Dear Reader,

In an effort to better serve clients, colleagues, and the general public, the Center for Grief Recovery (the Center) is providing this free website-based bibliographic resource to broaden and deepen your knowledge and access to grief recovery related materials. Our aim is to support, encourage, offer hope and guidance to anyone, free of charge, wrestling with the meaning of their lives and the lives of loved ones in the wake of loss.

Materials included have been…

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At the Center for Grief Recovery, we often find that our services are needed in response to a sudden loss in the workplace. The following outline has been used to help groups cope with such situations. The ideas in it, however, are applicable to many different kinds of loss experiences.

STOP THE ACTION

The first step in dealing with a death in an institution or workplace is to stop the normal activities and reschedule so that employees can come together to share their thoughts…

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Grief comes in many different forms and in response to many kinds of losses. Sometimes an existential crisis occurs in the context of loss and grief. In addition to returning to their pre-loss functioning and what has been good and satisfying in the past, many clients find that grief counseling helps them reflect on areas of the self that may need fleshing out and development. For some individuals, loss can become a call for fuller development of their humanness. Since life truly is not the…

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In American society we suffer from long-standing patterns of anxiety and denial about death.  Perhaps as a result, in our grief and mourning processes, we’ve learned to cope with our powerful reactions with self-control and “strength.”  It seems we are socially conditioned to be stoic, to “move on,”  “get back to work,” “be strong.”  These habits severely limit our freedom to grieve naturally and openly for any loved one we’ve lost.…

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Loss is hard enough, but when the environment won't or can't surround us in our loss with consistent comfort and useful resources, then it becomes even harder.  There's a term being used in the bereavement literature called complicated mourning or traumatic grief reaction.  These are often used interchangeably.  In my experience virtually all loss experiences are complicated and traumatic to a certain degree.  In any case, there are ways in which the natural grief process can get distorted,… Continue