Sherry's Bereavement and Grief Recovery Blog in NYC. There is Life After Loss.

Too many grievers come to see me and feel there might be something wrong with them. It may have been a month, 3 months, a year, three years etc since they experienced their loss and yet they are still feeling terrible grief. They have been told by friends and family that it's time to move on.

I worked with a lovely young woman who was grieving for her father who died six years ago. She was suffering awful anxiety which affected her physically

 "I just want to feel "normal" again!" "When will this horrible anxiety go away?"  "I am not functioning and it scares me."

These are just some of the common questions I hear from grievers. Although all relationships are unique and therefore all grieving is unique as well, there are common emotions we all share. Anxiety, lack of energy, disrupted sleeping patterns, changed eating habits, roller coaster of emotions to name a few.

The first thing I

Recently we worked with a lovely sensitive woman who lost her mother, her best friend. After she completed the grief recovery process, she shared some of her poetry with us. We would now like to share it with you.

You don't need to write volumes to say volumes.....

This is What They Would Say...
                                  By Sunshine  

"Oh but she would want you
to be happy, carry on"
This is what they tell me-
Act like you'd never gone.

"Oh,

After Cho Cho's death my parents gave my brother and me a goldfish on a Tuesday; we named him Tuesday.  As a six year old I remember thinking that Tuesday was a remarkable fish.  We kept him in a fishbowl on top of the refrigerator.  Whenever we walked passed, he wiggled happily and eagerly awaited his food.  He always seemed joyful and full of life, and we loved him.  One day we noticed that he was no longer alive.  We had a little ceremony

I have been a psychotherapist for more than 25 years.  Over the years I have often come in contact with people who have lost beloved pets.  I tried with all my expertise to help them overcome the intense pain I knew so well.  It was not until I was certified as a Grief Recovery Specialist that I knew the components of a program that would help me and others recover from the pain of this terrible loss. 

My dog Cho- Cho died when I was five

Athough there are no absolutes concerning grievers, there are common responses to feelings of grief, bereavement and loss. Lack of energy, a sense of numbness, disrupted sleeping habits are some examples. While working with some grievers I have also noticed many of them feeling what they term guilt. There is a feeling of wishing they could have done more, or done better for the person they lost through either death or even divorce.

There is a lot

I recently worked with someone who wanted to feel recovery from painful feelings resulting from a divorce of over a year. What usually surfaces as a primary emotion when dealing with divorce is rage.  However, her feelings were apprehension and anxiety. How would she go on?. Word of mouth about our program prompted her to seek our help. She wanted to move on but did not know how. All the therapy and support groups she had participated in

A BROKEN HEART....

When we experience a loss, a significant loss of any kind, our hearts feel broken and we grieve. We FEEL how will we survive it?  We feel such emotionally pain. Well meaning and loving family and friends commonly tell us what they themselves have been taught when dealing with a loss:  Time will heal; Keep busy: He lived a full life. When my husband passed away, I heard things such as, "He's not suffering anymore",

From childhood on we learn to shirk responsibility for what makes us uncomfortable. Perhaps it is in man's nature. As far back as Adam and Eve, did not Adam answer G-d, it was not his fault he ate from the Forbidden Tree? He quickly blamed G-d himself by saying it was the woman G-d gave him that enticed him to sin by eating from the Tree of Knowledge! And when Eve was questioned by G-d, did she not blame the snake?

We tend to blame others

In my last blog, I ended off with the words Different, Better or More. You may ask, "What does that mean when dealing with Grief and Bereavement?"

It took me a while to really understand and comprehend those emotions while grieving. I only knew what I felt in my bereavement. I wished it could have been Different; I wanted my husband to have recovered and survived the illness. I wanted to still be able to talk to him, feel him, and hold