It made front page news in March 2022, and for those of us who have lost loved ones in the past few years (whether due to COVID, other illnesses or tragedies) it's a relevant, albeit painful, subject.  
It's the subject of grief. The newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), also known as Psychiatry's Bible, has added a new diagnosis — prolonged grief disorder (PGD) — which has been the topic of heated discussion among psychiatrists, therapists, researchers and others who deal with those left behind when a death occurs. 
Is it helpful to call chronic grieving a disorder, or is labeling the process of working through a loss, even if it takes longer than people think it "should" take, something that can be hurtful or even harmful?
In her new book, "The Grieving Brain," psychologist and neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor writes, "A mental disorder shares a fuzzy boundary with normative human difficulties. Researchers and psychologists are working hard to understand and explain the murky boundary between disordered grieving and the universal human pain of loss."
It can be comforting to know that other people have struggled in the same way and that you are not the only one suffering so terribly. 
Prolonged grief disorder impacts approximately 7 - 10% of all bereaved persons. It can be comforting to know that other people have struggled in the same way and that you are not the only one suffering so terribly. It is validating for family and friends to know that it is a disorder and that you just can't "snap out of it."
Some experts, insisting that everyone has their own time frame for healing, worry that pathologizing prolonged grief by calling it a disorder could potentially make some people feel worse about themselves. However, news of the diagnosis has spread the word that there are treatments aimed at lessening symptoms, and that reaching out for help can speed the process of recovery, which is a positive thing.
Understanding the Grief Process
"We now know that time alone does not heal all wounds," says Mariann Arcari Rubin, a psychotherapist and certified grief recovery specialist in Nassau County, New York. "It is important to notice when you are triggered (for instance, when you unexpectedly discover a photo in the corner of a drawer) to feel the feelings of loss, to articulate them, and to process the whole array of complex emotions with a trusted listener so you can move forward and past these debilitating feelings."
In the "normal" grieving process, the first stage is acute grief, marked by strong feelings of longing and sorrow, insistent thoughts and memories of the person who died. Other painful emotions such as anger, guilt, remorse or anxiety may be present.
The "adapting to loss" stage is marked by acceptance of the reality and permanence of the death and working toward rebuilding one's capacity to experience a sense of well-being.
Loss of a loved one through death is a risk factor for development of depression, which is why getting early treatment for prolonged grief disorder is so important. 
There can be a mixture of negative and positive feelings, as the loved one is remembered with warmth, love or pride, possibly mixed with relief that the deceased is no longer suffering. The goal of this stage is to begin to envision a future that can be filled with purpose, meaning and satisfaction.
"Integrated grief" is a lasting, bittersweet form of grief which has a place in the person's life but does not dominate it or have great influence over feelings, thoughts or behaviors. Integrated grief generally stays in the background, but the intensity of the pain may be reactivated on an anniversary, birthday or holiday for years to come.
When the process stalls, people can suffer from Prolonged Grief Disorder. While there are some similarities to depression, in prolonged grief the thoughts and feelings circle more around the deceased, while in depression the emotions are more free-floating. 
Depression is marked by a lack of enjoyment in any activity and a sense of hopelessness, often with feelings of worthlessness or self-hatred.
Loss of a loved one through death is a risk factor for development of depression, which is why getting early treatment for prolonged grief disorder is so important. 
As listed in the DSM-5-TR, PGD has very specific criteria, which includes the core symptoms of persistent intense yearning and longing and preoccupation with thoughts and memories of the person who died. The death must have been at least 12 months ago (six months for children and adolescents.) At least three of the below symptoms must also be present on most days:
·      A marked sense of disbelief
·      Avoidance of reminders of the loss
·      Intense emotional pain related to the loss
·      Difficulty engaging and reintegrating in ongoing life
·      Emotional numbness
·      Life feels meaningless, and the future seems bleak and empty 
·      Feelings of identity confusion or disruption
·      Intense loneliness as a result of the death
These symptoms must cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. 
Risk factors for the development of prolonged grief include a history of mood or anxiety disorders; when the death is sudden, unexpected or violent; when a young person dies; when there is more than one loss within a short period of time and when the normal mechanisms for grieving are unable to take place.
Pandemic deaths, when families were unable to be with dying loved ones and when memorial services were only able to be viewed on computer screens, contain many of the ingredients that could lead to a painful and difficult-to-resolve extended period of grief.
Treating Prolonged Grief Disorder
Over the years, there have been a number of treatments designed specifically for people who are struggling with grief.
One of the most effective, Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy (PGDT), formerly called Complicated Grief Therapy, is a short-term therapy which fosters adaptation to the loss by addressing stuck points and promoting what are referred to as healing milestones. These include accepting grief and letting it find a place in your life, learning to live with reminders of the loss, and finding ways to ease emotional pain.
"One of the most powerful activities we encourage is to write a letter to the deceased with apologies, forgiveness or 'significant emotional statements.'" 
Developed by psychiatrist Dr. Katherine Shear, founding director of the Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia University School of Social Work in New York, its effectiveness has been shown in multiple studies including randomized clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, and it is now being used by clinicians across the country.
The Grief Recovery Method is an evidence-based program aimed at helping people identify how their loss is affecting them and what factors may be hindering their healing.
"Individuals go through a structured process which includes sessions with a specialist, readings about grief, loss and coping, and suggestions for stress-relieving behaviors. One of the most powerful activities we encourage is to write a letter to the deceased with apologies, forgiveness or 'significant emotional statements,'" explains Rubin.
Another form of treatment proven to be effective is exposure therapy, paired with cognitive behavioral therapy, where the bereaved are encouraged to repeatedly revisit intense and overwhelming memories and emotions about the death while the therapist provides support.
Antidepressant medications, surprisingly, do not appear to be useful in reducing symptoms of prolonged grief disorder, more proof that it differs from clinical depression. 
Because there are some similarities between the strong feelings of craving, yearning and attachment seen in bereavement and those during the withdrawal process in addiction, there are several clinical trials using oral Naltrexone (which is currently used for alcohol and opioid dependence) as pharmacological treatment for prolonged grief disorder.
"We bereaved are not alone," wrote Helen Keller. "We belong to the largest company in all the world — the company of those who have known suffering."
Grief aches and throbs and breaks our hearts, but it does not have to ruin our lives forever. There is help, there is hope and there is healing. 


