At the Heart of It Sometimes sharing about our grief with others can end up feeling like a competition—who has had the “worst” experience, or who will “win” by giving the “right” answers about how to grieve? This is common and can happen in a variety of ways, and it’s often unintentional. The way to […]
Whose grief is worse: the doctor who loses her patient, or the family who loses their beloved dog? Which situation is harder: a long, debilitating illness, or a sudden accident? What community suffers more: the neighborhood devastated by a hurricane, or the town shocked by a mass shooting? I hear comparisons like these all the […]
“You were so lucky to have her for so long.” Martha was 75 years old when her mother, Rose, died. Rose had just turned 101. Martha’s friends comforted her by saying how lucky Rose was to live so long, and how lucky Martha was to have that time with her. But Martha did not feel […]
Mary Kaminsky was a hospice worker in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and remembers the first patients coming into the facility where she worked. “They didn’t have visitors a,nd their food was brought up on cardboard trays, then thrown into a biohazard bag,” she said on the latest episode of The Grief to […]
Anyone who has had a pet knows the bittersweet reality that in most cases, we will outlive our beloved pets. But just because they have shorter lifespans than we do, doesn’t mean our bonds are any less close and meaningful. And that goes for the grief of losing a pet, too. Experts have shared that […]
None of us can imagine the pain of losing a child until we’ve lived it. But even though this nightmare is a reality for thousands of parents, there is very little research on the grief experience of fathers. We still fall back on old stereotypes as mothers being more bonded to their children and fathers […]
“I didn’t talk to my daughter for more than five years. I didn’t know what hit me. I kept thinking about her and wondering where she was. My granddaughter was born, and I never knew. We are trying to ‘fix’ things now, but it’s different than before. I still miss what we used to have.” […]
