Art & Allison Daily

Art and Allison Daily are the authors of Out of the Canyon: A True Story of Loss and Love. Art is an attorney for Holland and Hart in Aspen, Colo. Allison is the Bereavement Counselor at Aspen Valley Hospital and the co-director of Pathfinder Angels, a non-profit that helps cancer patients and others in need. Out of the Canyon was in USA Today's Summer Book List of 2009, and Art and Allison have written for Living With Loss Publication as well as beliefnet blog and Intent.com.

Articles:

An Open Letter to Whitney Houston’s Family

Growing up I listened to Whitney Houston’s music, pretending I was her as I belted out “I Will Always Love You.” I think I saw the movie ‘The Bodyguard’ a total of ten times, watching it again just after she died. As someone who counsels others when a loved one dies, I thought of her family and her daughter often in the days and weeks following her death. I wondered how they were coping, having their grief and Whitney’s death become such a spectacle. I began to think of what I would say to them, if I could..and I wrote […]

Springtime in the Heart Can Happen After Pregnancy Loss

It’s been unseasonably warm in the Rocky Mountains lately. We have an early and warm spring and I am not complaining one bit! I live for the sun’s warmth on my pale skin and the joy I feel when flowers begin popping out of the ground. I feel reborn, which of course is what spring is all about. In the last two weeks, two mothers have lost their babies at 16 weeks of pregnancy. I have been there as their counselor to help them birth their baby (after a certain stage of pregnancy, mothers must birth the baby), and to […]

Make Time to Grieve, and Celebrate, During the Holidays

When your heart is broken in grief, you’re not sure how you are going to get through the next day, much less the holidays. Holidays should be spent with the ones we love. It’s a time of celebration, of giving to those we care about. So, if your loved one has died, please don’t think I am in any way making light of the hole you must feel in the center of your being. I only wish to offer ways to honor and remember the one who is gone from your life. My brother committed suicide when I was in […]

Create Space in Your Life to Find Hope

I think an essential part of the grieving process is what I’ve heard called “liminal space,” or a time between things. If you’ve had significant loss in your life, you know that there is a time period when you are beyond the intense period of crying, but the missing still aches inside you. It’s as if your head says to your body, “Okay, this person is gone. He/she is not coming back. You have honored them, grieved for them, allowed them the freedom to ‘go,’…now it’s time for you to move on.” So, your head and logic know that it […]

Grief and Joy

When I think of grieving, I think of pain and sadness. I think of my stomach in knots, tears flowing uncontrollably and a broken heart. Joy has no place in grief at first glance. To me, grief is like a precious vase or plate that shatters into pieces. You look at all of your feelings and pieces of love and wonder how you can ever repair it—it feels destroyed. Life isn’t perfect and we will all experience loss and grief. It is something we all will share at some time or another. For some of us, it may be an […]

Grief and Loss During the Holidays

When I lost my brother it was early summer time. The flowers were out, the heat hadn’t magnetized and yet I could find beauty in nothing. I felt like I was never going to get over the pain from his death. In some ways I felt paralyzed, almost not feeling at all, from fear that if I did feel I would never come back. The pain ebbed and flowed but the pain was most intense during the holidays. I dreaded them the first year, knowing one chair was missing. His. I had a hard time eating or enjoying the taste […]

Is Widower Ready for a New Relationship?

DKT writes in: I met a man on Match.com. We are in our 50’s. He divorced his first wife after 20 years of marriage. He was married to his second wife for about 5 years before she was killed in a car accident in January 2009, just 9 months ago. We have been on several dates. After we spent a day together at an event, we went to his house. Her shoes were still by the dresser and her lipstick was still on the cabinet in the bathroom. There are photos of her on the refrigerator. We kissed, but that […]

What Does Grief Look Like?

When my brother Rod killed himself the grief itself made me feel like I was going crazy. One minute I was okay and calm, the next I was hysterical. If we are in the depths of loss and grief, the intense emotions and sometimes lack of them often make us wonder, “Am I all right?” or “Am I doing this correctly?” Most of want to know we are doing something properly– even grieving. Think about it, that’s why there are so many self-help and ‘how-to’ books. For many people, those books are hugely helpful because they help us know either […]

Trying to ‘Turn Grief Around’ After Brother’s Suicide

By Allison Daily — Does grief end? It’s a question that varies for each person and depends in part on the person’s relationship to the one who has died. The death of a child is different than that of a parent or grandparent. The death of a spouse is different from that of a sibling or best friend. Men handle grief differently than women do. I lost my brother Rod to suicide. I got the call, heard the gory details, and had to get my parents home and then tell them, “Rod has killed himself.” It’s been nineteen years since that day. I will […]