"dilbert firestorm" <scanb31@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:iO2dnUVKV9axoL3VnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> anyone know what to do handle grief?
>
> my dad died in late February 2008 and my mom misses him and has crying
> spells.
>
> my grandmother who's 93 isn't really helping with my mom handle the
grief
> as there is a bit of long running drama between the two. (not exactly
the
> favorite daughter one would expect of a mother)
>
> I try my best, but I don't know what to do ease her pain.
>
> does grief counseling be of any help for my mom?
Yes, provided she gets it from someone who knows what they're talking
about.
There's an awful lot of well-intended charlatanism out there.
The first -- VERY first thing I would suggest is grabbing a copy of THE
GRIEF RECOVERY HANDBOOK by John James and Russell Friedman. It's
available
just about anywhere, or through the Grief Recovery Institute's website,
www.grief.net, which I also highly recommend.
My memoir of my wife's illness and the aftermath of her death is coming
out
next year. I journaled in detail the grieving process (mine, that is --
EVERYONE's is different). I can give you lots of advice, but the truth
is,
virtually everything worthwhile I learned came from THE GRIEF RECOVERY
HANDBOOK and a three-day workshop I took with its authors. (They have
these
all over the country, virtually every week.) In the first few months
after
my wife's death, if it had not been for my two-year-old daughter, I don't
think I'd have cared to go on with life. I was highly resistant to the
idea
of grief therapy. I believed all the old lines about "it just takes
time,"
and all the actually harmful recommendations that I distract myself or
that
I comfort myself with the realization that I still had my daughter, or
that
my wife was in a better place, etc., etc., all of which are inadvertent
means of avoiding the fact that the griever is in present pain and needs
help now. We don't tell people with broken legs to get involved in some
activity to take their minds off it, or "hey, at least you've got one
unbroken leg." But we tell people they either shouldn't feel bad or that
they should pretend they don't.
The Grief Recovery Handbook and workshops were miraculously effective for
me, and seem to have been for thousands of people. As I said, I was
extremely reluctant to get involved in such a thing, or even to take
"expert" advice of any kind. I'd tough it out, I thought. But I was
singularly fortunate in that one of the leaders of that group just
happened
to be my wife's uncle. He didn't pressure me to take the workshop, but he
kept pointing out errors in my approach to my situation to the point that
I
suddenly realized that he was saying one thing after another that helped,
and no one else was. I read the book and took the workshop, and I swear
that if my own mother were teaching a grief workshop and it were not
effective, I would not say this on her behalf: the Grief Recovery program
was a miracle. It didn't cure anything. It simply made everything
livable,
understandable, and for the very first time since my wife died, I was able
to think of her with joy, with pleasure, to revel in the good times we'd
had
without constantly falling into the pain of loss.
When we lose someone we love, the grief comes from two aspects: our loss
of
the loved one's presence, and the incomplete or unresolved nature of the
relation****p. I will always miss my wife, but the recovery process I went
through allowed me to resolve and complete my relation****p with her, so
that
guilt, anger, resentment, all the things we rarely resolve with even those
we love most, no longer smothered my relation****p with her, and I was
left -- I promise you -- I was left with the joy of having had her in my
life and instead of an agonizing hole in my heart, simply an ache of
missing
her. Pain returns, of course, but one of the great things about the
program
outlined in the book is the tool it gives you to work through those
recurrences. Nowadays, more than four years after Cecily's death, I still
sometimes break into tears, but before things get dangerously painful,
there
are a couple of things I say to her and, without fail, I'm able to move
back
into a space of being grateful for having had her and being joyful in my
memories.
An awful lot of damage has been done by well-meaning people who don't
understand the process of grieving. I'm the last guy in the world to
proselytize for anything, but I give my unqualified recommendation to the
guys at the Grief Recovery Institute. I feel like I owe them my life.
I've
recommended their book and their program to dozens of people, and every
single one of them who has followed up on the recommendation has told me
they had the same results I had. I hope you give it some thought.
Jim Beaver
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