving John Edwards? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

As comforting as a list of degrees and licenses may be, the honest truth is they don’t mean much, so here are the criteria I would use in selecting a grief support professional whether as a group facilitator or a grief counselor.

1. Have they experienced grief themselves? In most cases the answer will be “yes”, but a “no” is a red flag

2. How long ago was their loss? Anything more recent than 2 years is a huge red flag. See the post earlier this week Do You Need to Experience Grief to Help the Grieving?

3. Are they still actively grieving? I know that sounds like a very personal question and it is, but you have every right to know where they are in their own grieving process. Bottom line is they should not be working with you to get their own needs met.

4. How long have they been working with the bereaved? As with most counseling there’s a sweet spot, where they have plenty of experience but before they start getting bored. In my experience that is usually somewhere between 5 – 10 years.

If longer than that, have they had any breaks? I know for myself this work keeps spiraling around. Every break has enriched and renewed me, and with each break I experience a renewed call back to do the work.

5. What are their spiritual beliefs? Are they similar to yours? (Good) Are they selling their own? (Bad) Are they open to exploring a variety of possibilities? (The Best)

This is especially important if you’re experiencing any kind of spiritual crisis which is very common. You want someone who will give you the space to explore for yourself what you really believe.

6. How comfortable are they sitting with someone else’s pain? You may not be able to assess this until you spend some time with them but if they keep redirecting you away from your pain, it’s time to move on.

7. Do they meditate? This may not sound like an important criteria, but here’s why I like to use it. Meditation is one of the most effective ways of learning to be present without judgments and agendas, and that makes for really excellent grief support.

8. How do they feel about medication? Medication, whether for depression, anxiety or sleep, should be a last resort. If someone immediately starts talking meds, find someone else. There are plenty of counselors out there who are discriminating in their use of prescription medications so don’t settle for anything less. (Note: this does not mean you shouldn’t use meds if they really are necessary)

9. Do you like and trust them? This is an intuitive criteria but that doesn’t make it any less important. No amount of counseling is going to help if you’re not telling the truth about what’s going on with you. In order to do that you need to feel safe. If you don’t like and trust them, you won’t feel safe enough to open up.

10. What kind of training and experience have they had? Education is good but experience is better and well supervised experience is even better. You want to know if that experience is specifically with grief or do they just have a mental health degree they think qualifies them (in and of itself it does not).

Many group facilitators are volunteers which is fine as long as they have been well trained and continue to be supervised. Find out.

11. How well do they listen? Assessing this may be hard during a phone call or even an initial meeting, but pay attention to whether you feel listened to or not?

12. In group settings, how well do they maintain the safety of the group? Do they let some people monopolize the conversation or are they able to set limits? Are they able to keep everyone on topic or does the conversation deteriorate into unrelated areas?

It may take more than one try to find the right grief support for you. What works for one person may not work for another so give yourself permission to look around.

If you don’t know where to start, you can usually get referrals from your clergy, local hospice or funeral home.

How to Find a Grief Support Group or Grief Counselor? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

I believe that in order to work effectively with people who are grieving, you do need to have experienced grief…but you also need to have completed the grieving process.

When I went back to graduate school 3 months after my mom died, I wasn’t allowed to work for hospice or do any other grief work for 2 years. At the time I was outraged because I was all fired up about helping others through what I was still going through…wrong.

Now I am so grateful for their restraint because by insisting on those 2 years, they insured I had the time to heal from the most profound loss of my life without imposing my experience on anyone else.

Instead, by the time I began facilitating bereavement groups, my own healing was complete which allowed me to be a compassionate presence, comfortable sitting with their pain without it triggering my own.

My own experience may have ignited my passion but that’s not what taught me about grief. It was sitting around that table in Somerville Massachusetts with the folks who came to every meeting from the beginning to the end of their grief, that I learned the many faces of grief and what it really takes to heal.

Those folks inspire me to this day. Their stories and those of the hundreds of hospice families that followed, are reflected in the pages of How to Survive Your Grief. They are the real experts and I thank them so much for allowing me to walk with them for that part of their journey.

Do You Need to Experience Grief to Help the Grieving? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Why?

Just because you’ve experienced grief does not make you an expert on grief. It only makes you an expert on YOUR grief.

So why are so many people out there peddling products and services to help the grieving with no other credential than their own grief, and unhealed grief at that?

Though sharing the stories is an essential part of the grieving process, the purpose of telling those stories is for personal healing not for the enlightenment or healing of others.

Can those stories sometimes help others? Certainly. This is what happens in support groups all the time. The stories of unhealed grief are mutually shared among group members. It’s powerful stuff and the common threads emerge out of the awareness and respect that each person’s grief is unique.

Therein lies the difference. Stories shared mutually and reciprocally, heal. Personal stories presented as “the answer”, generally don’t.

So where does How to Survive Your Grief fit in? First it can never, ever replace a support group. I recommend support groups all the time, and consider them the single best thing anyone who is grieving can do for themselves.

The book is for people who can’t or won’t attend a support group, and as a supplement for people who do, but How to Survive Your Grief is definitely not about my personal losses because my losses aren’t relevant to your healing.

The stories I share in the book are the stories of the hundreds and hundreds of people I’ve worked with over the years. In aggregate, they tell a story of grief useful to all who are new, and maybe not so new, to grief.

I hate grief memoirs! is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Even years following a death the holidays can be a time when grief reemerges, but they can also be a time for sharing our memories of all the people who are no longer physically present to us.

My family Thanksgiving included recipes handed down through the generations of cooks in my family…my mom’s pumpkin chiffon pie, my aunt’s bacon and watermelon rind, another aunt’s creamed onions, my mother’s turkey stuffing, and a family friend’s cheese wafers.

As we made each one, we shared our memories of the food and the person who taught us how to make it. It was such a wonderful way of sharing those memories with each other and sharing with my niece and nephew who never actually knew most of them.

The same will be true with Christmas memories…everything from how long it took to gain consensus on which tree, to the family argument that always erupted as my father put up the tree and got the big bulb stings of lights on safely, to the plate of intricately decorated ginger cookies delivered by a neighbor.

We’ll remember how totally overboard we all went the first Christmas without my mom and how she always stayed up until 4 am trying to finish something she was making and how often those gifts were received all pinned together.

Even the memory of the puppy who spent Christmas Eve in a neighbor’s garage and ate my father’s beautiful new leather wallet will be passed on to the kids who always get a good laugh out of it.

You have those kind of memories too. Remembering the people we have physically lost and sharing those stories with those who do remember and those who don’t, is healing. It’s part of the grieving process and continues far into the future.

Knowing the power of memories and stories, I was delighted when I discovered ‘Storybooks for Healing’, a program for collecting, writing and sharing your memories via a digital storybook tool. (For an additional fee you can also print your storybook as a keepsake).

This program has been done many times through hospice, churches and funeral homes. Now Joan Hitchens is offering an e-book so you can do the program on your own.

If it’s been 6 months or more since your loss (most can’t do something like this right away), I’d encourage you to check it out. The e-book is only $9.95.

Start to Finish Writing Guide to Discover, Publish and Share Your Loved One’s Life Story

P.S. I rarely sell other people’s products because it’s not often that I find one I’m willing to put my name behind. I feel totally comfortable recommending this one, and just so your know, I will make a small commission should you decide to buy.

What are your family memories? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

To bring awareness to this often invisible group and to let them know we are aware and want to support them.

Find out more about Children’s Grief Awareness Day and while you’re there LIKE them.

Children’s Grief Awareness Day – Thursday November 18 is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Grief wasn’t studied much before Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed the 5 stages of grief in the 1960′s, and from a cultural perspective our understanding hasn’t grown far beyond that early research. Though ongoing research has continued to deepen our knowledge, what we’ve learned hasn’t had much impact on our cultural attitudes and behaviors around grief and grieving.

While all of the research and anecdotal evidence suggests people with strong support systems tend to do better than people who don’t, I continue to hear the same complaint from people who are grieving that I’ve been hearing for over 20 years.

It boils down to some version of “the people around me don’t understand what I’m going through and they think I should just get over it.”

Why is that?

Is it simply our profound existential fear of death?

Is it that in our busy lives we forget to be there?

Is it that we don’t know what to say so we practice avoidance?

Is it a general a lack of understanding about the grieving process?

Is it our growing cultural assumption that we’re never supposed to suffer? And if we do, there must be a pill to make us happy again?

Is it because we assume this is a realm where only mental health professionals or clergy dare to tread?

In a world where we are confronted with regular doses of gruesomeness, are we all losing our respect for death and for those who are grieving?

Maybe it’s all of the above. Clearly I don’t have a definitive answer as to why we’re not doing better as a society in honoring people who are grieving, but we need to keep asking the question…how can we better support them?

Thoughts? I’d love to hear them below.

P.S. If you’re struggling with how to offer support to someone who is grieving, 5 Ways to Help When Someone You Know is Grieving is a good starting point.

So where’s the cultural support for grief? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

So back to the original question about pet funeral homes…

Although there are similarities in different kinds of losses, I still feel uncomfortable, queasy actually, with formalized death rituals for pets though I have created informal ones for all of mine and most of them have been buried in the backyard with tears and a prayer.

Here are some of the questions the whole idea raises for me…

• Are pet funeral homes meeting a real need or are they trying to create a need that isn’t really there? Are they helping or are they just taking advantage of people?

• Pet loss is a hot topic on the internet. Is that because it’s a disenfranchised loss that needs attention? Or is the grief over a pet displaced grief from other losses?

• Culturally, pets do seem to be taking up more of our emotional energy than they ever have before. Is this healthy? What is it about our personal relationships that is elevating the relationship with our pets in this way? Or is there even a connection?

• Would we be better off if our human funeral rituals were less formal and more personalized? Though many of our rituals are very helpful, could they be more helpful if we did them differently? Or maybe it’s that I’d really prefer to grieve my family as I do my pets…privately, naturally and at home.

Maybe pet funeral homes feel creepy to me because I’ve considered things I ultimately rejected because they just didn’t feel right. Pet cemeteries, crematoriums and even taxidermy just felt wrong, so very wrong for me and my pets.

Besides, had I gone the formal route, I never would have seen Jesse (Golden Retriever) lay down her beloved Kong as a gift to the recently deceased Toni Cat.

Thots? Feel free to share below.

Are funeral homes for pets over the top? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Our relationship with our pets is generally much less complicated than our relationships with our human family members. Though this may see counterintuitive at first, the more difficult the relationship with the person who died, the harder the bereavement.

When someone dies we grieve the actual death but we also grieve anything that wasn’t the way we would have liked in the relationship. We grieve when we didn’t say something we really wanted to say. Our grief becomes more difficult when our last words were said in anger. We grieve for all the things we hoped for in a relationship that we never got, and we grieve for all the things we got that we didn’t particularly want. From the minor spat to full blown abuse, these things factor in to make grief more difficult. All of that on top of the actual death.

With pets it’s usually easier because they don’t disappoint in the same way. They aren’t absent parents. They aren’t spouses who work too much. They don’t think we’re bad parents even when we are. Usually they’re just there for us without a lot of complications, and that lack of complication makes grief easier.

I don’t know that many human relationship that free of complication. Do you?

Is the Grief Over a Pet Easier? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Now before I start hearing from the animal lovers out there, I am too. I am absolutely crazy in love with all of my pets. The companionship of my Golden Retriever, Heidi, is more consistent and reliable than many of the people in my life.

She’s turning 10 in a few months, suffers from arthritis and has already had a bout with cancer. I will be devastated when she dies, but I knew that when I got her as a puppy. I made that choice. I’ve already grieved the loss of 9 other cats and dogs in my lifetime so I am no stranger to losing a pet. It comes with the territory.

Does the loss of a pet need to be grieved? Of course it does, and for each individual it will be different just as each human loss is different. Allowing the grief to lead you in the direction of healing is still the way to go whether the loss is animal or human.

Even though it’s all grief and there may be many similarities, I believe it’s disrespectful to equate the death of any pet no matter how beloved, to the death of a human being.

So this is the first, and the next few posts will probably be the last time, I will talk about the death of a pet. I’m doing it now because it came up elsewhere and maybe we can learn a thing or two by looking at some of the similarities and differences.

Just for the record, I also don’t talk here about the grief of divorce, infertility, and miscarriages…all of which can be devastatingly painful. Neither do I talk about the grief of addicts giving up their drug of choice. Nor do I talk about the grief of growing old. The list is endless.

Is there grief involved in all of those situations? Absolutely! Is it the same kind of grief? Usually not, and even it was, it doesn’t feel that way to a person grieving the death of someone they love. Death makes it different. Long term relationship makes it different. That it’s a human to human loss, makes it different.

For me that means respecting the difference, and talking about these different kinds of losses in different forums.

I’d love to hear what you think. Feel free to comment below.

Grief is grief…or is it? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

When someone we love dies and we’re facing an abysmal future without them, the meaning can be almost impossible to find.

Though there are many factors making sudden, unexpected and violent deaths more difficult for those left behind, one of the big ones is the meaninglessness of it all. No matter how hard we try, these deaths make no sense. In trying to make sense out of them the grieving process generally becomes more complicated and prolonged.

Sometimes it is up to us to make meaning out of catastrophe. These two 9/11 widows are stellar examples of making meaning out of the senseless acts of violence that so profoundly touched their lives.

