Her mother died far too young and much too sudden. She sat in my office broken and vulnerable as we began what will be a long walk together through her grief journey. Her mother was only fifty-one and died of leukemia after a year long struggle. One often hears someone say that their mother or father was also…
Doug Manning
My work in grief began when a couple from the church where I was the pastor lost a young daughter from a simple case of the croup. The mother was distraught and crying in the hospital room. The doctor and her husband were trying to calm her when she looked up and said, “Don’t take my grief away from me. I deserve it and I am going to have it.” I found that to be one of the most profound statements about what people in grief need and this became the title of one of my first books and started me on the road to my second career.
My years of counseling as a pastor put me in many situations where people were grieving so I started some of the first bereavement support groups and spent a great deal of time analyzing and trying to understand what processes are involved in a healthy grief journey. I did a lot of listening and learning.
Another book, When Love Gets Tough: The Nursing Home Decision, was born from experiences being a care giver for my parents. I tried to fill a communication gap between elderly parents and their children to help them make a decision that was right for their family.
For the last twenty-five years I have devoted all of my time and effort to these two vital areas that we all have faced or will face in our lives. I have traveled all over the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to speak and listen to folks. I began my company, In-Sight Books, Inc., in order to publish my books on grief and elder care and am delighted now that my company is able to provide this web site as a place where people can come and share and learn from each other.
My long involvement with grief started in a single statement from a broken hearted mother. Her daughter’s condition was not considered serious at all, and she was in the hospital under oxygen so no one was overly concerned. Within thirty minutes the child was dead. The mother was hysterical and of course the doctor…
In an earlier blog titled The Journey Of Grief I described grief as a journey from having your loved one right in front of your face, to their presence being more in the heart and in memories. The woman who first explained this analogy to me said her daughter seemed to sit on her shoulder and live in her heart…
Five days from today will mark the first year since my wife died. The actual date this year is on Sunday, but since the date last year was on Saturday and she died early in the morning, just after midnight, to me, the year ends as I relive that horrible Friday night. I have been reliving the week day by day not…
If you boil down everything all of us authors have written about grieving, it boils down to one word–PERMISSION. The key to a successful grief journey is finding permission to grieve. The best thing to do with our grief is to grieve, but finding permission from ourselves and from others is not an easy thing to…
It was her daughter’s birthday. The fifth one since she died. Many of the people she meet that day had no idea that this was a special day, how much every birthday hurt, and how certain birthdays hurt more than others. Fifth is really no different than fourth, but somehow it seems more significant. To her it felt…
I dread the day when I will no longer be able to be on the road making speeches and listening to people. I dread the loss of stories. Everywhere I go. I hear the stories of grief. Most of what I know about grief comes from these wonderful stories gathered over twenty-five years of touring and listening. We all…
There are no experts on grief, and that includes me. As I often say in these blogs, “Grief is as unique as a finger print,” so no one can be an expert about any grief other than their own. Most of what I know about grief comes from the stories people tell about their unique journey. I am here to just report on the…
I have a friend named Paula Loring who I think is the best leader of grief groups I have ever known. She lives in San Antonio, Texas and has made a tremendous impact there through her marvelous way of getting people to talk in groups. She has an outline of the grief process that I am sure I have refered to in other…
As I said in the last post, I used to say we should start dating when we feel we are ready, then I went through the experiences of the first year after the death of a spouse and realized there are some false readies that can make us think we are ready when actually we are just going through the biological response…
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