5 Steps to Holiday Grief Survival

I am excited about our next NABBW teleseminar, and want to share it here. The holidays are coming up, as we've started to discuss elsewhere on these boards, and many of us are worried about how we are going to be able to feel like celebrating -- there's been so much grief going around these last few weeks.

Here is a link to the NABBW teleseminar we are doing on Holiday Grief Survival - tomorrow, Thursday 11/11 @ 8 PM Eastern. 5 Steps to Holiday Grief Survival

Hope you can make the call - and remember, if you're an NABBW member you CAN listen to the replay at your convenience.


Thanks to NABBW member Ann Leach who is a certified grief recovery specialist for doing the call. You can see more about her work on her site: Life Preservers Grief Support

This was a FANTASTIC call and Ann Leach made some wonderful offers to our listeners - which are good through the end of the month. The link to the call is up so you can listen to the recording. If you're worried grief may make it impossible for you to enjoy the coming holidays, I urge you to catch the replay and take advantage of Ann's offers. Here's the link again in case you missed it the first time: "5 Steps to Holiday Grief Survival"

I just listened to "5 Steps to Holiday Grief Survival"

I want to thank you Ann, for making this interview. I immediately liked Ann Leach, and found her words comforting. I think I will be taking her advice, and this Christmas think about what I want to do, instead of what the family expects. This will be the first Christmas in my life, without my mother. So of course it will be full of memories. I think I would like to go somewhere else, away from the traditional memories and just have a quiet Christmas with my husband. Thank God he is understanding and will go along with whatever I suggest.

Just taking little steps.

The advice given for in-person good friends how they can support a grieving person by offering "what would you like me to do for you", is useful. What the friend might be asked to do, may not be interesting or anything intellectual/verbal, but to simply assist the person in a normal daily activity or activity that assists the grieving person in slowly re-establishing a different life..without the departed loved one.

The most helpful people to me so far, are my partner and long-term, close friends who have already lost a close family member and have had either reasonably healthy family relationships with the person who died or enough years in the past, when their family deaths happened. They have given to me useful, heart-felt responses and listening ear(s).

What I have sensed is people who have never lost a family member nor close friend, and have not yet dealt with death, they don't know what to say. And for a suicide, they really don't know what to say..not even "you must miss your sister". Which puzzles me abit because I know these people have siblings(!).

Ah. Life is so short, it is really a dream at times. When I think back to this summer after a great trip in Europe, then seeing all my family, including sis in Toronto...it is like a dream.

Hold on to those good memories Orchid. The good hopefully will eventually overtake all else, even the initial pain and shock of losing your sister in this most tragic way.

I know my mother is in a better place. And your sister is there too. I know the souls that have gone before us are lifted and filled with a joy that we here on earth have never experienced the likes of. Hold on to that thought, Orchid. It will lift you and carry you through.