Mary Jane Hurley Brant

Mary Jane Hurley Brant, M.S.,CGP, is a practicing psychotherapist for 37 years who specializes in grief. She is author of the book, When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir of Love, Loss and Life. In this first person narrative M.J. addresses the suicide of her father when she was 13 and the life and death of her daughter, Katie, of a brain tumor. She is the founder of Mothers Finding Meaning Again. MJ can be reached through her website www.MaryJaneHurleyBrant.com

Articles:

Synchronicity in Grief

What is Synchronicity in Grief? Have you ever had an experience where you said, “Wow, what a coincidence.” Maybe it was more. Maybe it was actually a “synchronicity.” Let me explain through a Jungian perspective. Carl Jung, the prominent Swiss psychiatrist, believed synchronicity meant “more than a coincidence.” Jung, the thinker and founder of analytical psychology, connected synchronicities to the bigger world: the collective unconscious. These were not just assumptions on his part. Jung believed the collective unconscious was universal (meaning common to all people) because he listened and researched for decades the overlapping stories and myths that people shared […]

‘Put Your Feet on the Floor’: After a Child-Loss

From When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press) on Amazon December 2, 1999 Dear Katie, Your dad and I are beginning again. We are at the beach for a few days. It’s cold but lovely. I continue to write in my journal. I am reaching for the pen, instead of self-pity. It’s a good thing. Love, Mom When someone you dearly love dies, you let yourself think that they are sleeping. When you take a nap or go to bed, your loss is asleep. When you wake up, the pain is […]

Relationships Make the Difference in Grief

Excerpted from When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press) on Amazon I always felt so close to my husband, Dick, as I observed him loving Katie, loving Richard, our son. He was never jealous of all the attention I gave to our kids right from the start. A wife can feel that; she knows the difference. As a couple we worried about Richard because his nature was sweet and sensitive and because the reality of our tie with Katie naturally meant that there was less time to focus on him. We did […]

When Grief and Coronavirus Collide

When Grief and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) collide, we feel like we’ll collapse. The Coronavirus is not only serious, it’s a pandemic. Like grief, COVID-19 is powerful, persistent and painful. The virus makes us fearful and our grief has made us more vulnerable. It’s a rough combination. Today, let’s consider what this fear-reality looks like to our brains; how it makes our bodies feel; and the way it affects our emotions. First, what is fear when coupled with grief? How does it look and feel? Unlike fruit on a tree, fear is not visible. Fear is more like a threat, an […]

Accepting Comfort in the Early Days

This is an excerpt from When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press), available on Amazon The loss of Jennifer (my sister’s five-year old child) was monumental for everyone. I felt woefully inadequate in comforting my sister, Eileen, or my mother because no one, not even a big sister or daughter, can give much to a mother who has lost her precious child. That mother or grandmother wants only one thing: that child back in her arms. The years 1988 and 1989 were sad and dark periods of mourning for our family and […]

Early Days After Child-Loss: Survival

Excerpted from When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press) on Amazon. When you really want to pray for something and you do not receive it, you tend to believe that your prayer was not answered….it is true that at times your prayer is not answered in a direct way ….Unknown to you, that prayer has secretly worked on another aspect of the situation and effected a transfiguration which may become visible only at a later stage. ~John O’Donohue~ Eternal Echoes July 14, 1999 Dear Katie, Today you have been gone four days. […]

‘Grief Fills Up the Room’ of an Absent Child

Excerpted from When Every Day Matters: A Mother’s Memoir on Love, Loss and Life (Simple Abundance Press), available on Amazon. In my end is my Beginning. ~Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots 1542-1587~ The life that I knew, the life that I had dearly loved, died when my daughter Katie died. Today is the start of another. Katie was not only my daughter; she was my hero. This narrative is about her. I invite you to get to know Katie; I invite you to get to know me. Katie died of a brain tumor. When she left my world and this […]

Coping With Post-Election Grief

The 2020 Presidential election is over. We have a voted for a President Elect and Vice President Elect – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was a race to the finish between the Red and the Blue. Some elations were that historical numbers of people stood patiently in long lines for hours. Unprecedented millions of people mailed in their votes due to the global pandemic COVID19. It was the largest number of votes registered in a presidential election ever. It was exciting and oftentimes fierce. But, as a nation now, what are some after-election deflations? The answer is that many […]

The Weaving of Love and Loss

When we open ourselves up to love, we open ourselves up to loss. That is why loss hurts so much – it’s connected to the greatest mystery of all: love. So it’s understandable that the deeper the love we felt for someone the deeper pain goes when they die and leave us. The death of a loved one shocks us physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. After those first four hits, grief arrives and is quickly followed by the mourning process. This process of grieving and mourning a loss is found across cultures. What does that mean? It means that […]

Are You Laughing With the Sinners or Crying With the Saints This Valentine’s Day?

Billy Joel likes laughing with the sinners. Me? I’m still deciding whether to join him. OK, I’ll admit that during grade school, going for brownie points with the good nuns kept me crying with the saints more than laughing with the sinners. And, come Feb. 14, I demonstrated complete loyalty by rejecting every other saint. Why waste time with second-rate saints when St. Valentine himself was purported to have the highest success rate in making the love connection? Ah, Valentine’s Day. Who could forget decorating those big cardboard boxes with white paper doilies and pink and red hearts? Who […]

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