Good Grief

When Dr. Paul Kalanithi faced a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in his last year as a neurosurgical resident, his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi faced it with him. In the twenty-two months that followed, they continued to work, had a child and he wrote a best selling book . But since his death, how have her grief and her love showed themselves? She made sure that his book, when Breath Becomes Air, was pu...

Are there human acts that are un-forgivable? Perhaps, but as human beings, some of us are able to find a way to forgive the person or people who have hurt us. Marina Cantacuzino's mission is to collect the narratives of people facing unspeakable difficulties who have moved towards reconciliation and peace; people on the opposite sides of war, or murder, or hate crimes. Then there are those who hav...

For Claudia Bicen, curiosity about the meaning of life inevitably led to curiosity about facing death. But how would she explore that deepest of human questions? A self taught artist, she decided to interview and draw people in hospice. She would visit, get to know them, then create an audio visual portrait of how they were facing this last chapter. Perhaps she expected deep and profound wisdom, a...

Keeping a sense of humor at the worst of times seems impossible until you're actually living through the worst of times. No one knows that better than Nora McInerny Purmort, whose husband died of brain cancer when she was 32, with a two year old, within a short time of her fathers death and a miscarriage. In those circumstances, humor becomes a balm, a way to keep your perspective, a healing salve...

How does a parent cope with the illness of a child? We want to protect and insulate our children from all harm. But when a child is diagnosed with cancer, we watch them experience many pains and ills. Purvi Shah's son Amaey was sick for six years, ultimately passing away at the age of 9. She searched for ways to cheer, comfort and sooth him (and herself) and found, in the arts, just what they both...

In times of profound loss, what do we turn to? Some of us look for a way to express our experience through writing or art or movement. Some of us write. Some of us turn to the comfort of the natural world, finding our place in the order of things by connecting with the outdoors. Mark Liebenow turned to his beloved Yosemite when his wife died, then wrote about what he experienced there. His writing...

Ned Buskirk did not consciously intend to open a conversation and create a movement about dying and death. But when he thought about what would make his open mic events meaningful, the title popped into his mind. What if he called it, You're Going to Die? Deeply impacted by the death of his own mother, he longed for artistic ways to express the way his life was changed by the fact of death. From t...

After a loss, people often have to return to work much too soon. And what do they encounter? A workplace which understands very little about grief or how to support a colleague in the loss. Often, a lack of experience and education results in harmful comments and unrealistic expectations. But with a little training, the workplace can take a role in supporting us through our worst times. When Rache...

With the legalization of marriage for all Americans and the greater level of acceptance for LGBT people, we could come to the mistaken conclusion that bias no longer affected LGBT people. But far from it, aging and dying LGBT people face an uphill climb to get the support they need; from family, facilities and professionals. Gen Silent is an intimate portrait of some of the people directly affecte...

At the end of life, there is so much mystery, so much we don't know. But because of the work of Barbara Karnes, we do have a map of the physical territory. Just knowing that what is happening to a loved one at the end is part of the natural process of dying can be a tremendous comfort. How did Barbara come to write her seminal books to support hospice patients and their families? What feeds her pa...

Going through the deepest struggle is sometimes the road to new illuminations. Robin Perry Braun knows this first hand. The tremendous struggles in her early life led her to a belief that with the right practices, she could attract the life she wanted to live. This led, as it often does, to her life's work; helping other people learn and use the tools she had discovered walking her own road. At th...

Palliative care has been a little understood aspect of our overall health care system even as it has become more recognized within that system as a valuable resource for patients and their families. Patients often have no education about how palliative care and hospice can serve them and ease the tremendous stresses of serious diagnosis. Thankfully, pioneers in the field have conducted an impassio...

At first, grief knocks us down. we are stuck on the corner, watching almost everyone else moving down the block. But as we investigate, there is the possibility of bringing meaning to our own experience and to open up realms of consciousness that are expansive and deeply transformative. For Terri Daniel, grieving the loss of her son, these investigations led to an acceptance of the mystical realm...

Our religious and spiritual teachers encourage us to forgive, as if we know how to do that and naturally want to. Yet forgiveness is actually a complex and nuanced experience, especially complicated when great loss has resulted from an injury. How do people who have lost loved ones to murder, politically motivated violence, sexual abuse, mass murder, relate to the idea of forgiveness? What inspire...

Breaking the silence to talk about the end of life is sometimes hard, but can also be compelling. For those who have had experience with people facing the end of their lives, the conversation is crucial. And if you work with people at the end of life, it is essential. After working as a physician in hospice and palliative care for nearly her whole career, Dawn Gross has made it her mission to open...

When Rachel Stephenson was five years old, her mother died in a car accident and never returned home. While the rest of her family was determined to move on, replace her mom and maintain their silence, Rachel rebelled against their attempts to ignore the monumental vacuum her mother had left. She never lost the compelling desire to speak her grief, though her family never became comfortable with i...

No one talks about the hidden losses that come along with a cancer diagnosis. For Barbara Musser, a single young woman in 1989 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, suddenly facing struggles with her sexuality was an unexpected and deeply troubling experience. After her successful treatment, she was moved to try to help the couples, individuals and health care providers who were ill equipped...

Regi Carpenter has always used story telling to make sense of her world. By the time she faced the loss of her brother suddenly, she was well established in her story craft. And as she moved through her own experience of loss, she began to be asked to share stories with people experiencing losses of their own. Soon, she was telling stories to grieving children, confronting the losses by weaving th...

Aida Salazar lost a baby and quickly found herself pregnant with another. Struggling to find an open heart in the midst of fear, she did what artists, and many other grievers, do; she accessed her creative expression as a way to make sense of her experience. Over time, her writings began to become a memoir of her experience. In the Womb of Love is a love letter to both babies, a deep expression of...

How would we cope if our brand new baby could not live beyond a few hours? Most of us cannot imagine that experience but, for others, it is a reality. Beyond a crushing grief and sense that this should not have happened, there is the unfolding of days, learning to live with what seems unbearable. And then, perhaps, something begins to unfold that changes our lives. The impact of a life, no matter...

The obstacles to exercising our own choices at the end of our lives sometimes seem impossible to overcome. We are part of a culture that refuses to accept death, a medical system that reflects that culture and a lack of capable help in navigating an unfamiliar territory. When we add geographic impediments, once travel becomes difficult, a rural death can be particularly isolating. Micheal Fratkin,...

Some losses are losses of things we never had; a safe childhood where we were protected and treasured. Attention to our needs and protection from what hurts. For a person abused as a child, the grief is for what never was and for the impact of that on our lives as adults. But there is the inspiration that comes when we love ourselves through these most terrible losses and find that life can be bea...

How do our losses help us uncover our true purpose? This is the question at the heart of Sonika Marcia Ozdoba's memoir, The Soul with Two Voices. Losing what she thought was most valuable to her, her professional singing voice, she found an even deeper aspect of herself, her true voice. But the road towards our most authentic self is sometimes laced with peril. What can help us to continue our wal...

Tara Shuman had the kind of life you could wish for; rewarding work, a husband and two little kids. She had started a few books, a children's book, a novel, but hadn't ever finished. The cancer came, unwelcome of course, into her life. And she found herself writing to pull herself through it. She shared what she was writing and found it had meaning to other people, that she could help people to un...

How do we move through multiple losses in a short period of time? What helps along the way? When Deborah Allen lost 5 of the most significant people in her life in just a few years, her considerable resiliency was put to the test! Her usual strategies didn't work, and she was submerged in an ocean of pain. Another family member, also coping with the same losses, excused herself every night to watc...