A Grief Support Blog

This blog will allow you the opportunity to acquire both support and guidance after experiencing a significant loss.

Blog

One caregiver talking to another about vitamin H

Many people call The Grief Recovery Institute looking for help. Their lives have been shattered by deaths, divorces, or any number of other losses that have made it difficult for them to negotiate a smooth path in life. As caregivers, we do our utmost to hear them and guide them to the kind of actions we know will improve their emotional well being.

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  • May 20, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Holiday Grief: Remembering my mom on Mother's Day

Holiday Grief: Mother's Day Reminders

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  • May 11, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 9 comments

Remembering Columbine

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, marked the passage of five years since the mayhem that interrupted life at Columbine in Littleton, Colorado, and injected massive fear into the hearts of students and parents everywhere.

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  • Apr 28, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Tips on talking to your kids about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus

Kids hear the darndest things. Years ago we heard of a little girl who had her own unique rendition of a familiar tune. Her version went, "In your Oyster Bonnet with all the shells upon it..." Perhaps her parents owned a seafood restaurant. Even so, it's likely that the same little girl would have managed to scramble the Easter Bunny into the Oyster Bunny.

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  • Apr 20, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

On crying and grief - Part 2

In Crying and grief - Part 1, we focused on the idea that it can be dangerous and counterproductive to attach our personal ideas and beliefs to how other people express their grief. Especially the idea that many people will communicate tremendous depth of emotion and never shed a tear, while others cry all the time but don’t seem to complete the pain, nor derive any long term benefit from crying. In part 2 we are going to address issues of gender and uniqueness of individuals and relationships, or exactly what function does crying serve, and for whom?

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  • Apr 19, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 1 comments

"Just the feelings, ma'am"

Feelings and Emotional Responses to Loss

No, the title is not a misprint; it’s just the Grief Recovery variation on that famous Jack Webb line from Dragnet.

We’ve spent the better part of the last 25 years helping people move about 14 inches from their heads to their hearts. We have written of the six major myths that we believe limit people in making that shift. We have lectured, we have pontificated, we have preached. We have even resorted to begging and pleading in an attempt to get folks to see the error of their ways, at least as it relates to using their heads rather than their hearts to deal with their emotional responses to loss.

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  • Apr 15, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Never apologize for your feelings

Published 2003 On Sunday, April 13, 2003, as the late-day Georgia sun slipped down in the sky, a young man of incredible virtue rose high to teach us all a lesson. The man's name is Len Mattiace.

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  • Apr 14, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Dealing with tragic events that you observe across the globe

Sorry to get melodramatic here, but recent events in the world have assumed proportions that are best described by Shakespeare. Fallouja is a new word for most of us, but it now contains ideas and images that may tamper with us for a long time. We already know the word Madrid and we all know what trains are, but now those two words have taken on implications that may linger in our hearts and souls. Even the benign word backpack has morphed as the result of being a container to house lethal explosives in Madrid.

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  • Apr 06, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Crying is not losing composure

There are hordes of expressions that swirl around the twin topics of grief and recovery. Unfortunately, many of them are not helpful when we find ourselves stuck in the middle of grieving situations. We have been socialized to believe that sadness, which is the normal response to sad news or sad memories, is somehow a reduction rather than an appropriate response.

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  • Mar 03, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 2 comments

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