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Healing After Loss


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I am reading a wonderful little book Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman and must share today’s thought with someone. I hope it helps.

It begins with a quote from William Shakespeare:

“Everyone can master a grief but he that has had it”

Basically the message is that “we don’t need to take seriously the comments of probably well-meaning but ignorant folk who imply that we are being indulgent or weak in not “getting over it by now” whether “now” is six months or six years after the loss has occurred.”

There is no need to feel bad or weak or abnormal if we still feel the pain of our loss when others feel we should “get over it”.

There is “no need to apologize if after many months we are still finding grief a major pre-occupation.”

And there is nothing to be ashamed of if a special memory of our loved one reduces us to tears a very long time after our loss.

I have found this book of daily readings to be of great comfort to me.

It has helped me survive one day at a time.

Like the daily book readings, some days are better than others.

unsure.gifEDIT July 7th I do "warn" you that some readings are very difficult to comprehend such as the one that suggests that some people "enjoy" prolonging their grief to gain sympathy from others or another that suggests that we "rejoice" when we meet others who share grief.

Perhaps there are some who do so. While I personally do get some comfort from others here who share their losses I can't imagine "rejoicing" with them.

Overall, I can still recommend the book, but it is not perfect!

Kindest Regards,

Walt C.

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Does this make any sense to anyone that reads these postings?

"For we have shared many griefs, but they are translated into pure love and rejoicing when we meet" - May Sarton

Today's reading suggests that when we find someone with whom we have shared grief we are filled with love and rejoicing unsure.gif

What am I missing here???

While I gain comfort from sharing with others I cannot imagine "rejoicing" about anyone else's grief/loss.

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My dear Walt,

Perhaps it's just the way I am interpreting it, but I read this to mean how we might feel if and when we are reunited with our loved ones who have died -- whether that is in a dream, through a vision or some other mystical experience, or even after we ourselves have died.

Just this morning I read this statement by noted author and bereaved mother Sandy Goodman (her 18-year-old son Jason was accidentally killed when he was electrocuted; she writes of her experiences in Love Never Dies: A Mother's Journey from Loss to Love; visit her Web site Love Never Dies.)

My girlfriend told me that there are people who would say that there is something wrong with me if she were to tell them that I feel joy when I think of Jason. She said that they would not understand how I could feel good when I have lost my son. I say it isn't about feeling good or feeling sad. It is about knowing that I have not lost him.

[source: Love Never Dies Newsletter by Sandy Goodman, May/June/July 2005]

In the same newsletter issue, Sandy included this poem by Deb Kosmer of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Says Sandy: “As you will guess by what you feel when you read her poems, Deb has a bit of experience with loss. Because of that experience, she is also a Bereavement Support Coordinator.” When I read Deb's poem, I thought of you and what you posted this morning:

HOPE

Hope like love is a 4 letter word.

When you died I was afraid

Your love went with you.

And I thought hope had left me too.

I was alone and in pain

Thinking of you

Missing you

Screaming for you

Then one day I felt your love

And it was like you were still here

And hope returned, I felt it

And I knew it was real

Like your love for me

Was still real

I smiled knowing

That our love survived

And knew that

I’d survive.

Wishing you peace and healing,

Marty T

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Thanks Marty - your interpretation makes good sense to me.

I certainly would rejoice seeing/sensing my Jean once again. smile.gif

The short article that I read seemed to refer to rejoicing with others who had also suffered a loss.

Perhaps it implied that those others had also felt a contact/presence with the one's they had lost.

Kindest regards,

Walt C.

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