Losing a parent is a loss like no other. The loss of a parent and how it impacts our lives can be compared to skipping a stone over water: there are ripples, many of them, and each ripple impacts our lives in a very profound and often discounted way. When we lose a parent we are faced with our own mortality for…
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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
Grief (Page 17)
When you’re grieving, it may feel like you’re in a long gray tunnel that you’ll never get through. It’s depressing, lonely, exhausting and feels endless.
It’s difficult to see the light. It can be frightening to think that you’ll never get through… that your life will remain in the gray.
If you allow yourself to grieve, you will heal. Life, as you knew it, will be changed forever but you will get through. You will have a newly defined life, one that you never asked for, one that you never imagined. This new life can again bring happiness, joy and peace.
How do you know if you’re healing?
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…
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
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…
Since 1979, HOPE Connection, a Los Angeles Grief Support Group, has helped individuals grieve and heal.
When a person’s loved one dies, reality quickly sets in. This is a permanent change, and the process of grieving has only begun. People often approach the person at this stage and offer some advice: “You should check out a grief support group.”
But are grief support groups for everyone? Are all grief support groups alike?
The answer,
There were no words to describe my feelings when my only child, Chris, took his own life. In the beginning there were no words. My soul had been excavated and sent out to sea. Bereft beyond words, in shock and disbelief, only howls of agony escaped my lips. Words were not available for me to utter and words from others could not…
Click here for more information about HOPE Connection’s Parent Loss Groups. The loss of a parent is a unique event, unlike the death of anyone else. When we are an adult and one of our parents dies, we are changed in three fundamental ways. Here is an overview of those changes and advice for grieving this very special loss.