Griever, Know Thyself

Self-awareness. As adults, there’s no getting around it. You can try, of course, and many of us die trying. So it may be tempting to move speedily through this holiday season without pausing to consider the ins and outs of your intimate relationship with grief. There’s no crime in that if it works for you.Continue reading “Griever, Know Thyself”

Defining Grief on Your Own Terms

Before you know how to heal your grief, you have to get to know the grief that is yours to heal. Put simply, grief is the spontaneous suffering you experience when you are subject to a real or imagined loss of someone or something you greatly value or cherish. But what makes grief so difficultContinue reading “Defining Grief on Your Own Terms”

Knowing Nothing of Grief But Your Own

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is my hero. But her five stages of grief are not. Kubler-Ross was a pioneer in the death and dying movement – bringing understanding, compassion and a sense of community to the dying and their families. She also gave us a simple explanation of the grieving process we could understand and remember. TheContinue reading “Knowing Nothing of Grief But Your Own”

Living With Your Grief

Physical death is often regarded as the ultimate grief-striking loss – the common denominator of our species. But death is hardly the most common loss we humans endure. Some of us make it all the way to middle age without experiencing the death of an intimate or seriously contemplating the inevitability of our own physicalContinue reading “Living With Your Grief”

Blessing the Infant Within You

An Audio Contemplation from Doing Grief in Real Life It’s been said that infants commune with angels, that babies and toddlers are protected by spiritual powers from beyond. This seems only right when one considers the vulnerability of the newborn. Angel theories aside, as an infant, your fate rests mostly in the arms of yourContinue reading “Blessing the Infant Within You”

New Way of “Doing Grief” Is a Life-Changer

When readers tell me that my new book, Doing Grief in Real Life, changed their life, I believe them. The book was written during a decade-long period of loss and grief unlike any my family had known. The pain was so thick some days, we wondered if joy or lightheartedness would ever come again. MyContinue reading “New Way of “Doing Grief” Is a Life-Changer”