Death can bring out the best and the worst in families, and family dysfunction is a real thing, and it happens..lot! Estrangement, dysfunction, and conflict are significant losses that are not clearly understood by our society, but with them they bring an overwhelming amount of grief.

Commitment is not a mere wish or a promise that can be broken, it's about staying true to yourself and staying committed to your goal. A commitment can be about taking care of yourself and to keep moving forward in life even when it feels hard. So why not, commit to YOU!

If you've listened to any of my podcasts, you'll often hear me say that "every relationship is unique, and we all have our own unique experience with grief." Comparing ourselves to others in any way is a recipe for unhappiness because, comparing never helps, it only hurts.

For some people they may not experience their grief the way they thought they would, or, they do not acknowledge their loss and show no signs of grief. And there are many reasons why people do not experience an emotional reaction when someone dies or they lose something significant to them. Everyone's grief is unique!

It's not always easy to make changes especially when dealing with emotional loss. When times are tough and some of us are feeling chipped and scared, we don't seem to realize that we actually have very few useful and valuable habits to help us manage our pain and loss.

Disenfranchised grief is often known as hidden grief. It's grief that goes unacknowledged or validated by many, it can be minimized or not understood and it makes a griever feel unsupported by family, friends, even society and they end up feeling like their grief is unworthy.

In the beginning of the adoption process, most of the emphasis is focused on the positivity and beauty and that's wonderful. The fact is, as much as adoption contains a great deal of hope, it can also contain a large amount of loss and sadness.

Most of us spend a lot of time at the workplace surrounded by people, some might be good friends and others.. not so much. When grief knocks at your door and you have to work, it can become very uncomfortable for you, and your coworkers. Sadly, most businesses handle the reality of death very poorly.

We identify ourselves with the stories we tell ourselves, the labels we place upon ourselves, and the roles we undertake defining who we are by what we do for a living, are we married, how much money do we have in the bank. Yet, we don't always have a conscious awareness of our identity until, something changes in our life.

Death does not create one single  ripple in one's life. From that primary loss it creates multiple losses, though we often are engulfed in the grief of losing the person we loved and cared about so much. Our grief is also the pain of other losses that are a result of the death, and this ripple effect is known as secondary loss.