Happy New Year to all our friends from HOPE Connection! The words from this blessing read:A New Year’s BlessingMay God make your year a happy one!Not by shielding you from all sorrows and pain, But by strengthening you to bear it, as it comes;Not by making your path easy,But by making you sturdy to travel any path;Not by taking hardships from you,But by…
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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
Music has the power to heal and help you find peace. Steve McPeters, a friend of HOPE Connection and a member of the band, Cadoan, composed a beautiful song called “There’s A Flame,” which is both healing and peaceful. It was featured in the award-winning documentary “Inside Peace,” which documented a workshop that began in a Texas prison and helped prisoners transform their lives.To listen…
Not long ago I learned that a very good friend’s husband was hit by a bus and left in critical condition only to pass away shortly after. He was a great man with a sweet soul and a gentle nature. He loved his animals, his wife, and kids, and seemed to always have a smile for you when in his presence. When…
I am alone and lonely with no one to turn to. Often I am afraid when thinking of my uncertain future… getting old and sick in a hospital or nursing home with no one to hold my hand and comfort me. Could you give me some feedback on this concern. When you get stuck in your fears about the future, you probably…
Laurie Burrows Grad’s husband, Peter, died one month ago. She writes, “The hardest thing about grief is to see life going on. People all around me continue to do their daily routines. The stock market keeps functioning; meteorologists predict the weather; time marches on. I cannot understand how I have lost Peter and the clocks have not stopped.”She also writes about other…
Grief itself can be and usually is overwhelming. Dealing with grief — healing — can be equally daunting. That is why Martha Whitmore Hickman’s beautiful book, Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief, is so valuable. In its very structure — daily meditations — the book gently allows the reader to face a range of emotions in kind and manageable doses,…
Grief is a strange landscape: The world is the same, but you are not. You are still you, but the world is not. Everything has collapsed and gone cockeyed and reassembled in ways that only you can see. Even those who have lost the same person have still lost someone different than you have. It’s easy to feel like Alice, dropped down…
Though it has been discussed many times publicly and privately, it bears repeating from time to time just so that people don’t forget. There are some thoughtless and inappropriate comments that people say to the bereaved because they:
A) Don’t know what to say
B) Don’t think about what they’re saying
C) Are uncomfortable with their own vulnerability
D) Just don’t understand. It is just not part of any experience they have ever had; therefore, they are unable to relate.
When the person closest to you dies, it is not only
Years of companionship, adventure, striving for understanding two souls grew together. The initial natural attraction maturing over the years into deep and lasting love creating a shared identity. We imagined we were in the indian summer of our years. Dreams of an undefined future together hand in hand abruptly ended when one was taken too soon. That loss brings tears.…
Grieving is not an event. It’s a journey that has many faces, facets and layers, many losses within loss. Some will take you by surprise. When your spouse dies, it feels like the pain of that loss is the only thing that you can see, feel and… barely manage. It feels like a deep hole inside that will never heal. You try…