Death of a Child

After Loss: Fear Can Be An Asset to Grieving Individuals

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

  “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear”– C.S. Lewis This first line in C.S. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed , inspired me to reflect on how I experienced fear during the early days of grief following my daughter Jeannine’s death. Jeannine was eighteen when she died on March 1,2003 from cancer. My fear manifested in uncertainty about my ability to live again in a world without my daughter. I feared that my other children would also die. These fears were triggered because my once predictable ,orderly and safe world was a distant memory. To […]

Death of a Child

Hope and Clarity in the Middle of Nowhere

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Lately, I have begun to revisit previous articles and blogs that I have authored. Perhaps as I grow older, I value nostalgia more, or perhaps it is the value I place on the past as a teacher. Regardless, I always discover new insights when I revisit previous writings. The  majority of the content of the article that follows was originally published by Hello Grief in November of 2013. I have eliminated or changed some words here because the terminology I used then to describe my path doesn’t apply to me in this moment. I believe that as we evolve after loss, how we conceptualize […]

Death of a Child

Scripting Our Own Paths After The Death of Our Children

Monday, August 17, 2015

My sincere and heartfelt thanks to both Susan Roback and Patty Furino for inspiring much of the content for this post. Deepening Bonds and  Linking Objects The relationship that I continue to share with my daughter Jeannine following her death in 2003 has on most days, allowed me to embrace a peaceful perspective.  As part of our ongoing relationship, she has regularly communicated signs of her presence. In the beginning, I longed for signs because the pain of her physical absence was unbearable. Today I still welcome signs from my daughter but no longer rely on them.  Jeannine makes her presence known […]

Death of a Child, Death of a Spouse

Ghosts of Memory: Integrating Our Loss Through Remembering

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

I recently read a book called: Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, by Neil Peart. Peart is the lyricist and world renowned drummer for the Canadian rock band, Rush.  His daughter Selena, age 19, died on August 10, 1997, as a result of a car accident and his common-law wife, Jackie died on June 20, 1998, of cancer. Peart became a bereaved parent and a young widower in the space of ten months. One year after the death of his daughter, he embarked on a 55,000-mile, fourteen-month journey on his motorcycle across Canada, the United States and Mexico. He […]