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What Martin Luther King’s Daughter Has to Say About Grief by Lynda Cheldelin Fell She was just 5-years-old when her famous daddy, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Thanks in part to the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the young Bernice King on her mother’s lap, most are familiar with that story. Yet a recent New York Times article about […]
Continue ReadingA Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon – Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks The murder of Emmett Till in 1955, and the subsequent acquittal of his murderers and public viewings of Till’s mutilated body, stirred the American consciousness and provoked outrage across the country. In 1960, Gwendolyn Brooks published her own […]
Continue Reading[Editor’s Note: in honor of Black History Month, AfterTalk will be devoting this month’s AfterTalk Weeklies to grieving in the African-American community] A Grief Observed From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the power and pain of black mourning. BY MYCHAL DENZEL SMITH June 22, 2017 Mamie Till-Mobley wrote her memoir, Death of Innocence: The Story of the […]
Continue ReadingEditor’s Note: Louise has written several pieces over the years describing her journey through grief. You can find all the earlier ones at this link: https://blog.aftertalk.com/?s=Louise+McOrmond-Plummer by Louise McOrmond- Plummer ( AKA Mrs Kenneth D. Plummer) When my beloved husband Ken, died in 2016, the thought of planning a future that wouldn’t include Ken knocked […]
Continue ReadingEditor’s Note: “Tonight I can write the saddest lines,” although technically not necessarily about death [a point many academics might dispute], this is a powerful poem about grieving for a loved one written by one of the world’s great poets, Pablo Neruda. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,’The night is […]
Continue ReadingEditors Note: As we pass the first “anniversary” of the January 6th riot, we want to again recognize the murder of officer Brian D. Sicknick. Here’s what we said last year and an update: “We have three pandemics sweeping the world: COVID-19, Climate Change, and Hatred. Last week [YEAR] the third of those took the […]
Continue ReadingThere are several suggested New Year’s resolutions for the grieving. This one is from Hospice of the Red River Valley: I resolve to not place time limits on my grief; it will take as long as it takes. I resolve to acknowledge my grief as my own—that it is as individual as I am—and will take shape […]
Continue ReadingEditor’s note: this post was authored by Bradley University’s Online Counseling Department. It is not only content rich, but the many links are amazingly useful and reliable. When a traumatic event occurs, the first emotions we tend to experience are shock and horror. Reality itself may seem to be suspended temporarily, but once we realize […]
Continue ReadingEditor’s note: as we may stumble into another lockdown due to Omicron variant, we thought this Katlyn Eriksen piece would be especially useful. The one thing we would add is that you can couple listening an/or singing with dancing, another form of release helpful to the grieving. Music can help us process feelings of loss […]
Continue Readingby Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. I’ve become a fan of sunrises. Before COVID-19 changed all of our lives, my busy travel and teaching schedule had me hopping. Most mornings after I woke up, I went straight to work. I had a love-hate relationship with the adrenaline of stress. I was a slave to emails, itineraries, […]
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