January - 2017

Grief: Instead of Going Three and Out; Go Three and In

To borrow a line from pro football, our culture encourages us to think of grieving the death of a loved one as “three and out." In other words, we get three days off from our jobs to deal with a death, including the funeral, burial and tying up loose ends, then it’s back to work as if nothing happened. Our response to death tends to follow this same pattern. We jump right in with good intentions, such as meals, visits, phone calls, texts, messages, cards and flowers. But, ver

If You Don’t Like Where You Are – Move. You Are Not a Tree!

At first you may be tempted to chuckle at this headline, but then you may be wondering what does it have to do with helping me get past my grief? Quite a lot. Consider what happens when we physically stop moving. Muscles become weak, standing and walking gets difficult, and we lose our sense of balance. In short, we become stiff and freeze up. This also can happen to our emotional health during times of severe stress, such as grieving a loss. Our culture encourages us to sepa