OK, I am cheating. I am pre-scheduling this post to run a couple days after my surgery to talk about anticipatory grief. What is that? It is the grief that you fear is coming and that you can’t stop from happening. It is the fear that grips me now, in not knowing the outcome [...]
Over the years, Nancy and I have become aware that being stuck in grief is a problem for most of the people coming to us for grief support work. When a griever comes to us, they are acknowledging that there is a blockage. This blockage prevents them from the healing part of the journey [...]
One of the fears that most people have as they age is the loss of health. I know this because as it has become a real life situation that I happen to be facing. I am facing surgery in a couple of weeks and the fear and surrounding grief associated with this loss is [...]
Some friendships are meant to last a lifetime while some blossom beautifully and fade. There is grief associated with each of these types of friendships. What does it mean to be a friend? How can you tell a long term from a short term friendship. I hope that everyone has a friendship or two [...]
What’s a Death Cafe? Another format for having those heart to heart conversations that are difficult to start can occur in the most unlikely places. There is another organization that we are affiliated with that has a funny name but does a great community service. Death Cafe seems like an unlikely name for almost [...]
One of our early attempts at providing grief support out to the community was to use MeetUp. MeetUp is an online community that intends to gather like minded people together for a common activity. In our case, to create a community gathering where it would be ok to talk about grief. MeetUp seemed like [...]
I know that "Patience" is difficult for me. While I try to make the best of things, sometimes it is just not easy. As I count down the days to a surgical procedure, my mind wanders to all the “what if’s” and begins to spin into chaos. Thankfully, I have some tools to use [...]
Here is a little known fact about me. I was adopted as an infant. My adoptive parents raised three of us in a wonderful loving home. I wish that I had been able to share with my parents, Dolores and Vincent, the profound sense of gratitude that I feel for the life that they [...]
As a young man, I was raised in a Catholic household. I attended Mass and was even an altar boy during my grade school days. Aside from my great grandmother’s wake, the funerals that I served as an altar boy was my primary exposure to how people grieved. Somewhere around the 5th grade, maybe 10 [...]
Looking back on my 66 years on the planet and being involved with the work that we do, has given me time to reflect on the memories of the grief that I have experienced. I often use the example of my little league story. As a youngster, I finally got a base hit only [...]
