I spent the evening co-facilitating a three hour grief workshop entitled "Your Heart Still Beats" in Wailuku. In attendance were several widows and being with them taught me so much.  All of them had been married for decades. Each one lamented how her husband had been so strong and strapping in life and how shockingly hard it was when he died.  The relationship between spouses is of course different than a parent and child, or siblings, and so, those differences carry over w

When you lose a loved one, it can break your heart and your spirit. It can feel like being at the bottom of a valley that will take forever to climb out from. It takes a long time to sort out your feelings...good and bad. This reminds me of the stage of grief that Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross came up with. They were actually meant for a dying person not those grieving a loss. Her explanation of the stages of grief have been corrupted and misquoted. The truth of the matter is th

I was really angry when my mother passed away less than three months after my father. He had been in poor health for awhile and my mother was too stoic to let on how exhausted she was from caring for him alone. The health of our parents should have been a priority but when life is busy we did not pay attention as closely as we should have. So, after my father passed we all had plans to do something for our mother to make up for the times she couldn't go on vacation. My bro