Grief and Loss Education

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St Robert, MO Feb. 27-28, 2026

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Grieving What I Never Had

alhesha_admin — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 21:52:24 +0000

I have written before about how going home can hurt but that it can also heal. Trips home remind me of how very different my life is now. I rarely go to the place where I grew up other than to be with friends for the funerals of their family members. In a few days, I will again make the seven-hour drive back home for a funeral. However, this one feels very different; it is for the funeral of my foster mom. A woman who, along with her husband, took me and others into her home for various lengths of time when parents couldn’t or wouldn’t care for their children. One who willingly opened her home and shared her heart to try to help heal what she was not a part of breaking.

As I reminisce, tears I never knew I needed to cry flow down my face. Even before starting the drive, my mind has traveled back to my childhood. It is a place of chaos, turmoil, brokenness, rejection, and a yearning to belong and be deeply loved. Although I am looking back with more understanding, it also requires that I look back with more honesty. And it hurts. It’s lonely, uncomfortable, and scary in my childhood memories where no one knows the pain, fear, or insecurity. It is a place in me that needs to grieve what I never had – a life without a mother after the age of seven years to protect, nurture, teach, support, and love; a safe place to take my concerns, questions, ideas, and emotions; a place that would not have birthed in me lingering insecurity and doubts. Someone who would have encouraged my ideas, cheered my successes, and been a guide through life’s changes. That is the way my mind imagines life with a mother anyway.

Merely the thought of returning has turned me inside out this week. And yet my toolbelt of experience and education has given me the knowledge that there is always hope available for healing and growth from pain. Grieve well; live well.

December 19, 2021

Angie — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 18:00:43 +0000

Today, My mind, body and heart feel very deeply a loss from eight and a half years ago. You might say that’s a long time to hold on to grief. But I am not clinging to grief, I have worked through it. I am holding onto memories. Memories of two kids who, 31 years ago, started life together, raised amazing children, traveled, laughed, played, worked, and had dreams of forever together. That life ended suddenly and the dreams shattered. But “loyalty to the dead (past) keeps you from living; you render your life irrelevant.” Van Der Kolk, M.D.

I still feel the loss, but my life is no longer ruled by it. I still wish he were still here, but am aware of abundant blessings in my life.

Yes, I am remarried and happy, but that doesn’t erase or replace Les.

I have experienced devastating loss and grieved greatly. And learned to live again. I am aware of the goodness of God in my life, but today I weep. it is ok to remember and to continue to live.

I hurt for those facing loss, but have hope for hearts to be mended.

We don’t get to choose what we think is good and avoid what grieves our hearts.

Life is an emulsifier of rejoicing and grieving.

Grieve well; live well.

Unconstrained By Grief

Angie — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 17:49:51 +0000

February had some brutally cold days and I was not able to clean up the graveside for Les’ birthday until March. It’s been over 7 years. I still kiss the headstone each time I go, I still miss him and I still cry. But life continues moving. A few months after he died, I met a woman who had lost two husbands. Another widow told me shortly after her husband died that she wanted to and planned to remarry. I found it shocking that she could be so brave and so confident in her decision. I was equally the opposite- I was not about to risk such heartbreak again. I felt more like Charles Dickens’ Miss Havisham. In Great Expectations, Amelia Havisham’s heart is broken when she is left at the altar. She is crippled by the weight of her loss and the grief causes her to pretty much cease living. She stops the clocks in her house and wears her wedding dress for the rest of her life. She stayed tethered to the past.

After years of experience, education and counseling, I now understand that it is OK to move on from the past, live in the present and plan for the future. It is possible to be complete with loss. That does not mean that sadness never returns or that the loss is forgotten. It means not letting the past keep me from pursuing new opportunities. It means freedom from guilt, pain and regrets in order to be able to experience joy, peace, and pleasure. It means that even though I wish he were still alive and that we were still married, it is right to continue to live. It is being able to live unconstrained by grief, even allowing myself the freedom to love again.