Understanding and Managing Grief & Pet Loss, January 29 - February 4, 2023

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

"No one warned me how badly grief can make you yearn for physical intimacy – or how much backlash I would get for wanting to talk about it." When grief makes you horny « The Spinoff

Understanding and Managing Grief, August 28 - September 3, 2022

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

Wherever you might be in your grieving process, support can be found through counseling, which can help you work through grief and heal in a healthier way. Learn more below about the different types of grief, what grief counseling entails and how you might benefit from trying it. Grief Counseling: How It Works, Benefits And More « Forbes Health

In Grief: A Teen Mourns The Death of Her Best Friend

Because children and teens grieve differently than adults, their needs, especially support through the grieving process, are often overlooked. Consequently, children and teens are frequently forgotten, even invalidated, as mourners.  ~ Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS

A reader writes: When I was 12 years old, my best friend in the whole world died, one month before her 12th birthday. She was in the swimming pool playing that game—you know, who can hold their breath the longest—she was under but when she came up she inhaled a lot of water. She stood up and went over to the ladder and she was wheezing. She got up to the ladder and fell backwards, but her cousin caught her.

Understanding and Managing Grief & Pet Loss, July 3 - July 9, 2022

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

Swedish researchers found that heart failure patients who had been struck by the grief that comes with losing a loved one faced a 5% to 20% spike in their risk of dying from heart failure over the following four years, a recent study found. Grief associated with increased risk of death among heart failure patients « UPI

Caregiving & Grief, July 26 - August 1, 2020

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

In the absence of rituals surrounding the dying — such as visiting the bedside, viewing the body and having a funeral — the picture of the experience has been rapidly transformed.  How Coronavirus Complicates the Grieving Process « Pain Medicine News

Teen Grief: When A Friend Moves Away

[Reviewed and updated July 3, 2021]

Truly great friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.  ~ G. Randolf

A reader writes: I am 14 years old. Can you tell me what the 7 stages of grief are and which one I am going through? I am hurt right now because my friend moved away to Texas. She moved away 2 months ago and I'm still sad. Help me.

My response: You've asked about the so-called "stages of grief." You may be thinking of the stages of dying first described by the famous Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. Please know that, wonderful as her work in death and dying was, her "stages" model was never meant to be applied to those who are grieving the loss of a loved one.

In Grief: College Student Struggling with Too Many Losses

[Reviewed and updated April 25, 2025]

What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us. ~ Helen Keller

A reader writes: I don't know what to say, what to do, or where to go anymore. I have lost four very good friends within a 10 month time span -- two to death, one to multiple strokes and the other is in a psych institution for the entirety of his life. They were all my good friends, friends I trusted, friends I confided in, friends I did things with; they were all I had, and, now, they are gone. I am lost, sad, alone, and as each and every day goes by I get lonelier and lonelier without them.

Pet Loss: A Young Teen Loses Two Best Friends

Image by ThePixelman from Pixabay 

[Reviewed and updated October 17, 2020]

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.   ~ Hilary Stanton Zunin

A reader writes: I am 13 and recently lost my two best friends: a 19-year-old cat named Sandy, and a 3-year-old Guinea pig named Teddy. Obviously, my cat had been with my family long before I was born. I loved her as I loved a family member, because she was always there with a lick and a purr. Two weeks ago, she stopped breathing and we rushed her to the hospital. We figured she would come out ok and come home but she didn't get better. When I came home from school, I knew that by the look in my mom's eyes, she had to put Sandy to sleep. On Friday, my mom and I buried her with some flowers and a can of her food. Then, just when the huge hole in my heart had just about begun to heal, on fateful Friday, my Guinea pig took sick for the last time.

Caregiving & Grief Tweets, September 8 - September 14, 2019

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:
 
5 Myths about Grief You May Believe, https://j.mp/2NfrYJ3 « Psychology Today

The NIH just appointed a dentist and a biologist to lead the NINR (National Institute of Nursing Research). Non-nurses aren't qualified to evaluate grants for nursing research! Please join in asking the NIH to recall these two appointments and appoint nurses now, https://j.mp/2UQ6CDe « The Truth About Nursing

Chasing My Cure: A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action: After nearly dying five times, a young doctor learned to treat himself, https://bit.ly/2UQLrko « STAT

Understanding and Managing Grief, January 20 - January 26, 2019

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

The Captivating World of Mary Oliver, http://j.mp/2RKw66y « TIME

“Get Over It,” http://j.mp/2ROTXC0 « Grief Compass

I Died Too, http://j.mp/2RLpipk « Better Not Bitter Widower

Understanding and Managing Grief, December 30 - January 5, 2019

Best selections from Grief Healing's Twitter stream this week:

'Mary Poppins Returns' Is a Subtle Exploration of Grief,  http://j.mp/2BWWdfU  « The Atlantic

When a Loved One is Dying: The Unspoken Emotions and Impact of Grief, http://j.mp/2BZ6Z5u « PSYCOM

Hospice of the Valley offers support in Fountain Hills, http://j.mp/2C2HQqe  « Fountain Hills Times

In Grief: When Sorrow Is Delayed

[Reviewed and updated May 18, 2025]

My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.  ~ William Shakespeare

A reader writes: Hello I lost my mum 3 yrs ago, she died suddenly of a heart attack at 41 yrs. I was 19 at the time and had suffered the loss of a friend 7 months prior to mum’s death, as well as the separation with the father of my 14 month old son. After mum died my son, younger sister and i had to move 5 times that year until we were granted government housing. After that, life just kept going and so did i. I feel i have a lot of delayed grief which i wish desperately not to keep bottled up. If you could help me out by sending me some helpful info i would be so very grateful.

In Grief: Coping with Deaths "Close Enough to Hurt"

Find a more recent version of this post here:

In Grief: Coping with Traumatic Loss

A reader writes: For the sixth night in a row I can't sleep. Last Monday a friend of mine was killed in a car accident. Her three children were in the car, the nine and eleven year old were perfectly fine, in fact just scratched. Her four year old was severely injured and helicoptered to another hospital. She died the next day. Mother and child were buried together in one casket. She was a friend from the past, but we had parted ways over the years. She still had a close relationship with my sister, and my niece and her eleven year old are close friends. This was not a death I would consider very close to me, although close enough to hurt. Anyway, I've become so paranoid I can't sleep.