Grief Digest Articles

Everyone’s grief journey is different… and the ability to emerge with your soul intact is dependent upon your willingness to do the excruciatingly difficult work that grieving requires. It is a long and lonely process, and no-one can accept the reality of YOUR loss for YOU… it is something that you must do for yourself. One of the things I’ve learned on my journey is that love is a force so powerful that it transcends death.Andy and I met at the end of my freshman year in college. I was immediat …

The new normal. Or so they say. After six months I still don't know what's "new" or "normal" about this life.The word "new" implies excitement. If something is new, you want it, you run towards it, you smile as you reach out to receive it. Put the word "new" in front of anything -- car, puppy, house -- and who would turn it down? We embrace the "new". We love the "new".“Normal” is the stuff that never changes. It's the thing we hardly notice every day, but we expect it to be there. Normal repres …

Dear Casey and Rebecca,Thirteen years have passed since your dad’s death, a lifetime for the two of you since you weren’t even three years old when he died of brain cancer. You were far too young at the time to understand the complexities of death and grief.Among all the questions you asked—and there were so many—this was the one that stopped me cold. “Did we ever meet Daddy?”I couldn't have expressed the giant void you felt in clearer language.Of course you don’t remember Daddy. None of it made …

I am planting a garden in anticipationof spring; roses will bloom, and thepeaches will arrive by summer, andhow do you lose a child?Envious of mama mockingbirds teachingtheir babies to fly, I wonder if their empty nestswill bring grief to their hearts, andhow do you lose a child?I hold a tantalizing book, hungryfor the next page, wondering howit will end, knowing it will, andhow do you lose a child?Tomorrow is always on the horizon;it will come as assuredly as dreadedanniversaries, no lilies, pl …

I think it’s safe to say that our society does not prepare us for the death of a loved one, either in how to experience it when it is happening or in how to grieve afterwards. We are taught to shelter the living from death as if it is an unfortunate reality, better ignored than embraced. Grieving individuals, and those that support them, often struggle for a vocabulary to talk about the loss and the resulting feelings. Instead we have a vernacular ripe with cliché that leaves mourners wanting an …