Ways of Coping with Loss and Grief
When faced with a loss, crisis or life-changing event, you are suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world, one that can be frightening and unsettling. Knowing how to make it through the first few days or hours can help.
This lens offers articles and resources along with helpful, healthy strategies for coping with a loss and the grief response that follows.
It can be helpful to realize that
- On life's most difficult days
all that we can do
is simply take things
Moment by Moment.
Sometime the best you can hope to do during times of challenge is remember the basics and take things one minute at at time, one hour at a time, one day at a time.
Photo Source: Linda Graindourze. Pain. Royalty Free Use.
Remember the Basics When Coping with Loss
Healthy Strategies When Facing A Life Challenge
This short list provides healthy coping strategies that I recommended to patients and to friends, to keep them moving during the first few days.
- Take it one hour at a time, one day at a time, if need be one moment at a time.
- Get enough sleep or at least enough rest.
- Try and maintain some type of a normal routine.
- Remember that regular exercise helps relieve stress and tension.
- Eat a balanced diet. Limit high calorie and junk food. Drink plenty of water.
- Avoid using alcohol, medications or other drugs in excess or to mask the pain.
- Do those things and be with those people who comfort, sustain and recharge you.
- Talk to others, especially those who have lived through and survived similar experiences.
- Find creative ways-journal, paint, photograph, build, woodwork, quilt, knit, collage or draw-to express intense feelings.
- Remember coping skills you have used to survive past losses. Draw upon these inner strengths again.
More Resources for Understanding Grief and Loss
- General Information on Loss, Change & Grief
- This page, from my Journey of Hearts site, provides general information on how we all join a club, no one planned on joining...the Grief & Loss Club.
- Acute Grief Response
- This page describes the normal response to a loss, the Acute Grief Response. It includes physical, emotional, social and behavioral symptoms that a grieving person typically experiences.
- Acute Stress Disorder
- An Acute Stress Disorder is an anxiety and behavioral disturbances that may develop within the first month after exposure to an extreme trauma, such as a sudden loss or death.
Grief is a Journey
The Experience of Grieving after a Loss
- Grief is a journey,
often perilous and without clear direction,
that must be taken.
The experience of grieving cannot be
ordered or categorized, hurried or controlled,
pushed aside or ignored indefinitely.
It is inevitable as breathing, as change, as love.
It may be postponed, but it will not be denied.
Molly Fumia
A Squidoo Lens on Loss, Grief and Bereavement
More information and resources on coping with loss and the grief response.-
Loss, Grief and Bereavement
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Loss is the disappearance of something cherished, often the death of a person, loss of a relationship, loss of a job or loss of health. Grief is the entire response--mind, body and spirit--to the loss. Bereavement is the often term used when the loss...
More Articles for Coping with Loss and Grief
Other Websites on How to Cope with Loss
- Coping with Loss: Guide to Grieving and Bereavement
- Learn about coping with loss, grieving, and bereavement from Helpguide.org. The article addresses the stages of grief, the length of the grieving process, and other questions concerning grief and loss.
- Grief and Loss, Funeral Arrangements, End of Life - AARP
- Information and resources from the AARP on coping with grief and loss, as well as some of the practical arrangements with end-of-life issues and funeral care.
- Coping With Death, Grief, and Loss Handout
- An article on coping with grief and loss after a death from the Counseling Center at the University of Iowa.
- Grief and Loss from Beliefnet.com
- Grief and Loss resources from Beliefnet.com, a website designed to help people find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness.
- Grief and Loss
- A helpful article from the Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA) the explains what to anticipate after experiencing a Loss and the Grief Response.
More Healthy Coping Strategies
Keeping You Going Beyond the First Few Days
This list provides additional healthy coping strategies to keep the person moving and doing something beyond first few days following the loss.
- 1. Create a Memorial. Depending on the circumstances and the person you may want to create roadside memorial, a home shrine or a bulletin board filled with letters, notes, poems and pictures. You may decide to create a sculpture, a collage or fill a scrapbook with memories.
