My Mother’s Grief
At the age of 48, after 28 years of being a high school teacher, a mother and a wife, my mother was alone. She jumped into redecorating our house and a new personality showed itself — an appreciation for French Impressionist painters, a curiosity about Native American art, a love for a shot of fine […]
WHEN FAMILY TIES ARE BROKEN
Each person in a family may feel shattered when a loved one dies, but death can also shatter a family. People grieve very differently. Some may be highly emotional. Others may have physical complaints or be unable to sleep. Still others may “get busy and stay busy.” These individual differences can make it challenging for […]
Ongoing Study of Grief
Why should we turn an eye to grief as a formal study? Grief is the most universal human experience, and we live with it every day in many forms. You’ll often hear that we’re a death-denying society. By extrapolation, we’re also a society that refuses to or doesn’t remember how to grieve. The two go […]
Embracing the Broken Heart
Understanding the Grief of Being Human. Life is a process of letting in and letting go, and grief is the roadmap. We all stumble through significant losses throughout our lives, so we need to ask three questions: What will help me when I feel lost and crazy? How do I develop skills to navigate hopelessness, […]
The Power of Ritual
Throughout history, grief and death rituals have been critical in sustaining individuals and societies during tragedies. Ritual reaches ‘below the threshold of the mind’ to bring our minds, spirits and bodies into wholeness when loss and fear have fractured all we believe in and hold dear. Working together, we learn how much power we do […]
Grief in the Workplace Management Training
Employers have come to realize that in order to support and retain employees and to maintain attractive and productive work environments, it is important to appropriately address issues of grief in the workplace. Workplace grief is a naturally complicated issue, as it involves personal responses in a professional environment. Employers have come to realize that […]