A Grief Support Blog

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

Blog

Make Sure You're Not Minimizing People's Grief

One of the most common and separating elements of grief is the fact that the people around a grieving person tend to make comparisons in an attempt to help the griever feel better. The classic is, "Don't feel bad, she's in a better place." That may very well be true for the person who died, but is rarely the whole truth for the person who is still living - and grieving.

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  • Jan 05, 2004
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Saying goodbye to a relationship: Stop saying there are plenty of fish in the sea!

Do you recall a time in the bloom of your first love when your feet barely scraped the ground and everything felt right in your world? If you remember those feelings, but the relationship that inspired them didn't make it all the way to the imagined sunset, then you've also felt the painful sting that accompanies romantic endings.

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  • Dec 17, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Kids and Loss: make sure you're giving them the right information about loss

A sponge cannot differentiate between deadly poison and sweet nectar. It sops up whatever liquid it contacts. Children are like sponges. They cannot distinguish the value of the information they are immersed in, especially when they are very young.

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  • Dec 10, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Uh-oh, it's that time again. Grief and the Holidays

The holidays are approaching. A joyous time. A festive time. A time when families and friends celebrate the passage of another year and the coming of a new year. But not everyone will feel like celebrating. If this is the first year since the death of a loved one or a divorce, the grief and the holidays may be difficult. Since time does not heal emotional wounds, subsequent holiday times may be painful and awkward. Even surrounded by family and friends, grievers may feel isolated, alone, and as if no one understands.

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  • Nov 14, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 6 comments

Honoring our Veterans

In its day, World War One was called "The War to End All Wars." Sadly, it wasn't. WWI officially ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year, 1918. Each year we commemorate that ending on Veteran's Day, which was originally called Armistice Day. There aren't too many folks left who were around when that came to pass. {C}{C}

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  • Nov 10, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Bereavement Scriptures (Part 1)

 

Sometimes we open this column with a suggestion that you grab a coffee because we've written a longer-than-usual piece. Today, you might get a piece of pound cake to go with your java. Why pound cake? Because pound cake is a simple thing and digests easily. We're about to broach a topic that will fly in the face of conventional awareness and could benefit from a digestive aid.

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  • Oct 23, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Bereavement Help: A few reasons why avoiding emotions hurts you

"He can run, but he can't hide." That famous expression is attributed to heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis, in 1946. Joe's statement was in reaction to being told that his next opponent, Billy Conn, was very fast and would run around the ring a great deal to try to avoid getting hit by Mighty Joe.

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  • Oct 14, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 1 comments

An emotional weekend

I started last Saturday at a funeral and ended it at a wedding. Many tears and tissues later when I got home, I was drained. Granted, different kinds of tears for each event, but huge wellsprings of emotions erupted within me. I hit several gushers. In the morning, I stood in a chapel at a cemetery with 100 others, most of whom I knew.  My dear friend, Raymond, who had died, was Chinese.

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  • Sep 23, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Mourning the deaths of celebrities we loved

It's late at night in the editorial office of a major metropolitan newspaper. The office, near the top of a high-rise building, is nearly deserted. There are only a few lights on. It's very quiet except for the clacking of a single computer keyboard. A lone reporter sits in his cubicle putting the finishing touches on his latest assignment. In a pause-to-think moment he stops typing.

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  • Sep 22, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

Moving can be traumatic

There's a reason that the Wednesday edition of the Grief Recovery Update is arriving on Thursday. No, the dog didn't eat my homework, but he did cause a real big problem in our lives, but that's another story, for another time. The big reason was that Wednesday was escrow closing day on the house that Alice and I bought here in Southern California.

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  • Sep 04, 2003
  • Russell Friedman
  • 0 comments

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