2. Help to plan and organize the funeral, memorial service, or celebration of life to honor the person who has died. Planning a service, tending to the details, is something active to do, during a time when people often feel helpless.
3. Plant a tree or flowers in a garden in memory of the person lost.
4. Donate--money, time, food, clothing or other needed items--to a favorite charity, homeless shelter, animal shelter or home for abused women.
5. Donate blood at your local blood center. Donating is another way of doing something active and giving something back.
6. Write sympathy and condolence notes, letters of encouragement and support to those affected by the loss.
7. Thank the emergency and hospital personnel, highway patrol, police and firefighters for helping if the loss involved an accident or emergency.
8. Be kind to others. Make space for the car merging in on the freeway. Don't use your horn unless it is absolutely necessary. Let someone with fewer items go first in the grocery store.
9. Perform random acts of kindness. This will help to remind one there is tenderness and thoughtfulness in the world. Pay the bridge toll for the person behind you. Smile at the store clerk. Some choose to perform random acts of kindness in memory of the person lost.
10. Volunteer your services or skills. Offer assistance to someone in need.
11. Do something that can benefit others. Take a first aid or CPR class.
12. Remember to tell your loved ones, friends and family how much you care about them often.
A Squidoo Lens on Helping Children Cope with Grief
Children can be significantly impacted by the death of a loved one.-
Children and Grief
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Children and adolescents are not immune to facing loss, death, dying and grief; they encounter loss and will experience a grief response. Much as we, as parents and teacher, might want to protect and shelter children and try to create a world for the...
The Great Family of the Heavy-Hearted
Finding Support During Times of Sorrow
- When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne,
let us think of the great family
of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance,
and inevitable,
we will feel about us,
their arms and their understanding.
Helen Keller
A Lens for Anyone Who Has Experienced a Loss
Information on Journey of Hearts for Grief, Loss and Transitions
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Journey of Hearts - Grief, Loss & Transitions
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Journey of Hearts was launched in the Fall of 1997 as "a Healing Place in CyberSpace." It was the as the first and only physician sponsored website devoted to educating people about the normal grief response. In the fall of 2007 Jo...
Mourning Ends - When You Decide to Live Again
Mourning can go on for years and years.
It doesn't end after a year, that's a false fantasy.
It usually ends when people realize that they can live again,
that they can concentrate their energies on their lives as a whole,
and not on their hurt, and guilt and pain.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
A Lens on the Anniversary Reaction
Grief can surface in unexpected places and times. One of those common times is around Anniversary dates--whether the birth date, anniversary date or death date of a loved one.-
Anniversary Reaction - When Remembering Isn't Always a Happy Occasion
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Coping with the anniversary of the death of a loved one, the loss of a public figure, dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or the national trauma of September 11, 2001 can be difficult for the family, the friends...
Books on Coping with Loss
Available on Amazon
When there Are No Words: Finding Your Way to Cope with Loss and Grief
Amazon Price: $14.95 (as of 07/25/2008)
Gifts from the Unknown: Using Extraordinary Experiences to Cope with Loss & Change
Amazon Price: $20.95 (as of 07/25/2008)
My Son Todd and My Guardian Angels: How I Learned to Cope With the Death of My Only Child
Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 07/25/2008)
Changing Course: Healing from Loss, Abandonment and Fear
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 07/25/2008)
Life After Loss: A Practical Guide To Renewing Your Life After Experiencing Major Loss (4th Edition)
Amazon Price: $10.85 (as of 07/25/2008)
Coping with Valentine's Day
- A Cleansing, Healing Candle Burning Ceremony
- A blog article with information on performing a cleansing, healing candle blessing.
- A Virtual Hug for You on Valentine's Day... Pass it On
- A way of coping by sending a Virtual Hug to cheer up yourself and others.
- Coping with Valentine's Day as a Single
- Suggestions with ways of coping when you are single or recently single.
