While we all experience grief in slightly different ways, and we may choose different coping methods, there are also commonalities. I’m over at Elephant Journal, talking about 5 things I never expected about grief. 5 Things we Don’t Get about Grief.
Whether it’s because our loved one died violently, or somewhere far away, or their body hasn’t been found, we can’t always see our dead. What happens when we aren’t able to see them? For my family, it meant we searched for my brother. I’m thrilled to have a new post over at the amazing […]
Losing a loved one is always hard. But when you feel like your grief isn’t recognized, isn’t valid, it adds an extra layer of pain. Click below to read more about this on elephant journal. The Specific Qualities of Sibling Grief—How it Morphs & Marks Us.
The death of singer and musician Chris Cornell stirred up my grief around my brother in a big way. It’s beginning to ebb, but that only happened when I untangled some of the threads that his death brought to light. Read more about it here.
If you’ve recently lost someone you love, you probably don’t want to hear that buried beneath the terrible sadness are little gleaming gems. That loss sets us down a different path than we’d hoped for, but that sometimes, if we’re lucky, grief has the power to remake us. I’m not going to say “Everything happens […]
To my child: The months after you were born were tough ones. You cried a lot and slept little. Your assessment of this bright, new world was decidedly unsatisfactory. In between fussing though, you offered just enough syrupy, middle-of-the-night smiles to melt away the challenges and make me want to buy you a pony, or anything […]
Do you ever experience nostalgia so intensely that it has skin? “You will miss your childhood at the strangest moments. Like when you’re 42, and you’re watching your son catch air in the bright February sun. I want to tell you this secret of adulthood, the one that still catches me by surprise.” Read more of […]
Answer the phone or the door, then wish you hadn’t. The news, even if you expected it, will stun you. You will feel as if you’ve left your own body behind too, and are hovering slightly above yourself, watching the scene unfold like some terrible TV movie. Gag. Vomit. Shout No to the person who […]
I loathed the first Christmas after my brother died. I felt like the strands of jewel-toned lights were taunting me, the ads flashing symbols of family and love and togetherness. The tumbling of decades of holiday memories rising in my mind: the time my brother and I secretly opened each other’s gifts weeks before Christmas. […]
Check out my new piece over at the elephant journal. I originally wrote this from the viewpoint of a grieving sibling, but decided to open it up so that more people could relate to it. But my sibling loss people– this is especially for you.