If you do a music app or some type of music download service that allows you to build a playlist, consider building one that will support your grief journey. Music can be therapeutic and having a playlist like this can help you grieve appropriately. Yes, listening to some of these songs will bring a tear to your eye but they’ll … Continue reading →
There are signs of dying when a loved-one is struggling with a terminal disease or for whatever reason is at the end of their life. People don’t die in real life as they do in the movies. Hollywood often portrays death as a split second closing of the eyes while the person is speaking in mid-sentence. Dying isn’t so clean … Continue reading →
When a loved one dies, the love that you’ve had for them or with them does not die. Love and the relationship that you have had does not die with the person. You still carry that love with you and that is the reason you are grieving the loss. With the person no longer available for you to express your … Continue reading →
In the process of grieving, there is no time frame assigned or one-size fits all approach to assure a healthy grieving process. There are elements to healthy grieving that one can be intentionally incorporate into their grieving experience, and that is what I want to share here. I want to share some objectives to aim for as you move forward … Continue reading →
I want to address a topic that I find myself dealing with from time to time as a hospital chaplain and that is notifying children of a family death. It is not uncommon for children to be shielded from the condition of a dying parent or family member in the hospital. An unresponsive patient with breathing tubes and monitor wires … Continue reading →
In her 1969 book, “On Death and Dying,” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss American psychiatrist, introduced us to what we now know as five stages of grief. When she originally penned these stages they were called the five stages of death. At the time, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was working with terminally ill patients and she cited these five emotions as what were … Continue reading →
Previously I shared a post on Styles of Grief but here I want to share a post on Types of Grief. I’m taking my lead from several sources that have referenced multiple types of grief. So I am going to yield to their wisdom, and am going to use the terms used by Liz Kelly, a licensed social worker in … Continue reading →
Sitting with families who are hearing the bad news of a loved-ones death is a near daily occurrence for me, as a hospital chaplain at a trauma center. Since transferring to this trauma hospital and having this regular occurrence of witnessing people’s reaction to a death notification, my curiosity of grief styles has gripped my interest. The way people respond … Continue reading →
It wasn’t long into my hospital chaplaincy career that I figured out that physicians do not like notifying a family that their patient loved-one has died. I’m mainly referring to a patient who has come into the Emergency Department because of a trauma like a motor vehicle crash or a cardiac arrest. Typically the family of these patients are led … Continue reading →
One of the saddest things for me to witness is a person who is nearing the end of their days without any spiritual strength to draw from. It’s something I’ve seen many times in my pastoral and hospital chaplaincy ministry. An individual is facing death but having no spiritual strength in them their emotional stress is compounded with spiritual distress. … Continue reading →
Here in America, we have close to 50,000 people a year who die by suicide. The majority of whom were struggling with a mental illness, either a diagnosed condition or acknowledged depression. Think of this, a person has to be in a very low state of mind to actually take their own life. So whether a person is on mental … Continue reading →