Celebrating Easter After the Death of a Mother
Holidays can be difficult when you are missing and grieving someone. But it seems a bit harder when it’s your mom. Usually it is our mothers who organize family dinners and events, so when she’s gone, how do we approach the holiday without her? The folks at Cake have a website of resources and tools to help with grief and end of life and general “navigating mortality”.
How Memorial Tattoos Help the Bereaved
“Tattooing one’s grief can be an act of resistance to the notion that grief can or should be cured … The act of tattooing suggests that grief is permanent and that it is life-long, visible, and always present.” For some, memorializing their loved one with a tattoo is a way to keep a part […]
Helping Children Cope with Grief
We are living in a sad and confusing time, especially for a child. From COVID to the Ukraine, we are saturated with loss. And even if your child has been spared the horrors of the nightly news, the odds are they will experience, at some point, the death of a pet or grandparent or family member or friend or teacher or…. Grief and loss are part of life, but how do we talk to our children about it?
How You Can Support a Grieving Friend Through the Holidays
There is a good chance that you know someone who is facing the imminent holiday with impending dread. It’s hard to know what to say to a friend who is grieving, and the holidays can be a particularly difficult time to face. There are ways to help (or not!) but the main rule is to follow the lead of the person who is grieving.
Keepsake Memories
When Charmaine Haddad’s parents were both gone, the family still had items and clothing that had belonged to their mom and dad. Charmaine’s sister, Charlotte, took her mother’s fur coat and her father’s suede one and commissioned a local craftsperson to create Christmas heirlooms. The result was a combination of Santas that the family can […]
Giving Space to Grief
In Ghana, Funerals Are A Party.
But My Dad’s Couldn’t Hold My Grief.
An Interview with a Grave Gardener
It is because of my grave gardener mom that I’ve grown to become a death-positive woman. I’m a woman who considers death a part of life.
Lessons from an Unexpected Widower
Everyone’s grief journey is different.
Near Death Transformations
It’s difficult to know, because a lot of people are not willing to talk about these experiences.
Thanatophobia and How to Overcome the Fear of Dying
It’s not unusual to fear death. It is the great unknown, after all. It brings the ultimate sadness and enormous loss. But to carry that fear always, obsessively, makes it a phobia. And that phobia has a name: Thanatophobia.