| Grief tips for those hurting by Reverend Mary Bredlan |
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| Experience your feelings... as fully and as often as you need, rather than stuffing them inside. | Express your loss... with a listening "sponge" who will just listen without giving advice. | Realize this death... may bring back other wounds which are unresolved. |
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| Nourish yourself... with people and creative outlets that are "energy givers", not "energy suckers." | Accept your own healing process... your grieving, your timing, as uniquely yours. | Ponder the "Big Why" questions... as you try to understand the unknown and discover some things are forever unknowable. |
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| Use this painful time to search... for what has meaning in life for you. | Try your very best to ask yourself... "Now that this has really happened what shall I do?" | Be kind and gentle with yourself... seek out support groups, clergy, or counselors, whenever you feel "stuck." |
| Q. How can I get to the place where joy and loss live together? How can I get past this pain? A. First, we don't get past the pain. We must go through it. We can't go around it, over it, or under it either. The path to healing through loss, which means the path to wholeness, requires that we incorporate our pain. To incorporate means to literally take the pain into our body (corps). We get to that place where joy and grief can live together by becoming whole. The process of healing, whether from a physical illness or from a catastrophic life disturbance is a transformational journey. We are changed in the process. The goal is not to be the "way we were" once again, the goal is to be more than we were before, to include more of life. Ultimately the goal is to include loss in our love and trust of life. |
| Q & A by Deborah Morris Coryell, author of "Good Grief Healing Through the Shadow of Loss" Good Grief.org |