Healthy Ways to Capture Memories

In the end, grief is about how we remember. Memory is powerful. It shapes our lives in many ways. Memory impacts our emotions. Memory shapes the significance we give to current events. Memory influences what we expect from the future. So the effort to grieve well...

Applying the Grief Seminar to Losses Not Caused by Death

Often it can be hard to recognize grief as grief, because of the absence of a death. Major losses can be caused by many other life changes than someone dying. But this difficulty goes well beyond the challenge of rightly labeling an experience. When we do not...

Thoughts on “Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection”

Your dad says he’ll pick you up Friday afternoon and the two of you will go camping for the weekend.  You don’t see him much because your parents are divorced and you live with your mom.  The thought of your dad taking you camping feels so great.  In fact, it makes...

Memorial Ceremony for an Unborn Child

Grieving the loss of an unborn child can be particularly difficult. No one else had the privilege of knowing your baby and, therefore, many of the rituals of grief (i.e., sharing pictures or stories of how the lost loved one touched other’s lives) cannot be engaged....

The Absence of Providence

Bill & Connie were devastated by the miscarriage on their first pregnancy.  It was especially hard sense their closest friends were pregnant at the same time.  In fact, the loss was devastating to both of them.  But now that Connie was pregnant again the painful...