By Amy Florian
While keeping busy can be a positive thing, we need to make sure that keeping busy is not an excuse to avoid grief and deny pain.
Read on thriveglobal.com
CLEAR ALL
This is what it looks like when you grieve the death of an estranged parent. It’s this surreal thing, where everyone expects you to feel something—yet you don’t. For me, it didn’t feel like I lost a parent, or a loved one, or even a close friend. It felt like I’d lost what could have been.
Sorrow, relief and guilt are just a few emotions that may come up when your estranged parent dies.
Joanne Cacciatore of Sedona started the nonprofit MISS Foundation in 1996 to provide counseling, advocacy, research and education services to families who have endured the death of a child.
Part of being human means that we do experience the natural ebb and flow of life. This brings sadness and joy, despair and happiness, pain and beauty, loss and love. These aspects of the human experience are normal.
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Most of you know her as Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, founder of the MISS Foundation and professor and researcher at Arizona State University. Her expertise is helping those affected by traumatic death.
Throughout his profound spiritual awakening, the great Tibetan yogi Shabkar experienced immense loss resulting in grief marked by raw pain, a sense of disorientation, sadness, and tears.
"But now we’re asked — and sometimes forced — to carry grief as a solitary burden. And the psyche knows we are not capable of handling grief in isolation." - Francis Weller
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Instead of the routine, "Your mother’s fine; we’re calling to inform you about…” this time the nurse said, “Your mother has stopped eating. - Sabina Nawaz
The mismatch between the knowledge and the longing is perhaps the most anguishing of all human experiences.
"It's been a little over two months since I lost my mom to cancer. When I say the words “I lost my mom" out loud, they don't seem right, because a lost sock can be found again. This isn't just a missing sock. This is a huge hole in my gut, which will never, ever go away." - Katie Karambelas