Grief and Thanksgiving: Finding gratitude
How grateful are you this Thanksgiving season? For those with a recent, or even a long-ago loss, gratitude may not be the first thing that comes to mind. I often hear that Thanksgiving Day is everyone’s favorite: no gifts to worry about, no commercial hubbub, good comfort food, no 24-hour carols. Just a quiet, low-expectation day with people you love or at least like, if they are close enough by. If they are not, then we make do with a phone call or Skype visit. But what do w
The case against helplessness in grieving: Handle your grief instead of it handling you
If you listen to conventional wisdom about grieving – don’t make any decisions in the first year, march through a series of painful stages before you can be trusted, grieve like everybody else or you’re doing it wrong, hurry it up – you’ll conclude that you are helpless until grief is done with you. Of all the myths about grieving, this is the most damaging, as it robs you of the chance to make something unique and powerful of your grieving. That’s the single greatest myth ab
One-Action-a-Day Grieving: Building strength as you grieve
We can probably agree that grieving is a bewildering process. Instead of getting up in the morning and jumping into your old routine, on some days it can be tough to come up with a reason to get out of bed at all. And where would the energy, and the focus, come from to power you through the day, anyway? Meanwhile, well-meaning people caution you not to make any big decisions while you are grieving, lest you make a mistake you’ll regret. The message, from inside as well at out