A Lens on Coping with the Holidays
The "I'll Be Home for Christmas" lens includes suggestions for "Ways of Coping When You're Apart at the Holidays" and "Coping at Work When You're Apart at the Holidays"-
I'll Be Home for Christmas - A Wish of Hope and Peace for the Holidays
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The classic song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas," is a song about longing to be home with the ones that you love. Listening to this beautiful melody and lyrics is one way of being home for a bit even when you're far apart...if only in your dr...
The Latest from the Grief, Loss & Transitions Blog
Blog for the Journey of Hearts Site
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byBooks on Coping with Grief
Available on Amazon
Understanding Grief: Helping Yourself Heal
Amazon Price: $21.56 (as of 07/25/2008)
Grieving the Death of a Mother
Amazon Price: $13.99 (as of 07/25/2008)
How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies
Amazon Price: $11.56 (as of 07/25/2008)
Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief
Amazon Price: $8.00 (as of 07/25/2008)
I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye Workbook: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One (Workbook) (I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye, 1)
Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 07/25/2008)
A Squidoo Group for Grief and Loss
The Grief and Loss Club
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Grief & Loss Club Headquarters
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The Grief & Loss Club is for lenses that have information, resources and support to anyone grieving a loss. The Grief & Loss Club is one that people do not choose to join, rather it is a club that their experience of grief has given t...
The Latest Grief and Loss News from Google
Updates from the World of Grief and Loss
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byOther Squidoo Lenses on Coping with Loss and Grief
More Ways to Cope with Loss and Grief
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The Light Beyond: helping you cope with grief and bereavement
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Someone you love has died. And, like countless others who have walked the path of grief before you, you are discovering that a death can rob you of so much more than a person you love. It robs you of your energy, your hope, and sometimes just of the...
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Christmas and Grief
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Traditions of the holiday season may be difficult to continue without the presence of your deceased relative or friend. You always have the option of developing new or modifying other traditions, or declining to do disturbing activities. Dedicate you...
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How to Cope with Grief
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Travel with me as you go on the journey of coping with grief. There is no guarantee here, no magical wand, just the assurance that your life will get better. It will never be the same as before your loved one died, but gradually you will feel s...
Grief - An Ever Changing Storm
there comes a calm.
After we become convinced that we are at the very brink
of eternal despair, or fear, or guilt, or sadness,
we are given a reprieve.
We have a breathing space that eventually leads to whole days
that have personal value and offer us the opportunity for affection.
Then we recognize that no period of misery is endless and unrelenting;
it is instead, changeable.
Carol Staudacher
Featured Lenses on Writing Condolence Letters or Notes
Often as part of the loss one needs to write condolence letters or notes.-
How to Write a Condolence Note or a Sympathy Note
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Taking a bit of time to write a condolence note or condolence letter can be a great source of comfort and provide a gift of healing for a friend or a loved one who is grieving a loss. According to research by Hallmark, Americans send nearly 125 mill...
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How to Write a Condolence Letter
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Finding the right words to write a condolence letter or sympathy note may be challenging, yet the benefits can be immeasurable. A well-written, heart-felt condolence letter is a show of your support and sympathy for the person grieving the death of a...
Copyright Information
Creative Commons License. Some rights reserved.
Creative Commons License © 1997-2008 Kirsti A. Dyer MD, MS, FT. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
The material in this resource book may be copied and reproduced on websites or in newsletters, ezines provided that the Author's Biography information is included with any article.
Longer excerpts from this online resource book may not be copied, duplicated or reproduced for use in a for-profit setting without prior written permission by the author.
Contact the Author at the Contact Me link above.
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Serenity_Prayer_Gifts
Very nice lens. Thanks so much! :-) Posted June 24, 2008 |
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flicker
Very helpful lens. Well done! Posted November 01, 2007 |
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jasmineann
Thank you for this valuable information for coping with grief. Posted October 10, 2007 |
