By Jane E. Brody — 2007
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
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CLEAR ALL
Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care, has accompanied over 1,000 people through their dying process.
This is written for the person with advanced cancer, but it can be helpful to the people who care for, love, and support this person, too.
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Normal bereavement and major depression share many of the same symptoms. And because of those similarities, psychiatrists have historically carved out what is known as a "bereavement exclusion." Its purpose was to reduce the likelihood that normal grief would be diagnosed as clinical depression.
I believe that social workers need to focus on that which we are trained to do: extend civic love and compassion to the client, staring where he or she is. We are not wed to the medical model; social work is ecological, psychosocial, and systems oriented.
Joanne Cacciatore of Sedona started the nonprofit MISS Foundation in 1996 to provide counseling, advocacy, research and education services to families who have endured the death of a child.
Part of being human means that we do experience the natural ebb and flow of life. This brings sadness and joy, despair and happiness, pain and beauty, loss and love. These aspects of the human experience are normal.
Most of you know her as Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, founder of the MISS Foundation and professor and researcher at Arizona State University. Her expertise is helping those affected by traumatic death.
Self and community care is critical to combating the effects of racism and intersectional violence.
"But now we’re asked — and sometimes forced — to carry grief as a solitary burden. And the psyche knows we are not capable of handling grief in isolation." - Francis Weller
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The mismatch between the knowledge and the longing is perhaps the most anguishing of all human experiences.