With fires burning across so many parts of BC, lives are being disrupted, wild places and wildlife devastated, and communities are facing profound loss and grief. The following article, which has been shortened considerably, was co-published by The Narwhal and IndigiNews. It is a tribute to courage and community. The Bradley Creek wildfire began on Friday, July 31, on reserve…
When someone dies, many adults instinctively want to protect children from the pain of loss. We may avoid difficult conversations, soften the truth, or postpone explanations until we think a child is old enough to understand. We tell ourselves things like: “They’re too young to understand.” “I don’t want to upset them.” “I’ll tell them when they’re older.” These responses…
In the Mel Robbins Podcast episode What Nobody Tells You About Grief and Loss, host Mel Robbins speaks with renowned grief expert David Kessler about the true nature of grief and how to navigate it in a way that honours the experience rather than minimizing it. David Kessler, a bestselling author and one of the world’s leading voices on grief…
The holiday season can be especially difficult when you are grieving the loss of someone close. Whether the loss is recent or happened long ago, this time of year often intensifies feelings of grief. Holidays are woven with tradition, memory, and togetherness, and when someone is missing, that absence can feel sharper than at other times of year. Activities that…
In 2010, Sasaki Itaru of Japan, grieving the loss of his cousin to cancer, discovered something beautiful: a poem his cousin had written, titled The Phone of the Wind. The poem spoke of a mysterious phone, one that had no line, no connection—only the wind, which carried thoughts and feelings directly to the heart. “Whisper to the wind,” the poem…
The five stages of grief were first identified by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Grief isn’t a linear process. It isn’t as if we experience stage one, followed by stage two, etc. When we’re struck by grief, we’re all over the map, consumed by one major feeling and cycling through different aspects, moment by…
A DeathCaring Collective intention, within and for our community, is ‘death as part of life’. Death is often difficult, scary, and overwhelming. It is natural for us to want to distance ourselves from the pain of it, and there is an underlying belief in our culture that suffering can be avoided. It takes a lot of courage, and usually significant…
The holiday season can feel like a punishment when you’re grieving. Forced festivity seems like it was created just to make the knots in your stomach even tighter. Seeing other people throwing parties and decorating trees and wearing ugly sweaters on purpose might make you want to crawl under your bed…and stay there until January 2. So how can you muster…
The book with this title by Megan Devine is about meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand. She writes: Most of what passes for grief support these days is less than useful. Because we don’t talk about loss, most people—and many professionals—think of grief and loss as aberrations, detours from a normal, happy life. We believe that…
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop…