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 [...]
Here’s another in the video series on surviving grief. This one’s on the stages of grief. More accurately it’s about how Elisabeth Kübler-Ross got it so horribly wrong, and why we need to stop perpetuating this myth of the 5 stages of grief. I am posting new videos every day or 2 (at least for [...]
The first in a video series on grief…
In the last post I wrote about acknowledging and even embracing your grief. I can feel people recoiling as I write that. The biggest argument I hear is “If I give into it, it may never stop.” It can certainly feel that way and yet, the exact opposite is true…when you give into it, the [...]
Recent research shows that in acknowledging fears prior to taking an exam, students improved their test scores. Huh? As one local newscaster said, “Most of us think ignoring our fears is the right thing to do.” And what does this have to do with grief? Everything. The truth denied, suppressed, repressed, resisted or unacknowledged, has [...]
With the passing of Elizabeth Edwards last week, a part of me has little sympathy for John Edwards. After all he cheated on her when she needed him most. They were on the verge of divorce. He fathered a child with another woman. Hard to have sympathy for that, and yet… Of all her close [...]
Grief support groups are without a doubt the single most effective healing mechanism available to people who are grieving, but how do you evaluate the people running a group? I suspect that many people don’t seek out grief support, because they have no idea how to evaluate the expertise of the facilitators. As comforting as [...]
Depending on where you are in the grieving process, Thanksgiving may have been anything from wonderful to endurable to downright terrible. 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 [...]
As I was walking on the beach the other day, I got to thinking. It seems so odd that as more and more research emerges about grief, cultural support for people who are grieving seems to be at an all time low. Grief wasn’t studied much before Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed the 5 stages of grief [...]