Making meaning out of an untimely death by serving others is not for everyone. There are no shoulds here, but there are countless examples of others surviving their grief by taking action in service to others.

The founders of MADD (Mother’s Against Drunk Driving) are one example. Jack Walsh of America’s Most Wanted is another that comes to mind.

Though these are enormous causes, it doesn’t have to be a huge thing or even a formal one. My father who always left such things to my mom, stepped up by reaching out to others who were grieving. After her death, he made a point of calling and writing anyone he knew who was grieving. It was healing for him as well as for them.

There are many ways to serve, and there are many ways to make meaning where none exists. This is the story of 2 women who turned a personal and national tragedy into something meaningful by dedicating themselves to making a difference.

The Healers of 9/11

In the shattering aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Ms. Retik bonded with another woman, Patti Quigley, whose husband had also died in the attack. They lived near each other, and both were pregnant with babies who would never see their fathers.

Devastated themselves, they realized that there were more than half a million widows in Afghanistan — and then, with war, there would be even more. Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley also saw that Afghan widows could be a stabilizing force in that country.

So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.

___________________________________
A Footnote

This story has a personal connection for me. Though I never knew her personally, one of these widows lived in my neighborhood. I remember walking by her house every day wondering how she was doing, and how she was ever going to recover from such devastation. She never knew I was saying a prayer for her and her children every time I passed. Now I know how she survived and I’m in awe.

Finding the Meaning in the Tragic Loss of a Loved One is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

That report of higher than expected acceptance, gave me pause. As I thought about it though, I realized that acceptance of a death and a death becoming real aren’t exactly the same thing.

I would agree that most people accept a death has occurred, and that most will tell you they accept that it’s occurred.

That’s different from the unconscious forgetfulness that’s such a characteristic of the first few months of grief. When I talk about a death becoming real, I am talking about the experience all grieving people report, almost without exception, of picking up the phone to call the person or coming home expecting them to be there. Throughout the first few months there are these split second experiences of forgetfulness followed rapidly by reality hitting yet again.

It’s not a full blown denial that a death has occurred that might be called lack of acceptance, but there is clearly a period of time that’s needed for the psyche to catch up with reality.

So I think both are true…levels of acceptance are high following a death (especially for anticipated deaths which is what was studied here) AND it takes a few months for the full reality and the implications of that reality to hit home completely.

Acceptance vs Reality in the Grieving Process is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

I find this study affirming of what I’ve observed in people who are grieving, and though I don’t hear people use the word yearning, and I don’t myself, it fits what I have heard described repeatedly in grief support groups. It’s that constant nagging desire for one last word, one last touch, or one last sight of the person who has died. Yeah, “yearning” describes it well.

It’s also interesting that all negatively identified responses peaked between 4-6 months which is when most, but not all, people report having the hardest time following a death.

My observation has been that somewhere between 3-6 months the full reality of the death hits, and with it the full impact of the loss. I think the full reality hitting is different than acceptance which was reported as being very high soon after a death has occurred.

CBC News Account

Abstract of the study

Stages of Grief? Yearning the #1 Response to Grief, Not Denial is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Seems that in a study of the prescribing habits of physicians there was an unexpected finding. Physicians are prescribing large amounts of addictive drugs like Xanax (an anti-anxiety medication) for bereavement.

If you’ve read How to Survive Your Grief, you know I’m not totally adverse to the occasional and very short term use of medications, but I am adamantly opposed to dosing up on medication to avoid feeling the grief.

Here’s why. Medication gets in the way of grief recovery. Grief is what heals us following a loss. If we avoid the grief, we can’t heal and we prolong the pain. The fastest and most complete way through grief is to experience it as fully and completely as we can. That’s not to say you don’t need a break from time to time, but large amounts of addictive drugs or alcohol just don’t help.

The most effective thing anyone can do following the death of someone they love is to join a support group. It’s even better than buying the book though I recommend that too.

To read the whole article, go to:
For Some Bereaved, Pain Pills Without End

Take good care,

Does Medicating Grief Get in the Way of Grief Recovery? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief

Sometimes we just need to fall apart and it doesn’t need to be “treated”. Throughout the grieving process what most need more than anything else, is to have their grief witnessed and acknowledged.

I recently rediscovered this article that tells the story of one woman’s loss and how it got “treated”.

Read Falling Apart

Though I acknowledge in the book that short term use of medication can be helpful in certain situations, this article makes the case for why it is not a long term solution.

Be well,

Death and Grieving – Is it Okay to Fall Apart? is a post from: How to Survive Your Grief