Grief is more about just physical loss but also the thought of loss itself.  When someone is diagnosed with an illness or disease that is terminal, one has yet to lose but acknowledges that loss will come.  This type of anticipatory grief is very common with family who live with terminal diagnosis of a loved one.  Parents can also live with this type of loss when a child is diagnosed with a disease, terminal or not.  They have to live with the new reality imposed by the disease or the potential future of loss.  This can create an uneasy existence of hope and loss existing side by side.

The article, “The ‘Living Grief’ I Carry After My Child’s Diagnosis” by Kat Barlow looks at this type of living grief.  She states regarding a family and their child Noah and his terminal diagnosis,

“Noah has a living life list, not a bucket list. The difference being, we are not waiting for the end. We are instead celebrating and living life now. We seize every opportunity to make memories. We make time; we don’t sweat the small stuff. We cancel appointments to sit in the sunshine instead. We make up stories.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Living and dealing with grief with hope and love is a difficult thing to do but sometimes it is the best thing to do even if darker days lay ahead.  One cannot deny the future, but one can definitely love the present.  Please also review our Grief Counseling Program

Great article on grief and how it can affect sleep.  Sleep is important to recovery from anything and sometimes loss can take such an affect on someone that sleep can be negatively affected.  Whether nightmares or insomnia, it is important to find help in dealing with grief when sleep is deprived.

The article, “Sleeping After Loss: Understanding the Effects of Grief on Sleep” by Sleep Adviser offers a comprehensive information chart on grief and sleep.  The article looks at the danger of lack of sleep and ways to regain sleep while dealing with grief.  The article states,

“Losing sleep might be a normal thing that everyone goes through from time to time, especially in times of great distress or sadness, but that doesn’t diminish the terrible impact it can have on the body.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review our Grief Counseling Program and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.

A stillborn birth is a terrible experience for the parents.  Still in the shuffle of loss and pain, other family members are also forgotten.  Potential grandparents suffer the loss very hard as well.  Grand parents share in the lives of their children and seeing their adult children lose a child and also be denied a grandchild is also very painful.

The article, “When a baby is stillborn, grandparents are hit with ‘two lots of grief’. Here’s how we can help” by Beth Daley states,

“Six babies are stillborn every day in Australia. This significant loss affects parents for years to come, often the rest of their lives. However, stillbirth also affects many others, including grandparents.”

Grandparents definitely have much to suffer when they lose a grandchild.   They have to not only mourn themselves but also be there for their children.  To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review our Grief Counseling Certification and see if it matches your academic and professional goals.

Great article on progressing through the fog of grief.  Grief is not an easy passage but many times if full  doubt and fear.  We can become loss and numb in our emotions.

The article, “How to Get Through the Fog of Grief” by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell states,

When my 57-year-old husband, Dale, suddenly died of a massive heart attack on Nov. 20, 2018, two days before Thanksgiving, to say I was in shock was an understatement. More than a month later, I realized just how much my mental capacity was affected by this life-changing trauma

To review the entire article please click here

Please also review our Grief Counseling Program and the four core courses required to become certified.

A mass shooting event affects not just the community but the entire nation.  It shakes the very core of every person.  It implants fear and grief for everyone.

In this type of horrific and traumatic loss, one does not just experience tragic loss of life, but also a collective loss.  So apart from the long term pain and grief of the parents and school administration, the nation as a whole experiences a national grief.

In addition to this national grief and fear, survivors of the account face their own inner demons.  Survivor guilt can overcome many teens.  They can question why they survived or question in what ways they acted.

The waves of grief and loss that rock a nation with mass shootings are too many to detail.

The loss of life, the loss of safety, the loss of peace and the continuing scars of survivors and families all cry for better laws to help protect America from these tragedies.  What these laws entail, the law makers will determine but in the meantime, the types of grief that rock the country will continue.

Survivors will experience survivor guilt.  In some cases, this can become so severe, that students, or survivors will commit suicide.  Survivor guilt exists in soldiers from war but exists in any type of traumatic experience.  In these cases, individuals will feel guilt over not dying and question everything they did that die.   Post traumatic stress disorder can also manifest in the individuals who are attempting to move on in life past the incident.

Those not involved in the shooting, but from a more distance will experience a collective national grief.  The nation will mourn the loss but also mourn the injustice.  This leads to political activism as well as new laws.  The nation however remains scarred psychologically with the indepth fear that a mass shooting can happen at anytime.  Whether Americans are going to the movies, or dropping their child off to school, or attending worship, there remains a fear in the back of their minds.

This is a collective type of grief that a nation inherits from such tragedies.  These events shake the individuals involved but also shake the very soul of the collective nation.  Grief and loss is shared by many at different levels of loss.  Some of these losses are more personal and intense while others experience this grief in a more abstract way.

If you would like to learn more about loss and grief then please review the American Academy of Grief Counseling and its Grief Counseling Certification.

Grief is a process.  It takes time to adapt and adjust to loss.  Refusing to do grief work can lead to later complicated grief.

This is not to say that one overcomes the sense of loss, but it does teach us that we can adjust and live life if we properly work through grief.

The article, “Live Well: Are you willing to dance with your painful partner named Grief?” by Jennifer Mulson states,

“This is about the time people often check out and begin to numb themselves through any manner of methods — food, alcohol, drugs — or preoccupy themselves so they don’t have to feel anything. But really, this is the moment to step into the emotions and feel them fully, even though it might feel as if you’ll be swept under a current of pain and never resurface.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Also, please review our Grief Counseling Training Program and see if it matches your academic and professional needs.

It is amazing how wen one experiences grief, how real and different it is from simply reading about grief.  One then is cast into the hell of reality that is about loss.  Where emotions come and go and sadness remains a constant.

The article, “What I Didn’t Understand About The Stages Of Grief — Until I Was In Them” by Caila Smith states,

My daughter died from SIDS when I was 22 years old. My life was just beginning, the best was supposedly yet to come, and I was hit with a head-on collision of life-shattering grief. Other than my grandma’s passing ten years prior, I’d never felt grief. So I definitely never thought about the stages that are known to go along with it.

To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review our Grief Counseling Program and see if it matches your academic and professional needs.

Good article on simply taking the time to write condolence letter for one in grief.  It does not have to be deep but simply an acknowledgement of the loss.   While somethings can be said that should not be, it is best to at least say something brief for the bereaved.   This article looks at the importance of even a simple statement

The article, The Gift of Shared Grief”: It’s hard to know what to say to people in mourning. Say something anyway.” by Margarat Renkl states,

When my mother died in 2012, she left behind a huge collection of memorabilia. Not just the usual love letters, family photographs and cherished recipe cards but also random items that almost no one else bothers to save. Parking tickets. Embossed cocktail napkins from the weddings of people I’ve never heard of.”

To read the entire article, please click here

Please also review our Grief Counseling Program and see if it meets your educational and professional needs.