Dealing with grief is one of the greatest challengers of living. What words can you say to comfort those who have lost a loved one ? At those moments in our lives language itself seems to fail us. Words seem to be rendered so pointless. Sometimes the loss can feel so great, that it seems unfair that life should go on for the living, yet it does. This feeling is most acute when in grief, we have to deal with the practical matters of the living as a result of a loss.

Each New Year many of us start thinking about resolutions: Lose weight and gain insight, spend less and save more, clean closets or drawers (I did that last year, well more than 100 of them – they add up!), work less – or maybe more, exercise your body or your rights.

Increasingly joining that list is the resolve to write down – or at least talk about – end-of-life wishes and to leave directives for friends…

A widowed neighbor finds her friends and family drifting away, She’s aware that her conversations focus on her painful loss but she’s missing her husband so much that she’s stuck. It doesn’t help when her loved ones tell her she’s spending too much time wallowing in her grief and it’s time to move on.

At work, a young colleague struggles after her second miscarriage. She can’t seem to find her emotional footing and she continues to feel poorly weeks after her…

Losing a chronically ill person is a very hard, yet strange thing. It also comes with a lot of shock. It is a myth or a fallacy to assume that every chronically ill person has to be taken care of. That is only true at certain times and in certain places. The truth is, most chronically ill people are just like you and me. They do the same things that we do: work, clean house, exercise, go to the movies, go to church, go to parties, etc., so after a while, you begin to assume that…