Do you ever get an intuitive feeling, a little voice in your head, that tells you to do something, say something, that is completely out of your comfort zone? Have you ever acted on that feeling? Maybe you should, says Bill Hart, in this short but compelling video — Shoulder Taps.
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Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
First Person
As an experienced traveler in this journey of grief, I have many unwelcome visitors: doubt, fear, sorrow, remorse, anger and guilt, to name a few. But the one visitor that seems to plague me the most, the one that has been the most successful in binding me up, the one that has been the most tenacious and unwelcome, is loneliness.
Lynne Goldklang is a psychotherapist, writer and a grateful member of a HOPE bereavement group.
“I don’t think of all the misery but of all the beauty that remains.” — Anne Frank
Lynne Goldklang’s article, The Transformative Power Of Collateral Beauty, originally appeared one year ago. In light of the terrible fires plaguing the greater Los Angeles area, we invite you to reread her article with fresh eyes. Discovering collateral beauty has the power to soothe aching souls already dealing with grief of their own. — HOPE Connection
Many of you reading this may not only be grieving the death of a beloved person but in emotional pain if you live in Los Angeles or nearby communities where the wildfires have left death, destruction and tremendous loss. The situation is horrendous. Yet as you watch the news, there will also be stories of incredible deeds as well as mini miracles: the man who found his wedding ring in the rubble of his destroyed house, neighbors helping neighbors to evacuate, so many opening up homes to those who need a place to stay, the teen whose house was destroyed who collected needed supplies for others from all over the country, the animal rescue facility comforting and treating injured animals — hundreds of sacred acts of goodness and love.
This is the story of how I first came to appreciate the power and healing nature of these sacred acts.
By Jeff Kober Jeff Kober has spent much of the last 30 years studying metaphysics and meditation, traveling extensively in India. In 2007 he began to teach Vedic meditation, and writes a daily Vedic Meditation. Visit his website Jeff Kober Meditation. The pain that we feel at the loss of someone in our life is a given. Where once there was another human…
This trip to Italy was my first real test of myself: to see if I could still travel, without my husband Marvin, and still enjoy traveling on my own. Since Marvin died, I had traveled abroad to see family but not as a tourist, and this was going to be “it.”
Grief can best be described as an unpredictable weather condition. For anyone who’s visited the Caribbean, it’s like one of those storms that comes out of nowhere. Imagine lying out on the beach, letting the sun rays penetrate your melanin with a cocktail in one hand, eyes closed, and head tilted toward the sun. Then you open your eyes and see the storm clouds. Before you can collect your vacation read and beach bag, there’s a downpour. There’s no way to escape it, you’re in the storm. While you don’t know when it will end, it’s a common enough occurrence that you know it will pass. This scenario encapsulates my relationship with grief. I often don’t know when it’s coming. I’m suddenly hit with a wave of emotion – sometimes, it knocks me down, but I always get back up.
“Your loss was different,” my 97-year-old aunt Adair said. “You still had a lot of life ahead together when you lost Richard. Herb was 96 when he died.”
I felt a swell of emotion in response. The casual way she said it made the comment hit home like the obvious fact it was, one that hadn’t quite registered with me before so clearly.
Following the death of her husband of 26 years in May of 2017, Marianne Simon began Poetic Plantings Publishing as a “the first step in the journey of all that I am still becoming.” They call it that – “the year of firsts.” The implication is that it will be a painful year of all the landmarks you will survive without your…
Grief is a journey, and each person’s journey is unique. Michael F. DuBois had a close relationship with his mother, and when she died when he was 22 he found that he was lost in his grief, seemingly unable to move on. That led him to produce this film, an exploration of his mother’s life and the impact it had on the…
I wrote this short poem about a month after my brother died:
My grief is like an ocean swell
rolling toward shore.
It rises but never breaks.
It came to me while sitting quietly during a yoga class, breathing deeply. There were swells of grief but no tears. The stillness helped me put words to my feelings. I had cried when he died, but then it subsided. Too quiet. Where was my grief?