When Grief Doesn't Go Away

Barbra Williams Cosentino

The uprising in Minneapolis following the killing of George Floyd by police brought local church leaders out into the streets, where they marched for justice alongside thousands of protesters.
"I couldn't stop the people at New City Church from protesting if I tried," said the Rev. Tyler Sit, pastor at New City Church in South Minneapolis. "The very thing that attracts people to New City Church is the thing that is bringing people out to the streets."
The church community — especially the Black church — has always had a foot in civil rights and racial justice work. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher after all.
Some church leaders in Minneapolis say it's up to the faith community to actively dismantle white supremacy in an intersectional way.
"A lot of times you'll hear activists say, 'We don't need your thoughts and prayers. We need you to do something about it.'"
"I'm a pastor for First Covenant Church in Minneapolis. I'm also an African American woman and a mother. And I am lesbian," the Rev. Jia Starr Brown said. "And I share those pieces of elements of my life because there are needs in all of those sectors. They all intersect in the conversation surrounding racial justice."
This is work these church leaders have been doing for years, only intensified by the recent uprising.
Rewire spoke with Minneapolis church leaders about where they see the church within the Black Lives Matter movement and about racial justice as a whole:
Reverend Tyler Sit, Pastor, New City Church
On prayers and action:
New City Church really cares about intersectionality. That means there are people who are queer people of color at New City, and they want to see both queerness and racism addressed at the same time, because it lives in our bodies at the same time. I don't get to wake up and decide if I'm Asian today or if I'm gay today; I am both Asian and gay.
Rev. Tyler SitWe know if we do one topic at a time, it'll never address a multi-identity person.
Nowadays, the trope of 'prayers and thoughts' is kind of a soft way of saying inaction. Like, a lot of times you'll hear activists say, 'We don't need your thoughts and prayers. We need you to do something about it.'
And I think that as a faith leader, I see that as my responsibility to show that thoughts, prayers and actions are all actually part of the same movement toward justice.
On grief as justice work:
From experience, I know that the injustices our society causes are complicated and formidable, and they won't go away without people dedicating their whole selves — their body, mind and spirit — to the work.
And the reason why grief is so important is because it allows us to bring our heart into the work. Otherwise, we'll just be responding based on fear, which eventually subsides, or adrenaline, which eventually subsides, or guilt, which eventually subsides. But it's grief that truly moves us into committed and whole-body activism.
I think that a lot of the role that I'm finding for myself, especially as these vigils continue to evolve, is telling the story of what people are experiencing, and giving a platform for that so that they're able to share their experience in ways that aren't being reflected in journalism otherwise.
Reverend Dana Neuhauser, Minister of Public Witness, New City Church
On starting a conversation:
Clergy and laypeople need to find ways to build on-ramps for people who are new to the conversation. You can't go from addition to calculus in one leap. So, what are the pathways for people to develop and grow?
Rev. Dana NeuhauserIt's just not enough that the church be involved in equipping people, but that there's some turning around and changing behaviors.
The church has been an agent of perpetuating white supremacy culture and racist attitudes going back to the people who formed the Doctrine of Discovery that gave Europeans the right to take land or enslave people who wouldn't become Christian. The church really has to face that.
Reverend Jia Starr Brown, Pastor, First Covenant Church
On healing:
I find myself, every day, quite a bit on the corner of 38th and Chicago, where George Floyd was killed. It's so interesting because the media tends to present primarily images of unrest and violence, not just in this past week but, just traditionally, Minneapolis has largely been painted as a place where there's a lot of unrest and violence.
And what I found on that corner was a really beautiful melody of people helping people.
"I think that the church is called to listen to the voices of people of color and indigenous people in this moment and be led by them."
And of people healing people, of people passing out free food and just setting up tables, and kids drawing images with chalk, and music playing and dancing happening and relationships being built, as people who have worked to repair the broken windows, but also the broken dreams of business owners who were already struggling due to limited access to the small business loans to minority business owners.
On action moving forward:
Three months from now, when the signs stop waving, and the tourist attraction on 38th and Chicago goes away, there still will be a need in the Black community for support and for advocacy and for resources.
And so a lot of us are paying attention not just to what's happening right now, but we're also looking at the chronic source of the problem and continuing to strategize what that might look like so that we can create some invitations for community members to step in and address that.
Rev. Jia Starr BrownI think that in the Black community, living in the Twin Cities, every African-American clergy member I know is speaking out, and I don't know one who's not.
I think in the wider community of faith, I have seen an increase in advocacy work.
The challenge comes when we continue to address one aspect, one dimension of this and not the other.
If I fully focused on what was happening through a scriptural perspective and didn't provide opportunities for people to take that and actually put on shoes, you know, and buckle up and get out in the community and put that to work and actually implement that, I would be doing a disservice to the community.
Reverend Ingrid Rasmussen, Pastor, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
On her initial response:
We served as a medic station for a couple of nights, primarily serving those who had been affected by tear gas that police had fired into the crowd and also as a place of rest and hospitality for those who had experienced some pretty serious trauma out on the streets.
When the Third Precinct burned down, we needed to move the medic station to a nearby church for safety reasons. And we moved into the ministry of feeding people in the neighborhood who no longer had access to grocery stores and basic necessities that they might have bought at stores that had been burned to the ground.
We had a huge response from both church members and the wider community, both in terms of donations and in terms of volunteer power. It's quite a testament to the interconnectedness of this neighborhood.
On dismantling white supremacy:
I think that the church is called to listen to the voices of people of color and indigenous people in this moment and be led by them.
Rev. Ingrid RasmussenI think the church is called to call out state-sponsored execution when it happens on our streets in the middle of the day. And the church is called to imagine with the whole community a new future that is more equitable or just, particularly for those who have been pushed to the margins.
It's easy to focus on the physical destruction that comes in the midst of an uprising. And yet I think we, as a church, as a nation, need to acknowledge that destruction is simply a symptom of generations of inequality.
Langston Hughes wrote, 'What happens to dreams that are deferred?' They explode. And that's what happened all around us these past few days.
(This article originally appeared on Rewire.org.)


