Love and Grief: In Communion and Greater Than the Sum of Their Parts
Love and Grief is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” — Marcus Aurelius When you love another person, it can feel like one plus one equals three. I’m sure […]
Mustering the Courage to Mourn
Take Grief’s Hand Someone you have given love to and received love from has died. You are grieving. You are “bereaved” which literally means you have been “torn apart” and have “special needs.” You are beginning, or are in the midst of, a journey that is painful, often lonely and naturally frightening. Among your most […]
Healing When an Adult Sibling Dies
To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. Your brother or sister has died. […]
Helping Your Family Heal After Stillbirth
Many Share Your Pain… More than two million babies are stillborn worldwide each year, about one in 160 pregnancies. Each baby’s death is a tragedy. Most of the time the baby dies before labor begins, but sometimes the baby dies during labor (about 15 percent). These numbers represent many, many millions of people the world […]
You Must Go Backward Before You Can Go Forward
Going backward through ritual Throughout history, when the import of an event or transition in our lives is more profound than everyday words and actions can capture, we have had the wisdom to turn to ritual. And in our rituals, we often looked backward first—to our ancestors, to our holy or touchstone texts, to our […]
You Must Make Friends with the Darkness Before You Can Enter the Light
A paradox is a seemingly self-contradictory statement or situation that is in fact often true. The paradox of mourning we will consider together in this article might, at first glance, seem self-contradictory, but as I will reveal, it is actually a forgotten Truth with a capital T. It’s a Truth we must rediscover because it […]
You Must Say Hello Before You Say Goodbye
Saying hello to the physical reality of death before you say goodbye In centuries past, our actions and rituals made it clear that we understood the necessity of saying hello to the reality of death. We have always—from the time of Neanderthals, even, anthropologists suggest—honored the body of the person who died through the moment […]
