On May 6, 2:06=A0pm, "Jim Beaver" <jumble...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> Yes, provided she gets it from someone who knows what they're talking
abou=
t.
> 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. =A0It's
availa=
ble
> 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
ou=
t
> next year. =A0I journaled in detail the grieving process (mine, that is
--=
=A0
> EVERYONE's is different). =A0I 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. =A0(They have
t=
hese
> all over the country, virtually every week.) =A0In the first few months
af=
ter
> 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. =A0I was highly resistant to
the =
idea
> of grief therapy. =A0I believed all the old lines about "it just takes
tim=
e,"
> and all the actually harmful recommendations that I distract myself or
tha=
t
> I comfort myself with the realization that I still had my daughter, or
tha=
t
> 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. =A0We 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." =A0But we tell people they either shouldn't feel bad or
tha=
t
> 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. =A0As I said, I was
> extremely reluctant to get involved in such a thing, or even to take
> "expert" advice of any kind. =A0I'd tough it out, I thought. =A0But I
was
> singularly fortunate in that one of the leaders of that group just
happene=
d
> to be my wife's uncle. =A0He 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. =A0I 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: =A0the Grief Recovery
progr=
am
> was a miracle. =A0It didn't cure anything. =A0It simply made everything
li=
vable,
> 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
h=
ad
> without constantly falling into the pain of loss.
>
> When we lose someone we love, the grief comes from two aspects: =A0our
los=
s of
> the loved one's presence, and the incomplete or unresolved nature of the
> relation****p. =A0I will always miss my wife, but the recovery process I
we=
nt
> through allowed me to resolve and complete my relation****p with her, so
th=
at
> 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
missi=
ng
> her. =A0Pain returns, of course, but one of the great things about the
pro=
gram
> outlined in the book is the tool it gives you to work through those
> recurrences. =A0Nowadays, more than four years after Cecily's death, I
sti=
ll
> sometimes break into tears, but before things get dangerously painful,
the=
re
> are a couple of things I say to her and, without fail, I'm able to move
ba=
ck
> 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. =A0I'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. =A0I feel like I owe them my life.
=
=A0I'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. =A0I hope you give it some thought.
>
> Jim Beaver
Sorry to those who prefer snippage in responses, but Jim's post
doesn't deserve to be snipped. Much of what you say here sounds like
what my dad went through when Mom died. One evening we were all
calling each other and being alarmed because my uncle had called Dad
and Dad told him that he really didn't want to go on without Mom.
Dad does seem to have worked through the worst of his despair, if not
the grief itself, though, by himself (well, there are lots of us who
talked to him as much as we could, but I think that it's accurate to
say that you have to work through this sort of thing yourself when it
comes down to it). The fact that Dad didn't appear to need counseling
is just further evidence of different folks, different strokes.
Best wishes to you and your daughter, Jim. I'm glad the Grief
Recovery people were helpful.
Mary
|