Minneapolis Church Leaders on Their Role in Racial Justice

Gretchen Brown

When Carla Sofka's mother died just before Thanksgiving 2017, Sofka didn't immediately post the news on social media. She was busy planning the funeral, making travel arrangements and getting an obituary ready for the weekly newspaper in her mother's community.
"We had 23 hours to get the information to them if we didn't want it to be 10 days before Mom's obituary was in the local paper," says Sofka, a professor of social work at Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y.
Then the phone rang.
Unbeknownst to Sofka, the funeral home had posted the obituary on its website, and almost immediately a childhood friend had spotted it and shared it on Sofka's Facebook page.
"The minute that obituary showed up on my feed, people who saw it started posting comments and messages to me," she says. "I didn't even know this was going on, because I didn't know it was there."
A good question to ask yourself is, "Is it your story to tell?"
What makes Sofka's story ironic is that she has been writing and teaching about the impact of technology on grief and dying for decades. She even coined the term "thanatechnology" ("thana-" means death in Greek) in 1997. But in her moment of grief, she never thought to say to the funeral director, "Please don't post Mom's obituary on your website until we tell you that we've notified the people who need to find out another way." (By the way, that funeral home now asks families whether posting is okay.)
Lee Poskanzer, CEO of Directive Communication Systems, which helps clients safeguard digital assets in their estates, experienced a more pleasant Facebook surprise in 2010 when he posted news of his mother's death on Facebook. "A very close friend of mine, who I would never have thought about calling, actually hopped on a plane and was able to make my mom's funeral the next day," he says.
The Social Media Rules Have Changed
As Poskanzer and Sofka's stories illustrate, digital technologies have changed the rules surrounding grief and dying.
"How does one decipher a uniform approach when our society is using technology in so many diverse ways and each one of us has a different approach to our online presence and our digital footprint?" Poskanzer asks.
Fortunately, experts like Poskanzer and Sofka have begun answering those questions. While the landscape is still shifting, it's possible to discern some basic rules of "netiquette."
Here are eight tips about death and social media:
1. Leave the scoops to CNN and Fox News. If you've heard about a death but haven't seen a Facebook post from the next of kin, that could be because family members are still trying to contact people who need to hear the news firsthand. Sofka says a good question to ask yourself is, "Is it your story to tell?"
2. Think before you post. Even when it's appropriate to share, make sure what you're sharing is appropriate. Don't post painful or disturbing information without the family's consent — and even then consider whether sharing is appropriate. "We may not recognize that we could be harming someone by posting or tweeting or putting a picture on Instagram," Poskanzer says.
3. Avoid being cryptic. Nuance vanishes in cyberspace. A post that says "I'm praying for the Johnson family at this difficult time" could refer to anything from a death to a job loss to a house fire. "You have to know the poster in order to understand a little bit where they're coming from," Poskanzer says. When in doubt, pick up the phone.
4. Remember that news travels fast. When Sofka's aunt died unexpectedly, she elected not to tell her teenage daughter, who was on vacation in Florida and didn't know her great aunt well. Unfortunately, cousins began posting stories about the deceased woman on Facebook, so Sofka's daughter quickly found out and wanted to know what was happening. "I can't believe I didn't expect that," Sofka says.
5. Be patient. "Sometimes people watch how many people like a post or how quickly they acknowledge it," Sofka says. "Somebody who's grieving doesn't have the time or energy to focus on that." And if you're on the other side of the situation, consider posting something like Sofka did after her mother's passing: "I'm overwhelmed by the caring and the kindness of the postings. Please forgive me if I don't have time to respond right now."
6. Watch out for problems. Unfortunately, online death notices can attract everything from negative comments to fraudulent GoFundMe campaigns allegedly set up to pay for funeral expenses. "As family members and friends, if we see that, we need to contact the family immediately so somebody can contact GoFundMe," Poskanzer says.
7. Be helpful — but not too helpful. It's fine to offer to monitor the family's online presence for problems, but don't go too far. Poskanzer recalls a woman whose husband had just passed away. "While she was sitting shiva (mourning in the Jewish tradition), somebody had memorialized the page to her husband's Facebook," he says. As a result, the grieving woman no longer had access to the page. Facebook also has information about legacy contacts; people chosen in advance to oversee memorialized accounts.
8. Adjust your response to the situation. Poskanzer lost a friend recently who was very active on social media — to the point of chronicling her cancer battle online — so sending online condolences after she died made sense. On the other hand, Sofka talked with a woman who's not active on social media and had recently lost her father. "She said, 'Nobody sent cards; that was the hardest thing for me, because if felt like nobody cared,'" Sofka recalls.
As the rules of netiquette change — funeral selfies, anyone? — perhaps the best rule to follow is the Golden Rule: Blog, post and tweet about others as you would have them blog, post and tweet about you.


