Grief and Loss: Insight and Helping Those Who Are Grieving
We all experience some sort of loss in our lives. The experience is different for everyone. It is so easy for some of us to forget what that pain was like and for others, they never forget.
Loss & Grief: Grieving as a teenager
Although loss is a universal experience, there are considerable differences in how people grieve- this is especially true with teenagers. Although teenagers are aware of the emotional impact and long term implications of losing someone close to them, their reactions to death are often very intense.
Anticipatory Grief
Most of us know what it feels like to lose a loved one to a terminal illness. Grief is unpredictable and loss can feel like white noise or earth-shattering pain. Living with a parent, partner or child diagnosed with a terminal illness literally rips the ground from beneath our feet. Knowing how, but not how much longer, can take us on a journey of acceptance, denial, depression, indescribable fear and complete dissociation from the current reality. Loss, no matter the circumstances, is life altering.
Grief Beyond Grief: A Dive into Secondary Loss
. In our lives, a loss, such as the death of a loved one, serves as the pebble in our pond. When we lose something or someone significant to us, the grieving process does not end with the mourning of that singular loss. Rather, the singular loss triggers a chain of events known as secondary losses, which often cause us to feel as if we've lost everything and that the sorrow will never end.
The “other losses” we are enduring in the pandemic
We have been living in a changed world for nearly 2 years. The Covid-19 pandemic has been around for 2 years and has changed our lives in many ways. During this pandemic, we have suffered major losses such as the loss of family and friends, however, we have also suffered a wave of other losses.
Children facing death during the COVID pandemic
Death is one of the hardest topics to talk to your child about, especially when you are dealing with grief yourself. It is an inevitable topic that you won’t be able to dismiss, especially not during a pandemic where illness & death numbers are all around. It is an inescapable part of life, which your child will want to understand.
And then you were gone… The grief journey
Losing someone that you love is not something that can be easily be described in words to another person. Whether it was expected or unexpected – in a single moment life changes. Never to return to what it was. The person that you loved, lived, laughed and fought with, is suddenly just gone. Reduced to photographs, “can-you still-remembers-?”, and a few personal belongings.