“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right” Henry Ford is quoted as saying something like that… but what does that have to do with imagination and grief? The mind works with imagination and pictures and tends to be a part of leading our subconscious, that most powerful part that …
Why do I care so much about helping people move through the grief process? One reason is that it takes such a toll on health. Usually when people think of mourning and the feelings that it carries with it, they think of emotional and mental health. But I’ve found that physical health suffers as well. …
One of the challenging aspects of grief is that it is made of so many different feelings, combined and revealing themselves at different times for different people. Not only is there the sadness of loss, but there may be others – despair, anger, hopelessness, guilt, and loneliness. These are natural emotions and are not a …
What happens when you lose a best or closest friend? There’s a gap in your life that feels ‘unfillable’. While no one can replace your dog, and that particular emotional bond that you had, sometimes a way to help you gently through the mourning process is to look at the ways in which your dog …
Why should someone, as the definition of empathy goes, have to focus on having the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, when they are the one who has experienced a loss? I’ve found that many people who experience the loss of a dog are hurt and frustrated by comments about ‘just a …
When we feel a dark cloud over us or feel like we are at the bottom of an emotional pit, most people rightfully say “I’m depressed”. However, to understand despair, it’s important to understand what is underlying feelings. When people feel down they tend to feel hopeless and/or helpless. When people feel hopeless or sometimes …
Nelson Mandela is quoted as saying, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Often when we are experiencing the loss of a loved one, we feel a number of ‘negative’ feelings including fear. Fear tends to emerge when we feel that something bad might happen. In fact, …
At times the death of a loved one may be due, in part, to external forces or people. A careless driver, a vet, contaminated food, our own mistakes… and that can lead to blaming. We blame because someone or something hurt a loved one and we want to make it right, make someone pay, get …
Sometimes we confuse alone with lonely. Have you ever been in a crowd of people and felt very lonely, yet been on your own and not felt lonely? For many dog parents, with your special companion gone, you are probably feeling loneliness as well as feeling alone. Loneliness has to do with a lack of …