Addressing Loss on Social Media

Mark Ray

A Sudden Temporary Upsurge of Grief is an intense, unexpected wave of emotionality that can come on sometimes long after the death of a loved one.On an ordinary afternoon walking through Wal-Mart in search of those affordable staples everyone finds at big-box stores, I passed a family having typical squabbles with each other — teens arguing with their parents, a young child begging for a sugary snack — all tense and irritated. I nodded, agreeing with myself that I was glad to be past that age and stage of life, acknowledging that this is what families normally do when they get in each other's hair.
Then it hit: A wall of abject pain slammed into me, full of loss, longing, loneliness, and heartache.
The sense of agony was stunningly electric. I felt attacked. I could neither think nor talk. In terror and horror, I abandoned my shopping cart, staggered to the parking lot and managed to fall into my car, all while struggling to catch my breath. After about 20 minutes (which seemed like 20 years), the sensation receded, leaving me agitated by the vestiges and residuals of a hyper-aroused mind, body, and spirit. I had been hit with a blindside wipeout of grief, known as a STUG.
A STUG is an unwelcome, unexpected tsunami to the natural tidal rhythms of grief.
Researchers call what I experienced a Sudden Temporary Upsurge of Grief, a term defined by grief expert Dr. Therese Rando in the early '90s. It is an intense, unexpected wave of emotionality that comes on occasion to someone who has experienced the loss of a loved intimate, sometimes long after the person's death.
As a psychologist with many years of clinical practice, I have held others through similar experiences. Because of my professional life, I smugly didn't expect to have this awful reality in my orbit.  Silly me, thinking that I was sufficiently removed from my wife Karen's death in 2016 to be immune from this kind of event.
Quite Alarming and Frightening
For each of us, an ordinary day is characterized by a mental scaffolding called the assumptive world, defined as the personal organization held of the way the world works. The assumptive world is a psychological structure, containing everything a person assumes to be true about the world, the self and others.  It is our automatic, unconscious and generalized body of knowledge, learned through cumulative experience and history.
A STUG is outside of this scaffolding and comes as a threatening invasion. It happens unexpectedly and without warning when someone is fine and in the rhythm of a typical, ordinary day. There may be a trigger to the attack — or not. Innocuous memories or sensory experiences, such as a smell or a sound, can evoke this wave of juicy, raw emotions. After a substantive time has passed following the death, and the acute pain of grief subsides, the dramatic and unwelcome experience of a STUG can be quite alarming and frightening.
The Roadmap of Grief
The process of grief involves the survivor's new search and acquisition of experiences to live a healthy and full life in the new world without the loved one's physical presence. Grief helps a person to resolve — i.e., re-solve — the way the world works, requiring adoption of new ways of being in that world and reinvesting in it to compensate and adapt for the loved one's absence.
Grief guides a person toward revising the assumptive world and the way markers of self-identification are discerned and employed. A STUG is an unwelcome, unexpected tsunami to the natural tidal rhythms of grief.
'Sometimes When We Touch'
A fellow came to therapy, asking for help with a deeply personal narrative:
"I like listening to oldies music stations.  Nearly ten years after my wife died, as I was driving down the interstate, I heard the Dan Hill song from 1994 'Sometimes When We Touch.'  She and I used to sing it to each other in funny, pseudo-romantic ecstasy.  Well, it came on the radio and I started singing it automatically, just like we had always done. I got through the first verse before my throat closed and I started crying tears as big as light bulbs. I thought I would die. I pulled over to the side of the road and thought, 'Now what?' I shook like a wet dog and nearly vomited.
"I got through the first verse before my throat closed and I started crying tears as big as light bulbs. I thought I would die."
Eventually it passed, but I don't know what in the world happened to me. There weren't any thoughts that went with the feeling. I believed I had managed to make sense out of her death; it was so long ago. What do you think is the matter with me?  Was it a panic attack? Do I have to live with the possibility of this happening again? I was driving and could have been hurt."
This gentleman was slammed by a STUG that profoundly and dramatically untied a psychological connection to his deceased wife, one that he did not even realize he continued to hold. The STUG, traumatic as the experience felt, ultimately brought deeper and more personal meaning to his marital relationship — in life and death.
After the discharge of such intense emotionality, he was quickly able to gain context by attributing meaning to the trigger of the song. With a bit of perspective, he revisited one of the more pleasurable memories found in the history of his marriage.
Surviving a STUG
What can you do after a STUG? Here are a few suggestions:
Identifying the experience for what it is and calling it by name can help you stay in charge, even when feeling out of control.Remember that a STUG is a temporary, transitional experience. No one ever dies from a STUG, though many feel like the experience is deadly. The painful feelings will pass. The most effective strategy in the presence of a STUG is to ride it out. Find a safe place, as private as possible, breathe deeply and lean into it. Allow the pain until it passes. During a STUG, a person’s body goes on hyper-alert, releasing endorphins because of the fight-flight response manifest in the perception of danger. After the STUG passes, a body needs several hours to absorb the hormones and brain chemicals and return to baseline.Sleep on it. The day following a STUG, cognitive capacities return to normal, allowing more thoughtful consideration of the meaning of what triggered the memory. Take it as a matter of truth that the STUG signaled a reconsideration of a loving experience in the history of the relationship.Finally, remember that the word "closure" is never relevant in the loss of a loved one. If we have loved another intimately, grief does not lead us to forget.  Rather, the process facilitates resolution, clarity and meaning, even in the presence of a blindside wipeout.


