How Yoga Can Help After a Loss

    By Jason Wendroff-Rawnicki -- My journey to healing through yoga started even before my need for it appeared. I began practicing yoga about ten years ago. It started as a workout regimen. I was tired of aerobics, weight lifting, cardio kick-boxing and similar exercises. There was talk in my gym of this great yoga class. Not really sure what it was, I kept delaying taking the class. One morning, I was over a friend's house with my wife, and my…

    Planning Helps With the ‘Firsts’

    By Sue Gilbert and Suzanne Redfern - The following is an excerpt from The Grieving Garden, authored by Suzanne Redfern and Susan Gilbert (Hampton Roads Publishing, 2008). In this excerpt, Susan Benveniste, one of the book's 22 contributors, speaks of her family's first celebrations, including Thanksgiving, without their daughter, Shelly. Enduring the "firsts" can be one of the hardest obstacles to face.  Examples of the firsts are:  holidays, birthdays, Mother's or Father's Day, and the death-day anniversary. These days can…

    Finding Your Way to a “New Normal”

    By Clara Hinton -- Grief is such a difficult journey, but it becomes especially difficult around the holiday season.  Everywhere you look, there are reminders of family times, laughter and cheer, and times spent sitting around the table telling stories and eating a delicious meal together. For the person who has lost a family member, the holidays take on an entirely new meaning.  There are thoughts of emptiness, loneliness, incompleteness and a fear and dread of facing the holidays without…

    Struggling to Survive Brother’s Suicide

    Janet writes in: I, along with my sister and now deceased brother, have always suffered from mental illness --  hereditary-based and environmental. We grew-up in an immensely dysfunctional home, with a raging alcoholic father. My sister has bipolar disorder, and I suffer from depression. I knew my brother planned on killing himself and argued for my parents to look for him after they had had a terrible fight and he left our home in a rage. They said because he…

    Mourning a Brother Lost to Violence

    Sameena from Charlotte writes: I am looking for ideas to help my mom. My  older brother was murdered and buried in foreign country as a John Doe. We will eventually have him exhumed and have services - it's just a lot of red tape. I am looking for a way to help my mom grieve by honoring him in some way. I like the quilt idea but I don't know if my mom has any of his clothes. Do you…

    Loss of A Sibling

    by P. Gill White, PhD For many years I have denied the unusual experience that happened to me when my sister Linda was in the hospital just prior to her death from cancer at the age of 13.  I realize now that this was a significant part of my spiritual journey. She had been in the hospital for nearly 4 months.  One night, I was asleep at home when I heard her softly calling my name...."Pat....Pa-a-a-t" --over and over.  I…

    When a Sibling Dies by Suicide

    By Michelle Linn-Gust, PH.D. In the initial months and years after my sister Denise died by suicide (just two weeks before her 18th birthday), I sought out as much information on sibling loss as I could. Denise was my younger sister, the one I shared a room with for 10 years, the one who knew more about me and my goals and dreams than anyone else. When she walked in front of a train near our parents' suburban Chicago home,…

    A Twinless Twin

    Dear Dr. Heidi, I am a doctoral student in the School of Nursing at Columbia and I just listened to your show on twin loss.  My name is Kevin Johnson,  and I had a wonderful twin brother named Kelvin Johnson.  Kelvin died February 25, 2007.  It is a loss that I do not know how to move on in life with.  As I heard in the show, it truly is like another half of me is gone. I started this…

    Child Bereavement: Words of Comfort for a Child

    Young people need as much time to grieve after the death of someone close, whether they show it or not. The most common issue for a parent is that the child doesn't seem to be distressed so they don't want to upset them. Children are in a world where they are used to not having control over things and therefore often accept things quicker that doesn't mean that it is ok with them though. Their feelings can be hidden from…

    OCTOBER 19, 2006 ? PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: SIBLING DEATH FROM A LONG TERM ADDICTION

    OCTOBER 19, 2006 ? PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: SIBLING DEATH FROM A LONG TERM ADDICTION:? ROD COLVIN who lost his brother, Randy, age 35, to a drug addiction in 1988. Randy?s death inspired Rod, a former journalist, to write Prescription Drug Addiction?The Hidden Epidemic.? Rod currently is the publisher of Addicus Books out of Omaha, Nebraska. From 2003 to 2005, Rod served on an advisory panel to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), Columbia University, which produced ?Under the…