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[Editor’s Note: I was going to write the perfect post for Valentine’s day when my colleague Lisa alerted me to this post from the remarkable website WhatsYourGrief.com entitled “Dear Love: Healing through Writing Letters.” It could not be said any better. Thank you Eleanor for giving us permission to reprint it here.] Dear Love: Healing Through […]
Continue ReadingGrief is like a ball of string, you start at one end and wind. Then the ball slips through your fingers and rolls across the floor. Some of your work is undone but not all. You pick it up and start over again, but you never have to begin again at the end of the […]
Continue ReadingI would like to tell you about the Melodies From The Heart foundation, how it came about and what we do.The foundation creates music and documentaries on grief and loss, especially the loss of a child. On one hand to give comfort, on the other hand to help break the enormous taboo on such a […]
Continue ReadingTo reiterate an exhausted and lackluster explanation, 5 years ago (January 29th), my dad died. The anniversary slumbers in the back of my consciousness, ready at any moment to sabotage a perfectly normal conversation. “Hey Caitlin, what movie should I watch?” “Kill Bill” “How’d you decide so quickly?” “It was the last movie I watched […]
Continue ReadingAmerica has be riveted by the podcast called “Serial,” a spinoff of the popular NPR series “This American Life.” Serial’s Season 1 is an investigation into the 1999 Murder of Hae Min Lee, an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She was last seen about 3 p.m. on January 13, 1999. Her corpse was discovered […]
Continue ReadingI was going to call this “Grief is a Snowflake” until I discover there is an excellent book for grieving children called “Grief is Like a Snowflake” by Julia Cook and Anita DuFalla. I am convinced that grieving for a loved one is as unique as a snowflake. Two recent experiences I had reinforce this. […]
Continue ReadingThis poem arose from a conjunction of events—the recent death of my mother-in-law, the last surviving parent on either side of our family, and my driving for hours through a deep Canadian winter to offer a grief workshop in Brockville. The periodic bursts of long “O” sounds echoed for me the howling wind, and the […]
Continue Reading“I was so sorry to hear that your father died,” was probably one of the worst lines you could have said to me in 2010. I hated nothing more than other people’s pain in the months after my father passed. At best, it was an unpleasant reminder of what I was trying to put in […]
Continue ReadingTo those losing loved ones to Alzheimer’s, I did not notice subtle changes in my mother’s behavior because my focus was on my father’s loss of memory, poor decision making, and constant repetition. I was busy engaging my mother’s support to help dad. Dad and I were teaching mom how to write checks to pay […]
Continue Reading“You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare […]
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