When I received the phone call at five o’clock in the afternoon that my 47-year old husband had died of a heart attack, all of a sudden I was in a place I had never been to before. And in a dimension only I knew - and no one near me. I did not sleep nor eat for three days. But I still had enough sense to wait until 4 a.m. on the first night to call my closest relatives, living in France. Four o’clock in the morning here is ten o’clock in the morning over there.

My message to you:
If you're looking for someone who will reassure you that what you're going through now - after the sudden, untimely, or violent loss of a spouse, child, sibling or other loved one, or after having witnessed or contributed to their terminal care - will be over in just three months, I'm not the right person. (I know that your environment wants you "to move on" and "be over it" after five months, at the most!) Also, I refuse to make any promises using terms such as healing, recovery, stages, "letting go" or “grief journey." Coping with grief is too complex for that, and there are no 21-day miracles.

What I can assure you of:
Since I lived through It and came out of It the other end, you will too. Most of us do (we will discuss how to take care of yourself so that you can beat the statistics). How you will cope, how long it will take, and what your life will be at the other end can not be predicted in detail and with precision. Nor what sense you will eventually make out of your experience. Only that you will.

What I can tell you is that the It holding you in Its grip right now will eventually let go. No, you are not going crazy. And whatever you may do, think, feel or perceive – as different as it may be from your earlier self – is typical for living through trauma. Whether it is memory loss, difficulty concentrating, irritability, perceiving things which turn out not be there, involuntarily reliving time and again the worst moments, possibly flashbacks and disturbing dreams – not to mention loss of appetite, sleep and energy – is, unfortunately, a natural component of your experience. And so are the reactions and actions on the part of your ENVIRONMENT - even the most well intentioned individual JUST DOES NOT KNOW what you are really going through. Learning to coach your environment is part of the grief work we do.

What I can also assure you of is that you are not alone. One of the amazing things I discovered after my husband died was the world of survivors. It had never occurred to me that a young spouse could die. And that a child could die before you had been inconceivable!

Survivors often are silent because they feel isolated and painfully misunderstood. But all of a sudden I realized that we are a group out there, bound by a common experience and with an intuitive understanding of what the other person is going through. We are linked by a bond known only to those WHO HAVE BEEN THERE. Whether you are a WOMAN or a MAN does not matter. We understand each other, and there is comfort in not being alone. Even without words.

Because I have experienced the comfort of not being alone, I have established the Grief and Traumatic Bereavement Counseling Program offering individual counseling, help for families, the Adult Bereavement Support Group, and the Nationwide Telephone Grief Support Network.

These are the goals and subjects of individual, family and group grief counseling: