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In response to COVID-19, Gerard’s House has completely transformed our services. In March, we switched all grief support groups to a virtual format. But the more seismic shift has been in the amount of casework we provide. Immigrant families in Gerard’s House’s Nuestra Jornada program, especially, have been disproportionally impacted by lay-offs in the service industry and often do not have access to government relief. Throughout 2020-2021, Gerard’s House has reached out to the parent/caregiver of every family in our care to assess their basic needs, provide resources and emotionally support families emotionally through their grief, anxiety, family conflict and other struggles. Whenever possible, we fill out applications and make calls together to address basic needs and connect families with services and emergency funds. By the end of 2020, we will also have distributed more than $100,000 in direct financial assistance to grieving families in need.
The page you are looking for no longer exists. Perhaps you can return back to the site's homepage and see if you can find what you are looking for.
Someone whom you love has died, or is dying, and you feel sadness. You may be asking, “Why do I hurt so much?” If you can take a moment, I would like to talk with you about the hurt and sadness that you are experiencing.
Everybody at one time or another feels grief because of the death of a loved one. This deep hurt is only possible when someone we are close to dies. We rely on each other. We spend many years dependent on our parents, other adults and children. We have families. We make friends. We have neighbors.
It is a part of our makeup to form lasting bonds of caring and affection with other people. We fall in love and long for the love of another person. If we lived our lives separately from other people, and did not need to rely on others, the loss or death of another would have little impact.
Because we form deep attachments, we are vulnerable.
Because we depend on other people, because they matter to us, they become a part of us and cannot be replaced. When someone is gone from our lives, someone with whom we have a heart attachment, a piece of us has been torn away. The loss wounds us deeply. This wound is called “grief.”
The grief wound can be healed, but it will take time.
Grieving is the way we heal from this wound. Through the process of mourning, the outward expression of inner grief, we gradually accept the loss and heal. At the end of mourning, there is still a feeling of sadness, but it is not the deep hurt we have felt before. With the sadness, we still have happy memories of our loved one who has died.
There are no hard and fast rules for how people grieve.
Grief may be more intense and more prolonged the more you relied on, or were bonded to, the person or pet that died. Also some deaths tend to be more difficult: the loss of a child, death from a suicide, or an unexpected death, to name a few.
I would like to share with you what happens to our bodies, to our hearts, and to our lives when we experience grief. Before I talk about these changes, I want you to know that they are absolutely normal. There is nothing wrong with anyone who experiences these reactions. However, each person’s response to grief is unique. Therefore you may or may not experience some or all of these changes.
There are physical changes such as:
There are emotional changes:
There are mental changes.
There are other changes:
Why must I grieve? Won’t the hurt go away after time passes?
Healing wounds of the heart is different from healing physical wounds. Given time, most physical wounds will heal by themselves because the physical body usually heals over time. Hurt that results from the loss of someone we love can only truly be healed through active grieving.
It is true that we can cover over grief through drugs, alcohol, activities, another relationship, or just by mentally pretending that we feel okay. The problem is the wound still exists inside of us, and will affect our ability to enjoy life fully and to love others.
In our culture, we are not taught the skill of healing the heart, healing emotional wounds. You may discover that it is difficult to find people who are willing to listen to your hurt in a non-judgmental and comforting way.
A simple way to remember what is needed to heal grief is:
“What you can feel, you can heal.”
Provided by Gerard’s House, a grief support center for children, teenagers and their families in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For more information please contact us at (505) 424-1800 or gerardshouse.org.
This article was published in “The Grieving Heart,” written and edited by Bob Dorsett, LLC, www.silentseas.net
Mailing Address: P.O. BOX 28693
Santa Fe, NM 87592
Physical Address: 3204 Mercantile Court, Suite C
Santa Fe,NM 87507
(505) 424-1800
info@gerardshouse.org
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