The Blindside Wipeout of Grief

Jackson Rainer

Suddenly, after months, maybe years of caregiving, it's over. For me, it was just after midnight on a Monday in December. The phone rang, and a voice from Skilled Nursing said, "I'm sorry to tell you that your mother passed away at 12:10 this morning."
"Oh my god, it's over," I gasped. I felt a clutching in the pit of my stomach. Oh my god, it's finally over.
"Care does not end with death but involves actively caring for memories."It may have been different for you — perhaps you were there when they died. Perhaps it was peaceful; perhaps it wasn't. Maybe you were waiting for a plane back home when you got the news that Dad had died.
However it happened, your person died, and your caregiving is over. Loss … and guilt. You feel disoriented, unmoored, off-balance, numb and in a fog, and you may also feel guilty.
"After she died I felt guilty that I had the freedom. I felt guilty that I could sleep through the night."
Judy Smith, a former English teacher and Peace Corps volunteer, had brought her ailing mother to her DC home. "Her bedroom was across the hall. After she died I felt guilty that I had the freedom. I felt guilty that I could sleep through the night."
The Hardest Job in the World 
"It's the number one thing that people tell me afterwards," says Selena Tourtillotte, a hospice social worker in southern California. "They feel so guilty. 'Am I a horrible person to feel a little relieved?' they ask. There's no need to feel guilty, it's perfectly normal. Being a family caregiver is the hardest job in the whole world. It's natural to feel some sense of relief."
And what if you weren't there when they died? You stepped out for coffee, and when you came back into the room, your person had passed. Carmel Murphy-Kotyan is a Massachusetts-based caregiver consultant and founder of Elder Service Network: 
"It's as if they wait until you walk out the door. I hear that a lot. There is nothing to feel guilty about. People pass the way they do. Sometimes when they're by themselves, that's when they pass. There should be no guilt. It is a solo journey."
Grieving on Your Terms
Recent thinking about grief suggests that we zigzag between moving forward with our lives and revisiting the loss. So the following days are filled with the cut-and-dried tasks of emptying our person's room, calling the lawyer and notifying Social Security. 
"The key to grief after caregiving is to allow yourself that time to grieve."
And in between, the grief wells up, and the memories come to the surface and collide.
Rosanne Corcoran cared for her mother for twelve years and now hosts a podcast on caregiving and a Daughterhood Circle supporting caregivers. "The key to grief after caregiving is to allow yourself that time to grieve. Not on someone else's terms, not how someone else thinks you should." 
"I had lost this person who was my world. If I need to just sit in a chair, that's where I'm at. It's not going to be forever."
Judy Smith says, "Four or five months after my father died, I went by myself up to West Virginia and stayed at an inn. I sat there on the bed and wrote in my journal for four or five hours, and cried and wrote, and cried and wrote. It was a very special time."
Baby Steps
Meanwhile, you need to rebuild your life. After being on call 24/7, intensely entwined with your person and their needs, "you can lose yourself to the point of not knowing who you are anymore," says Adriana Covarrubias Hernandez, regional bereavement manager with Silverado Hospice. 
"What is my purpose? What am I good for now? You're not going to reconstruct your life overnight. Take little tiny baby steps," says Corcoran. "It doesn't have to be a grand gesture, a trip to the Caribbean. Just meeting a friend, taking a morning walk. Explore. Sometimes you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Say, 'I'm going to try this.' You have to be open to trying."
Rediscover things you liked, tap into things that bring you joy.
Allow yourself to take a joy break every day. Even 5 or 10 minutes — read a few pages from that spy thriller, watch cat videos, open your window and listen to the birds. Tourtillotte says, "Rediscover things you liked, tap into things that bring you joy."
"And learn to slow down," says Hernandez. She likes Sudoku. "For me, it's a mindless activity that helps my brain relax." Some people do jigsaw puzzles, play word games and paint by numbers. It's not about the accomplishment; it's about taking a mental timeout. It's part of the healing.
Caring for Memories
The person you cared for may be gone, but there is still one more task. Arthur Kleinman, who nursed his wife through the ravages of dementia, declares in his book "The Soul of Care": "Care does not end with death but involves actively caring for memories."
Many caregivers have technicolor memories of their person in their prime ("she looked like Ava Gardner, raven-haired, with a lovely figure and a beautiful smile") but also darker memories of their decline, their suffering and their last days. 
I learned things about my mother that I never would have known if I hadn't been at the table with her for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So how do you care for those painful memories? Tourtillotte says, "Sometimes you have to take an active role. None of us is just one moment. Remember the whole life, the happiest moments. The ending is such a small piece in this amazing life that they've lived."
Caring for memories can also be very tangible: Smith makes fudge from her mother's recipe every year at Christmastime. There is the widow who keeps her husband's bathrobe on a hook on the bathroom door, the son who keeps his mother's pastel of an Italian landscape by his desk, where "it radiates her energy to me every day."
Svava Kristinsdottir raised chihuahuas in California and was the caregiver for her friend Jerry. She keeps a Wall of Angels in her home — pictures of Jerry and the dogs she has loved and lost. She has set a timer so the wall is lit at night. 
"Does it make you sad to pass by here all the time?" I asked. "No, never," she told me. "The pictures give me comfort. They remind me that they are all still with me."
Reflecting and Reframing
The caregivers I've talked with freely acknowledge how stressful and exhausting long-haul caregiving can be. But after the caregiving ends, they look back and often see something else. "It gave me purpose." "It was transformative." "It was a growth experience."
And they make discoveries. They come upon old photos and old love letters. Bruce Frankel, president of the Life Planning Network, a national association devoted to positive aging, took care of his mother for four years, two of those in his home: "I learned things about my mother that I never would have known if I hadn't been at the table with her for breakfast, lunch and dinner."
"I'm starting to be able to look back and say, Wow, I got her to the finish line. Through all of it, she knew she was loved, she knew she was safe," says Corcoran. "She knew that I was always there for her. That was a gift. I can allow myself to accept that it was a gift. I guess I did a good job."
And I'm working through the loss, trying to let the grief take its course, allowing a new life to unfold. As the images of my mother in her last days begin to soften, pale and lose their grip, I'm assembling an inventory of sweet memories — bright ones where my mother smiles, lovely ones where she is young and hopeful. 
Sometimes I write to her and sometimes write down what she is saying. My heart is now our letterbox.


When the Caregiving Ends: Recovering from Loss, Rebuilding Your Life

Connie Baher

It happened again this morning. I’d just finished a task at my desk and thought, Okay, time to call Dad. Then my eyes teared up as I remembered, Dad’s not here anymore.
Jill Smolowe with her fatherMy father died on March 19 at the age of 87. Four days earlier, he’d played tennis. The end was swift, and for that my two brothers and I are grateful. Seemingly little pain. Seemingly little suffering. If you’ve gotta go, that’s the way to go.
But the fact that he’s gone? That part makes me very, very sad.
I adored my father. After my mother’s death in 2010, I took to calling him daily — initially out of concern, then because I found that I really enjoyed talking with him. As we traded daily phone calls over the next eight years, with a visit mixed in every other month, our relationship deepened and sweetened. Now, I’ve lost not only my dad, I've lost my friend.
No Stranger to Grief
I’ve done this grieving thing before. My first husband died in 2009, my sister and mother the following year. With those three deaths, I came to understand that it’s not the person we grieve; rather, it’s the loss of our relationship with that person.
What I find striking as I digest this newest loss is how different my bereavement feels this time around.
The attending ache and need are unlike what I experienced with each of my earlier losses. This time, I can be distracted from my sadness and shift my focus elsewhere. The pain is gentler, less frantic, more tolerable. All of this has heightened my appreciation for how both the timing of a death and the surround-sound of a particular moment in life affects the nature of our grief.
When my husband, Joe, died, my anguish was trained on the crater that his absence had created in my life. By losing my constant companion of 28 years, I felt like my entire life had been disarranged. Fear and worry informed my pain. How would I parent our 15-year-old daughter solo? How would I live with so much loneliness? How would I reimagine my life?
I thought about Joe constantly, but the “I” who had to survive was inextricably connected with any thought of him. It would take a few years before I could separate myself out and make space for happy memories of Joe.
At the time of his death, which had followed a prolonged illness, I took little solace from hugs and consoling words. I didn’t want to share my tears. What I needed most from those closest to me was reassurance that I was doing the right things for my daughter, and that I could, and would, go on.
A Different Timetable
The deaths of my mother and sister the following year resulted in a very different timetable for my grief. Key to what unfolded emotionally was how their deaths happened so close together in time.
During the eight months that my mother and sister were both in unarrestable decline, my brothers and I wanly joked that they were in a “race to the finish.” It was a logistical nightmare ricocheting between my sister in Vermont and my mother in North Carolina.
My sister died first; my mother followed 18 days later. In the bizarre twilight between their deaths, as my mother’s liver shut down, turning her skin from beige to yellow to orange, my grief couldn’t find a place to settle. I can’t fully grieve Ann while Mom is going, I wrote in my journal.
After both were gone, my emotional confusion deepened. I would start to think about Ann, then think guiltily, I should be thinking about Mom — or vice versa. Or I’d think of one of them and the thought would intrude that I should be thinking about Joe.
Later, each of my brothers would tell me that it took them 18 months to really feel their grief for our baby sister. For me, there had been deep pre-death grief as I stuck close to Ann to help care for her through her decline from colon cancer.
But it had been too much illness and death for me to truly process so much loss. It would take another 5 1/2 years before I would be wrenched by bereavement for my sister. I think of, and miss, my mother, of course. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I get whacked by a bout of grief for her one of these days.
It’s so different with my dad.
This time round, the playing field is clear, so to speak. No one else in the family is sick or dying. My daughter is grown and no longer needs my constant minding. Unlike with Joe, I feel no fear, worry or fuzzy-headedness. Unlike with my sister and mother, I feel no confusion or numbness.
Time to Remember Dad
With my mind and heart free to settle on the loss of my father, I have time to think of Dad — and only Dad. And so I do.
What I feel is unadulterated sadness. Where I couldn’t make room in my brain and my heart for words of solace after Joe’s death, I take comfort from every expression of sympathy about my father. I linger over notes that summon a recollection of him. I nestle into people’s hugs. I well up a lot. Sometimes, I let the tears flow in the presence of others.
Sometimes, those tears have a bittersweet edge. Unlike with Joe, Ann and Mom, the happy memories aren’t buried beneath layers of illness that will require years of excavation. My happy memories of Dad are right here, right now. I hear his voice, I see his smile — and they remind me how much I’m going to miss his presence in my life.
“I hope your grief is pure and purifying,” a friend wrote to me. I think that captures perfectly what this grief feels like: pure and purifying.
For now, my father is often on my mind. I’m in no rush to let go of those thoughts. I know that the day will come when the thought doesn’t cross my mind, Gotta call Dad.
And when that day comes, I know that, too, will make me very, very sad.


