Understanding and Managing Grief, September 1 - September 30, 2025

Best selections from Grief Healing's X feed this month:

Most people expect to feel better after that first year of bereavement, as if they've reached some sort of significant milestone in their grief journey. Unfortunately, this is another of those myths about grief that simply does not hold true. If you assume that grief will ease as the second year begins, you may soon discover that in many ways it seems much harder now than it did before. You may find yourself feeling even worse ~ and that can seem very unsettling. Beyond the First Year: Struggling with New Waves of Grief « Grief Healing

Beyond the First Year: Struggling with New Waves of Grief

Consequences follow when we force people to use a universal roadmap for grieving, and then judge those who do not follow it as wrong or sick. We deny the normality of grief. We deny the differences in our grieving experiences. We deny people the freedom to grieve. ~ Nancy Berns

If you find yourself (or someone you know) struggling with new waves of grief after having reached the one year mark, you are not alone. A woman whose husband died 15 months ago described her experience this way:

Myths and Misconceptions about Grief

 . . . just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.  ~ Humphrey Carpenter

Loss is a fact of life, and so are the reactions that follow, but the grief that accompanies significant loss is frequently misunderstood.

Here are some of the more commonly held myths and misconceptions about grief, along with the facts to dispel them:

When someone dies, grief is felt only by that person’s family members and friends. In reality, grief is felt by anyone with an emotional attachment to the deceased, whether we know the person well or not. As we saw with the deaths of Charlie Kirk and Robert Redford, for example, we may mourn for public figures we like or respect and admire, even though we’ve never met them personally.

Grief is what we feel only when our loved one dies. Grief is a normal response to the experience of loss of any kind, including unusual and secondary losses. Such grief often goes unrecognized and unacknowledged. (Examples include disenfranchised losses such as loss of a cherished pet, and losses stemming from major life transitions such as graduation, moving, marriage or divorce, job loss, incarceration, disability or alteration in health status.)

In Grief: Finding Crying Time

Sorrows which find no vent in tears may soon make other organs weep. ~ Sir Henry Maudsley

A reader writes: My sister has been very sick and only recently recovered from a serious illness, thank goodness. Thursday will be three months since my big brother died. And last night I found myself crying—really crying—for the first time. Maybe it’s because I can breathe a little easier now that my sister is more out of the woods. I've always been a caretaker. I've always put everyone I love before myself. I did that for my big brother when he was alive. And I'm doing it for my sister. I couldn't save my big brother, just as I couldn't save our father. I cried for a good couple of hours last night. My husband tried to console me, but either I just wouldn't allow it, or he was doing it wrong. I don't know really. All I know is that my big brother is gone and I'm having a hard time with his loss. He was my big brother and meant the world to me. His passing is hitting me hard.

End of Life Care for Companion Animals

All we animal lovers ever want is to do the best for our animal. When it comes to dying, what is best can be more complex than euthanizing. There is a way to come to peace with the dying process and discover its life enriching value. Animals can teach us about this if we let them. ~ Ella Bittel, Holistic Veterinarian

Coping with the terminal illness of a cherished animal companion presents the same challenges to an animal lover as would anticipating of the death any other family member. Today hospice and palliative care for human beings provides a much needed service to the dying and to those who care for them, but finding such support for a beloved animal close to the end of life can be more difficult.

Reflecting a growing trend toward allowing companion animals a natural death at home, the concept of providing hospice and palliative care for our four-legged friends is similar to that offered for people. The focus is the same: on providing safety and comfort care in loving, familiar surroundings, rather than on aggressive treatment and cure in a hospital setting. Animal hospice is based on a belief that, with proper preparation and guidance for everyone involved, symptoms can be managed, pain can be controlled, and death can be experienced with dignity and compassion. In this way, pet hospice can be an effective alternative to euthanasia.

On A Personal Note

They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them.  ~ A. A. Milne

To all my clients, colleagues, readers and visitors:

On the morning of Saturday, July 13, still feeling weak from the robotic hernia surgery I’d had 3 weeks earlier, I stood at my bedside helping my husband make our bed. In an instant and without warning, I suddenly lost my balance and fell to the floor. It was a hard fall onto my left side, and I knew immediately that something was seriously wrong. The pain was excruciating, and as I lay there unable and unwilling to move, my husband called for an ambulance. The EMTs got me onto a gurney, into their vehicle and on to the Emergency Department, where I was examined and evaluated.

Xrays revealed dislocation of the hip replacement hardware inside the bone, and fractures on both sides of my left femur, which would require admission to the hospital for surgery the next day, July 14.

Loss and The Grief of Abandonment

A reader writes: I was recently informed that my mother has died, and I am grieving. My mother left me when I was a little girl. It hurt. I denied it for 40 years. So far I have attended two different bereavement groups. Both are filled with people who are grieving a loved one. I am not. I do not have a string of memories of our times together to talk about: how she taught me how to bake a pie, helped me plan my wedding, helped me through my divorce, paid for college, took care of my kids while I met my second husband, etc. I do not fit into those groups. They are grieving such a beautiful memory that I’m afraid I will poison their precious period of grief if they hear my story of abandonment. I didn’t have a mother to maintain kinship ties with an extended family. I had an evil stepfather who was remote and distant and lied to me about why my mom was gone: “She left you.”  Read on here >>>

In Grief: Doing The Work of Mourning

If I think of the real work of grief as doing whatever I can to keep my heart open, to feel and to face every stitch of both pain and love, without somehow abandoning myself in the process, well – that’s “work” I can get behind. That’s work I understand. ~ Megan Devine

A reader writes: It has been a year and 3 months since my best friend died. I think I've moved thru alot of the intensity of my grief and now what I feel left with is something similar to the wreckage after a train wreck. I feel so afraid...so removed from the person I used to be. I am not myself...my old self. I kinda expected that, but I feel so unmoved by life right now. Nothing seems to thrill me...in fact everything seems to be a struggle to do.

Understanding and Managing Grief, June 1 - June 30, 2025

Best selections from Grief Healing's X feed this month:

Pet loss can be just as devastating as the loss of a human loved one. Some say it is even worse. Studies like this can help to validate this experience—and shed light on how people cope, grow, and honor their special bond. For anyone who has grieved a pet, you’re not alone. What It’s Like to Lose a Pet: 4 Lessons About How We Grieve « Psychology Today

In Grief: Finding Support That Is Right for You

The human organism knows how to heal itself, once it knows its symptoms are normal.  ~ Gail Sheey, in New Passages

Reaching out to others is often very difficult when we’re struggling with grief, but experience teaches us that the more support and understanding we have around us, the better we will cope.

You may wish that friends, family and co-workers would just “be there” for you without your having to ask, but that’s not likely to happen. It’s not that these people are uncaring; there simply is no way for them to fully understand the significance of your loss and the depth of your pain. Unfortunately your friends, family members and co-workers may not fully understand or appreciate the attachment you have with the one who has died and the pain you may still be feeling weeks and months after the death. What is more, your need to talk about your loss may outlast the willingness of others to listen.

If you find yourself in this position, please know that you have a number of helpful alternatives available to you.