To most of us it is incomprehensible that our children will die before we do—no matter what age they die (although the impact will be different)! (It is the order of nature to expect elderly people to die first. The death of a younger person disrupts this order.) If your friend is a parent who […]

People often say that they could never cope with the death of a child—but they can! Grieving for a child (whether an infant, teenager or an adult) is severe, complicated and long lasting (it often lasts for years and leaves the grievers fearing for their sanity—some people never reach the closure stage as in other […]

If you are a couple grieving the death of your child, know that couples often have opposite grieving styles (a person’s style usually operates somewhere between avoidance and immersion): ·If one is immersed in work, the other is disorganized ·If one avoids things that trigger memories, the other dwells on them ·If one talks about […]

  I’d like to think that what I’ve written will be a comfort or will help someone to not feel so alone in grief. Maybe part of my lesson in all of this is to always offer an ear to someone even when I don’t know if they need it and to sort of “check […]

When I was grieving for my sister, Cindy, I was blessed to have time with wonderful people who supported me, who listened to my heartache, who cried with me and who uplifted me in some of my darkest moments. There were countless times when I was alone with my despair and countless times when I […]

When my sister, Cindy James, died, I found it hard to believe it was a reality—I was in shock and bathed in numbness, disbelief, denial (and eventually acceptance). When the numbness wore off I felt intense emotional pain and gut-wrenching emptiness (and it was scary) but I learned this was a natural, common, and healthy […]

  During my grieving, as I took a step and experienced a specific emotion (such as anger over the injustices bestowed upon Cindy and myself), I was learning something about myself, and growing and slowly healing and moving forward. Later on I revisited that anger for further healing but with a slightly different perspective with […]

During the processes of working through grief and writing the book, Who Killed My Sister, My Friend, I was awakened to a different level of awareness. My senses were heightened. I saw through different eyes. I was experiencing the darkness of humanity and existence yet I was opened up to the beauty around me! There […]

  I know some people think they are protecting their child by not talking about a death (as happened in my family when my brother-in-law died when I was 12), but that adds to the child’s fears because they think it is so horrible it can’t be talked about. And it is really important to […]

Children, unlike adults, grieve sporadically (they cry for a while and then they want to play—their overt sadness can appear short-lived, or they may appear indifferent, unaffected, or perhaps even callous) because it is hard for them to tolerate intense sadness or anger. They tend initially to deny and avoid experiencing the loss. Their experience […]