Losing My Dad

Jill Smolowe

As the passing of renowned physicist and public intellectual Stephen Hawking is met with grief and remembrance the world over, Next Avenue wanted to honor the man who educated the world on a host of issues by sharing five important lessons we learned from him:
1. Trust in science, but remember that we haven't uncovered all its mysteries yet.
At 22, Professor Hawking was diagnosed with a rare form of motor neuron disease and told he only had a few years to live. For most of his adult life, he was wheelchair bound and could speak only with the aid of a vocal synthesizer. Yet, against all odds, Hawking had a successful career and rich family life until passing away at the age of 76.
2. Sometimes a person's greatest impact happens when he or she feels (literally) voiceless.
From Oxford graduate to public figure to cosmologist to celebrity, Stephen Hawking was perhaps the scientist with the most prominent place in the public eye in the past few decades. His book, A Brief History of Time, shattered expectations for sales. And in recent years, he was a vocal critic of environmental policies that he felt were hurting the planet. He traveled to space, figuratively, and had a "theory of everything." In short, Hawking hasn't spoken without the aid of a computer for decades, but he has most definitely been heard.
3. The universe is vast, and our own potential is just as limitless.
Professor Hawking had as much to say about humanity as he did about the cosmos. In a 1998 interview with Der Spiegiel he said "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special." He also had great wisdom about our responsibilities to ourselves and one another as people. In a 2010 interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, Hawking offered three pieces of wise advice: "One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away."
4. Live in the moment and remember what (and who) truly matters.
Despite having his mind and gaze directed at the stars, Hawking was always present in the life, family and community that surrounded him. Indeed, his children have credited him as being a loving father, noting that he would often say, "It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love."
5. Don’t fear the end.
Perhaps one of the most famous of Hawking's quotes is the most prescient on the day of his passing. Once, when speaking on his theory of everything, in which he explains that the universe is governed by a set of laws, Hawking pondered how the universe began. He then added, "Where is it going and will it have an end? If so, how will it end? If we find the answers to these questions, we really shall know the mind of God." In other words, the end was not a finale as such, but the beginning of a whole new way of knowing.
So long, Professor Hawking, and may you find peace on your journey. You helped make the world kinder and smarter for having been in it. You are a giant on whose shoulders we now stand.


