On Grief, Healing and Resilience

[Note: Originally published in November, 2009, this post was updated on April 16, 2025]

Billed as “the largest and most dynamic gathering of women in the nation,” the California Women’s Conference launched its website in July 2009, as a way to extend the power and reach of the conference.  The 2009 conference included very moving talks by Katie Couric on Resilience and Maria Shriver on Grieving, as well as a Panel on Grief, Healing and Resilience.

Katie Couric's husband died in 1997 after a 9-month battle with colon cancer; her sister died four years after that. In her presentation, she described how she managed to find meaning after both these devastating losses, along with her struggles to "make it" in a man's world of broadcast journalism, all the while relying on her father's advice simply to "do your best."

When this conference was held in 2009, Maria Shriver was California's First Lady, wife of Governor Arnold Schwartzenager, and producer of the conference. She presented herself a bereaved daughter and niece, as both her mother (Eunice Shriver) and her uncle (Teddy Kennedy) had died within a few months of this event. She spoke vividly and movingly about her grief ("Every moment of every day I can feel my broken heart") and the pain of losing her mother ("My mother's death has brought me to my knees. Life without my mother is unimaginable to me.")

Moderated by Maria Shriver, the panel featured bereaved parents Elizabeth Edwards (now deceased ex-wife of Senator John Edwards), Susan St. James (actress and wife of NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol) and Lisa Niemi (widow of Patrick Swazye). Topics ranged from coping with anticipatory grief, letting go, feelings of disloyalty and guilt, grief triggers, and dealing with the insensitivity of others, to finding hope and making meaning out of loss. Their stories were powerful, compelling, uplifting and filled with hope. Watch Good Morning America’s brief overview of the panel presentation on YouTube: Women Dealing with Grief.

Engage With Grace, 2009

Some conversations are easier than others.

Last Thanksgiving weekend, many bloggers participated in the first documented blog rally to promote Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes.

It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations – our closest friends and family.

Our original mission – to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes – hasn’t changed. But it’s been quite a year – so we thought this holiday, we’d try something different.

A bit of levity.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important.

To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:

Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this – just five questions in plain, simple language – can deflate some of the complexity, formality, and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion.

So with that, we’ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.

Over the past year there’s been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we’ve been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.

One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife’s preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.

Wishing you and yours a holiday that’s fulfilling in all the right ways.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )

Advance Directives

[Reviewed and updated March 28, 2022]

In a segment entitled The Cost of Dying, 60 Minutes featured Ira Byock, MD, palliative care physician and author of the acclaimed books Dying Well and The Four Things That Matter Most. In this New Health Dialogue Blog post, Dr. Byock offers his thoughts on advance directives, arguing that physicians should be discussing these matters with all their adult patients, “whether these conversations are reimbursable or not.” See Health Care: Time for a Serious Discussion.

Your feedback is welcome! Please feel free to leave a comment or a question, or share a tip, a related article or a resource of your own in the Comments section below.

If you’d like Grief Healing Blog updates delivered right to your inbox, you’re cordially invited to subscribe to our weekly Grief Healing Newsletter. Sign up here. 

© by Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT, BC-TMH

An Invitation to Widowed Persons, from Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation

"Kick off the holiday season with hope by spending some time with Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation! We are planning parties in four different states to celebrate YOU! Widowed? Not looking forward to the holidays? Love someone who is widowed? Not sure how to help? Want to be inspired by the power of hope, and support a worthwhile cause at the same time? Join us at one of four uniquely fabulous locations, for great food, festive drinks, live music, silent auctions to get a jump on some gifts, support the programs of SSLF, and start the season off with a festive good time! Events will be held in: Los Angeles, CA 12/2 at 8:00PM. Austin, TX, 12/2 at 6:00PM, Seattle, WA 12/3 at 6:00PM, and Tribeca, NY 12/5 at 6:00PM. Send inquiry to contact@sslf.org for event details in your area!"

Research Report: An Internet Tool to Normalize Grief

Researchers have studied the usefulness of an Internet-based self-help tool, Making Sense of Grief, which they designed to inform, educate and support recently bereaved individuals experiencing normal grief. Results suggest that the intervention had a measurable positive impact on the participants, with no ill effects noted during follow-up interviews. The study points to “the positive potential of the Internet to assist the bereaved in normalizing their grief and enhancing adaptive adjustment to life without the deceased.” [Dominick S, Irvine A, Beauchamp N , Seeley J, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Doka K and Bonanno G. An internet tool to normalize grief. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying. Vol. 60(1), 71-87, 2009-2010.]

