By Fern Lippert, Licensed Marriage Family Therapist Holidays are normally a time of rejoicing, sharing meals with loved ones, and carrying out the family traditions. Unfortunately, this year for many that has changed. A loved one is no longer there and now holidays can be a time of tremendous sadness. It reminds us of what we no longer have. We often wonder, “How…
(818) 788-HOPE (4673)
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Grief Support Groups Serving West Los Angeles, Encino and Agoura Hills
Healing (Page 9)
So you’re feeling too much pain and isolation and decide to join a grief group. Or you simply work up the courage and jump in. Whew! That is not an easy step. No one wants to join this “club.” At first, everyone seems to be more or less in the same boat. It appears that everyone is sad and grieving a huge…
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?
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…
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…
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…
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,
Grief is a natural reaction to death. Grief can be intensified when a death is untimely — when a young person or a child dies. Grief and additional emotions can be doubly intensified and more when a young person dies by suicide.Iris Bolton experienced this first hand when her 20-year-old son, Curtis Mitchell Bolton, died by suicide. She went on to describe her reaction…