5 Life Lessons From Stephen Hawking

Bryce Kirchoff

When my father died, I managed my grief through writing. Sharing stories about visits to my hometown, recounting how his favorite chair keeps me connected to him, and describing our frequent lunches, have helped me process his passing. 
While words are my path to healing, others find comfort and hope in therapy, support groups and conversations with friends. But it turns out there are myriad ways to process grief that fall outside traditional methods. 
"The key is to figure out what kind of activities make you feel okay in any given moment." 
"You spend all this energy trying to color in the lines of your life while grieving, and that's because that's how society wants us to act," says Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of the Modern Loss community and author of "The Modern Loss Handbook." "The key is to figure out what kind of activities, both passive and active, make you feel okay in any given moment." 
Whether you're searching for a way to supplement therapy sessions or are eager to work through your sorrow in a different setting, consider stepping out of your comfort zone with these creative and unusual strategies to manage grief. 
Grief Yoga Uses Movement and Breath 
Paul Denniston, author of "Healing Through Yoga," combined aspects of various types of yoga: Hatha, Vinyasa, Kundalini, Restorative, Laughter Yoga, and Chakradance, to create Grief Yoga. He says Grief Yoga isn't about physical flexibility but more about empowering the person to tap into their strength and courage by using movement, breath, and sound.
"It's a sacred ritual that embraces the different colors of life, loss, love, anger, purpose or happiness," he says.
The online sessions range from 30 to 60 minutes, with options to practice while seated, standing, or on a yoga mat. Through his work with clients, Denniston discovered that people repress sadness, anger, and even joy. Traditional yoga classes include holding poses, but the focus of Grief Yoga is to learn how to breathe and move with your body to release pain and tap into unresolved feelings beneath the surface. 
The movement, "Breaking the Chains," where you stack your forearms in front of your chest, push both elbows back and let out a firm "Ha!" sound, addresses the feeling of being constrained by grief.
With the "Woodchopper," you stand with your feet hip-width apart, and knees slightly bent. After interlacing your fingers, raise your arms over your head and bring them down in a chopping motion while yelling "Ha!" This movement creates the space to let go of anger and rage.
The Benefits of a Grief Yoga Practice 
A year ago, Catherine Boorady, who lost her husband in 2019, began half-hour online sessions in her upstate New York home. 
"I was still so emotional and exhausted from the grief that I could not focus for more than thirty minutes," she said. After practicing daily, she developed enough stamina for one-hour classes. 
The Grief Yoga sessions have helped her get through the day, and when she practices in the evening, it improves her sleep.
"It has helped move whatever emotion was trying to surface," she says. 
Joy Myers, a psychotherapist in the Denver area, practices Grief Yoga by herself and with her clients during therapy. She started the online sessions six months after the death of her 26-year-old son three years ago.
"In my own grief, it gave me a language for my pain when words were not enough," she says. "Grief Yoga took me beyond the burden of thought and got me to where my grief was in my body and helped move that through."
She finds the practice beneficial during what she refers to as "dip-in moments" — times when, for whatever reason, the deep pain emerges. 
Splatter Paint Sessions Can Be Cathartic 
Finding the words to convey grief and sorrow is easy for some, while others struggle to discover ways to express their feelings. Creating art can fill that gap.
"It bypasses language so we can more readily access feelings and memories that might be shut down and cut off from grief," says Helen Marlo, clinical psychologist, professor, and chair of the Department of Clinical Psychology at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California.
While drawing, manipulating a small mound of clay or creating a collage can direct your grief into meaningful works of art, thinking outside the art box can be freeing and cathartic. Enter splatter paint. 
With splatter paint sessions, room sizes can range from a small room for two people to a large room for 15, depending on the business. When guests arrive, they receive coveralls — a paper-like material with a hood — along with goggles and shoe coverings. Rooms are set up with a canvas on each easel and paints and brushes on the shelves. During a 30-minute session, participants dip the brushes in paint and fling the colors on the canvas. 
"It's a creative outlet for people to release their excess feelings, whether grief or anger." 
"People say, 'It's therapeutic for me to be able to throw paint around, and I don't have to worry about the mess,'" says Steffany Faldmo, co-owner of Splatter Lab in Rexburg, Idaho. "It's a creative outlet for people to release their excess feelings, whether grief or anger." 
The best part about splatter art painting is that you don't need artistic talent to see the benefits.
"Splatter art is amazing because that's what grief is — it touches everything," says Soffer. "It's a total mess, so go in the room and make a mess, have a cathartic moment." As you make plans to channel your inner Jackson Pollock paint session, consider asking family members or friends who are also grieving to join you. 
Finding Support for Grief at Sea 
Mary Feith, from Maple Grove, Minnesota, lost her 13-year-old son 34 years ago and her 35-year-old daughter 11 years ago. When she told her friends she had registered for a cruise, they couldn't understand how she could vacation and grieve simultaneously. But that's the goal of The Grief Cruises, a week-long trip for those who have lost someone close to them. 
Created by Linda Findlay, the seven-day grief seminar at sea includes presentations, arts and crafts, meditation sessions, and a "Night of Remembrance" on the top deck. The week offers a way for people who understand loss to come together.
"People think we'll cry all week," says Findlay. "Instead, it's a time to honor a loved one and feel that connection to them." Attendees range from parents who have recently lost a child to those mourning a spouse 20 years after their death.
When Kellie Sanchez, from Roseville, California, scheduled her first cruise, she initially felt guilty about enjoying the voyage. Her spouse was 49 when he passed away. Although everyone believed she needed to move on, she wasn't ready. Instead, she was determined to learn how to cope.
"When I was on the cruise, I felt like my husband was on vacation with me," said Sanchez. "It was me remembering him." She plans to attend her fourth Grief Cruise in 2023.
Findley recognizes that when people experience the loss of a loved one, they feel they're dishonoring that person if they go on vacation. 
"The outcome of the cruise is for people to have that message of hope and recognize that joy and grief do co-exist," she says. 
Grief has no time limit. Almost two years after my dad's death, I still write about him. Now I focus less on my loss and more on his legacy. 
While grief can be exhausting, with the power to leave you feeling helpless, there's hope. Whether you are experiencing a recent loss or are still mourning a family member or friend who passed away decades ago, try creative ways to manage your grief. Then you can begin to find the solace you need and deserve.


A Grief Cruise, Splatter Paint and Grief Yoga: Unusual Ways to Handle Loss

Lisa Kanarek

I’ll never forget that night. I was expecting my husband to arrive home from an out-of-town business meeting, but instead of hearing the garage door go up, I heard a doorbell. My heart pounded as I opened the door, and I felt it would stop when I heard that John died in a car accident and would never come home again.
The death of a beloved person is a scenario we all dread, and rightly so. It is one of the most devastating experiences one can endure. In the initial period of time after it occurs, most people wonder whether they’ll survive.
So if it happens to you, what can you expect and how do you cope? Full discussion would take a book, but hopefully these tips will help.
What to Expect Soon After the Death of a Loved One
Shock and numbness: You can’t instantly grasp the reality of what happened, much less the implications for your life. That’s actually good. The numbness allows you to compartmentalize as needed, so you can focus on essential decisions and actions. Yet because your brain still expects that person’s presence, you may dial the number, call out the name as you walk in the door or think you see him or her walking down the street. The reality will gradually hit home, bringing waves of pain and grief.
Unhelpful friends and family members: Despite their best intentions, most people don’t know what to say or do after the death of a loved one because they’ve never been taught. Many don’t want to say the wrong thing so they say nothing, skillfully avoiding you or talking about anything except what happened. Others do try, yet they repeat what everyone else always does, so their attempts are often neutral or even pain-inducing.
Still others feel it is their duty to “fix” you, telling you what to feel and how to grieve or saying that you should "get over it." This is terribly unfair, so you frequently find yourself educating others on how to support you.
A wide range of emotions: Every human emotion is caught up in the spiral of grief. You may be angry, sad, relieved, guilty, confused, vulnerable, afraid, searching, despairing or hopeful. You sometimes experience several emotions at once; other times, you cycle through them at a dizzying pace. You are simultaneously genuinely grateful for some things but desperately sad about others.
The unpredictable volatility may cause you to feel you’re going crazy. You’re not. It’s all normal for a grieving person.
4 Things to Do After the Death of a Loved One
Face the grief: Allow whatever emotions arise without allowing others to judge you for it. Cry when you need to, with no apologies. Let yourself smile or laugh, too; that helps sustain you. Find ways to name, express and gradually resolve your experience. Write in a journal, use music or drawing and/or talk to people who “get it” (friends, family, a counselor or a support group). Exercise. Sleep as best you can. Get out in nature. Freely accept help; there will be time to return the favor later. Do things that comfort you. Take care of your fragile self.
Be patient with yourself: Grief is not over in a month or even a year. The pain diminishes over time and you regain your footing, sense of purpose and capacity to love. But set no deadlines and follow your own path. Take whatever advice makes sense and ignore the rest. Live into the experience and let it unfold. Expect that even years later, you will occasionally get ambushed. You loved someone who died. Give yourself permission to mourn.
Build memories to carry with you: You will never forget, get over it, or “put it behind you and get on with life.” That’s not what healing looks like. Instead, even as you learn to let go of what can no longer be, you create memories and stories that you take with you for the rest of your life. You carry that person, their love and who you became because they lived. In fact, as Rabbi Earl Grollman says, the greatest memorial you can build to a person who dies is to live your life now as fully as possible, enriched by their memory.
Choose to heal: There is an element of healing that is a choice. You can’t go back. You don’t get a do-over. This happened to you. So now what? Do you choose to live in pain and grief or do you choose to heal? Make the choice, every day, every hour, sometimes every minute. As unbelievable as it seems at first, healing and joy are possible. Your future may be very different from the one you had planned, but it can still be a good one, holding promise, happiness and hope. Choose life.
Remember: We forever carry the burning ember of those we love within us. They are gone from our sight, but not from our hearts.