Web Site: The Eldercare Support Group

Caring for her aging father is what inspired Shelley Webb to develop The Eldercare Support Group,  along with her blog and bi-weekly newsletter, Taking Care of the Folks.  Using her own experience as a care giver as well as her education and training as a registered nurse, Shelley offers encouragement, empathy, education and effective strategies to enrich the lives of others caring for elder loved ones.  Included are helpful articles addressing various aspects of care-giving for the elderly, including self-care, money and legal issues as well as activities and health.  Visitors are welcome to subscribe to her (free) bi-weekly e-zine and download her special report, 12 Things You MUST Do To Stay Healthy and Sane While Caring for Your Aging Parents.   “You and I are on the same journey,” Shelley tells her visitors, “and together we can find the joy in caring for our loved one.”

Web Site: The Heartlight Tree

Carla Blowey, bereaved mother and author of Dreaming Kevin: The Path to Healing, invites you to send an ornament in memory of a child who has died, to be placed on The Heartlight Tree this holiday season. This is an opportunity to let your lovelight shine, for your own child or for any child who has died and blessed your life. To learn how you can share your lovelight, visit The Heartlight Tree.

Article about Abandonment and Grief

Having recently learned of the death of the mother who abandoned her in early childhood, a woman asks, “Where is a grief support group for me?” Mother Loss And The Grief of Abandonment

Interview, Are We Medicating Normal Grief?

[Reviewed and updated March 10, 2026]

In this informative interview with Open to Hope founders Drs. Heidi and Gloria Horsley, Dr. Richard Dew discusses the potential overuse of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication in grief. Speaking from his own experience not only as a physician but also as a bereaved parent himself, Dr. Dew notes that

• While the sorrow of grief is normal and to be expected, studies indicate that clinical depression is likely to occur in only 30-35% of bereaved parents; the other 70% will not experience the type of depression that calls for prescribed medication.

• Doctors should avoid prescribing antidepressants and anti-anxiety agents for newly bereaved parents, at least for the first 2-3 months following the death of a child. After that, if symptoms warrant it, a trial may be indicated – with the understanding that medication will not remove the grief; it only makes it more bearable.

• Studies show that 13% of those with a prior history of clinical depression will develop depression following the death of a child.

• Indications for antidepressant medication include inability to function and / or a history of depression prior to the death of a child.

• The newer antidepressant medications are far safer than their predecessors; they are neither addictive, nor lethal if taken as an overdose.

• Bereaved parents are wise to look for a counselor or therapist who is knowledgeable about and experienced in working with normal grief.

Listen to the entire interview here: Where Sadness Ends and Depression Begins

Your feedback is welcome! Please feel free to leave a comment or a question, or share a tip, a related article or a resource of your own in the Comments section below. If you’d like Grief Healing Blog updates delivered right to your inbox, you’re cordially invited to subscribe to our weekly Grief Healing Newsletter. Sign up here.

Related:

• 11 Common Depression Symptoms
• Antidepressants and Complicated Grief by Robert Neimeyer
• Are We Over-Diagnosing Mental Illness? by Katti Gray
• Bereavement and Snorting Seaweed by Joanne Caccitore
• Coming Off Antidepressants via Harvard Health
• Depression vs. Sadness by Caitlin Goodwin
• Doing Harm: The Human Cost of Turning Mourning Into a Disorder by Richard Sears
• Do You Have Grief or Depression? by Ruth Clark
• Grief and Depression: Are They Different? by Elaine Mansfield
• Grief Combined with Depression May Need Extra Medical Help by Carol Bradley Bursack
• Grief vs. Depression by Kelly Buckley
• Grief vs. Depression: Which Is It? by Nancy Schimelpfening
• Grieving and Depression by Robert Neimeyer
• I Am Feeling Crazy. Do I Need Psychotherapy? via Open to Hope
• Normal Grief vs Depression via Grief Compass
• Take It from This Physician: Beware The Dangers of Benzodiazepines by Christy Huff, MD
• The Two Worlds of Grief and Depression by Ronald Pies, MD
• The Value of Sadness by Lisa Firestone
• Using Antidepressants to Manage Acute, Normal Grief by Marty Tousley
• When and How to Use Medicine for Grief by Richard Dew, MD
• When Does Grief Become Mental Illness? by Joseph Nowinski
• When It's Grief, Not Depression by Susan Casey

© by Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT 

Web Site: Custom Crafted Songs

Psychologist and award-winning singer/songwriter Anna Huckabee Tull enables mourners to give voice to their grief through beautiful custom-crafted songs of love and loss. Following an in-person or telephone interview during which she captures the essence of the person’s message and story, Anna reviews with her client the lyrics and rough-cut recording. Upon completion of the process (which takes from 3 to 6 weeks), the client receives a studio-recorded CD of the song, a lyric sheet, an originally designed and signed CD cover with lyrics, and coaching “on making your most successful ‘presentation’ of the song.” Anna's Web site, Custom Crafted Songs also features the Song of the Month, where you can listen to her songs, view the lyrics, and read the stories behind the songs.