Sumie Higa, RN

My Experience

This program has helped me become functional. After such a sudden tragic loss I was paralyzed with grief. I read the book prior to meeting with my counselor. This helped because the assignments are challenging and having had read the book helped as we went through the sessions. I still had to re-read and think as I grappled with some concepts. My counselor was a wonderful person who had experienced a similar type of loss. My meetings with her helped me process my grief in a way that taught me a lot about communication with those gone and living. I am still in a lot of pain, but GRM has helped me be in a better place. My next step is to seek mental health therapy, which I think will be more effective after doing the GRM. I don't give it a 5 star because I had to do a lot of re-reading and thinking to understand assignment 5.

My Experience

My mother passed away and even though I knew her death would eventually come I still wasn't prepared. I kept thinking she would make it through her illness and give us a few more months or another year. So when she passed away in her sleep it was still sudden and I wasn't at her bedside. The Grief Recovery Method helped me take the pain off my shoulders that there were still some things I regretted that I should have done and that I should have said to her. I believe going through this process and writing the good bye letter has helped me get through this loss progressively so that I don't feel a heavy burden on me. It probably would have taken me longer to recover from her death if I were able to ever to. The Grief Recovery Method helped ease the heavy pain of losing a loved one. I am glad I was brave enough to complete the program and feel I can move on with my life without feeling I still had some unresolved matters with my mom.

My Experience

I never really had a specific loss or death experience to work with on the grief recovery program. I wanted to work on self-confidence and how I lost faith in myself. I was very afraid to look into what I lost in my life. But when I looked back at what I lost, I found that I have to work on grief to recover. I decided to work on my relationship with my mother. I found many painful and joyous experiences from our relationship. It was a beautiful process letting go the pain with forgiveness and accepting the unique relationship with love.

My Experience

The program showed me how important it is to come to terms and complete my relationships so that I can fully benefit from the full range of goodness they provide. I realized how i had dulled positive points in my relationships out of a fear of being hurt by the negative points. It’s an observation that I have brought with me into my daily life that helps me deal with difficult or stagnant emotions.