How to Deal With Grief After a Loved One's Death

Amy Florian

Not too long ago, a dear friend’s dad suffered a major heart attack and died. At the funeral, there was little time for more than a brief exchange of words.
But, given my background in grieving support and education, I wanted to offer some advice to help her and her mom through the grieving process. So, that evening I wrote her a letter. I'm sharing it here because I believe it can be of help to anyone who has recently lost a parent and wants to help their surviving parent through the grief. Here is what I wrote:
Dear Katie,
The way-too-soon and totally unexpected death of your dad has hit you hard. It was clear at the services that your family is reeling, trying to comprehend what happened to you, to understand the enormity of this loss, and to figure out what to do now.
Leave behind the well-meaning compulsion to cheer each other up or keep looking on the bright side.
I'm glad I was able to attend the services to celebrate his life and mourn his death together, and I also know your grief has only begun.
I remember after my husband's death, a few of the letters that people wrote were extremely helpful — not the ones telling me the writer’s own story of grief, as if I was supposed to experience the same thing and handle it in the same way, but those that contained hard-won wisdom from grieving people.
In that vein, I offer you some input that may be helpful to you and your mom, gleaned from my many years of providing grief education, facilitating grief support groups and counseling grieving people.
If any of this does not apply in your case or is not helpful, then set it aside. Everyone grieves uniquely and you don’t have to meet my (or anyone else’s) expectations.
Grief hurts. We don’t want to face the pain, the loneliness and the void that will never be filled in the same way again. But if we don’t, we won’t heal.
Grief that is suppressed, denied or ignored does not go away. It stays there, it festers and it will find a way to come back out and bite you in physical, psychological, spiritual and emotional ways.
But it also helps to try to set the grief aside sometimes, as if in a box on the shelf, and let yourself smile or enjoy life for a bit. Those times will sustain you.
Don’t be afraid of bringing up your dad, saying his name and telling the stories. Will it cause tears? Yes, sometimes, but that’s not because you brought it up. The tears are there anyway. It is healing to allow them to spill out, whether you are alone or especially when you share those tears with someone else who also loved him, whether it’s your mom or supportive friends who will let you cry with them.
Did you know that there are physiological chemicals in tears that relieve stress? Tears are our natural stress-relief mechanism when we are sad — that’s why we call it “having a good cry.” So, when you cry, you help yourself heal.
One final thing about tears. People often say they can’t start crying because if they do, they will never be able to stop. Do you know that has not happened in the history of humankind? No one has ever not been able to stop crying. Allow the healing to happen, facilitated by allowing tears when they are there.
As you support your mom, remember your job is not to “fix it” or to make her feel better. Your job is to be her companion, to be there for her whatever she is feeling.
Leave behind the well-meaning compulsion to cheer each other up or keep looking on the bright side. Instead, just keep checking in. Ask what kind of a day it is today — feeling up, down or all over the place?
Talk about when you miss your dad the most. Share your stories about things people say that are helpful, and the well-intentioned things people say that are not! Share what you each wish people knew about what you’re going through. Keep the lines of communication as open as possible, so you can pour your experience out to each other and gain comfort.
Keep in mind that grief takes a very long time. Expect to hit sad periods of time again weeks or months after the death. This is especially true when those “marker days” hit: his birthday (and yours), the wedding anniversary, Father’s Day, the holidays, the monthly and yearly anniversaries of his death.
You will be sad over and over again. You will be happy over and over again, and eventually the happiness will predominate. But expect a roller coaster of emotions — some hours and days will be better, and some will feel like disasters. Hang in there. As long as you continue doing the hard work of grief, you are healing, you will heal and you will get there.
Another word about those “marker days.” Your dad’s absence will be huge, and yet the tendency of most people around you will be to talk about anyone and everything except your dad.
The intention is good — they want to keep you from feeling sad. Yet, these are the times it is most important to say his name, share the memories and keep his legacy alive.
His life and the lessons he taught you are with you forever. His love is with you forever. You are a different person because of him, and no one can ever take that away from you. Keep his name, his stories and your memories alive, even as you let go of all the things that can no longer be.
These are just a few things that I hope can get you on the path to healing. My most fervent hope is that your family may heal, carrying memories and stories of your dad’s life with you even as you move into a future that will be different than you had planned.
I will check in regularly, just to see what’s happening and how you’re doing. I am here for you for the long haul, no matter what.
I hold you and your mom close to my heart. In these crazy, turbulent days, I wish you moments of peace, an occasional smile and continued healing.
Love and hugs,
Amy


When a Parent Dies: Ways to Help Yourself and Your Surviving Parent

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