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Part 6: Living and Grieving Together by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. In the early days after the death of someone you love dearly, it’s normal for this step to seem like a ridiculous impossibility. You feel so raw and torn apart, you can’t imagine surviving, let alone returning to any semblance of “normal life.” But […]
By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. We as a nation will never be “done” mourning the loss of 2,977 lives lost during the attack on September 11, 2001. On that Tuesday morning at the World Trade Center in New York, more than 2,700 people died, among them over two thousand people working at the Twin Towers, […]
Part 5: Embracing Your Spirituality Helps You Survive by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. In early grief, existential questions tend to naturally arise. Why did the person have to die? Why now? Why in this way? Why does anyone live and die? Why are we here? I often say “why” questions naturally precede “how” questions. […]
Part 4: Telling Your Stories Helps You Survive by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. Telling your stories of love and loss helps you survive. The more you allow yourself to tell your stories, the more you will be helping yourself embark on a healthy path to integrating loss into your life. Going Backward Before Forward Since […]
Part 3: Acknowledging the Illusion of Control by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. Death naturally throws thoughts, feelings, and behaviors into disarray. Nothing may feel “normal” right now. Your routines and schedules might be chaotic. You may often find yourself surprised at things you think, say, or do. Small things that you used to take in […]
Part 2: It’s Important for You to Feel Safe and Comforted by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. Have you felt stressed, anxious, fearful, agitated, panicked, worried, or uneasy since the death? I’m not sure grief is possible without these feelings. As author C.S. Lewis wrote after his 45-year-old wife died of cancer, “No one ever told me […]
Part 1: Intense Grief Is Normal and Often Necessary by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D. I have been a grief counselor and educator for more than forty years, and that is the most common way in which people describe their early grief to me. They say: “I feel like I’m going crazy.” “I feel like I’m […]
Lisa and I created Aftertalk around one fundamental belief; that writing to a deceased loved one can help you cope with grief. Our belief in this is rooted in personal experience; Lisa came to it after the death of her father; I discovered therapeutic writing to a deceased loved one quite by accident when my wife of […]
When I attended your training, I think you mentioned that the true “expert” is the mourner. Can you expand on this? Your memory is correct – I have always maintained that the true expert in grief is the mourner. I do believe there is a real difference between studying a mysterious body of knowledge surrounding […]
…Going Backward Before We Go Forward It was Soren Kierkegaard that wisely noted, “Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards.” As the 25th anniversary of the death of my father approaches this next month, I have found myself instinctively going backward. Backward to the days just prior to his […]
