what grief is NOT

I'm someone who believes Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did as much damage to grieving people as her writings were a breakthrough for exposing the important subject of grief, grieving and, dying.

Kubler-Ross defended her seminal work (1969) "On Death and Dying" as having "taken up where Freud left off in his study of grief" in many of her public appearances. Yet in fact Freud's unfinished work was not on the subject of grief but on the subject of melancholia. Melancholia's description was closest to what we currently know as Depression.

Freud's interest was to observe how it was that people who were told a diagnosis of impending death acted out their attempts to 'ready' themselves to die. Kubler-Ross's work turned Freud's attempts on it's side: Responses to interviews with the dying about their experience of moving toward death were labeled as grieving. In other words, a new term was attributed to the process of the interviewees experiences of dying. The notion of 'Stages of Grieving' were then attributed to and through a small sample of the people who exhibited the stages.

The year is 2009 and those of us who serve the grieving and the bereaved also still see people who come to grief support specifically because they hear from clients: "I know I feel this way because I've missed a stage".
In my many years of service to the bereaved I can assure you many people suffer this delusion. What tyranny!

The hold on the American population of Kubler-Ross's "Stages" is so strong and widespread that we at Oak Tree Bereavement Center speak to a wide range of groups and answer calls and emails regularly throughout each year.

Subsequent posts to this blog will address:

* What is grief?
* What can I expect while I grieve?
* Current research in Death and Dying
* What's to know about how to self-care during grief ?

Healing Earth Spirits

I spent the last three days with women who came from all over the USA with one mission in mind: To assist in healing the Great Mother Earth. We met on a beautiful and sacred ground in Fremont, CA where the burial ground for the Ohlone Indians had been disturbed once again. In fact, the area had been disturbed so many times that as early as the 1700's various groups of people were seeing angry spirits as they walked the land where we were planning to eat, dance, ceremony, and sleep.

It wasn't just women from all over the Nation but specifically, healers from all over the world who were invited to the Ohlone site. Pretty amazing still that so many women showed up and put such long hours in nourishing the earth, the participants, and the spirits. We were protected by approximately one dozen men who surrounded the ceremonial and sleep sites. I want to say again "Thank you" as I spoke to each personally while there but as a group we also thanked them and blessed their work for us.

How is it that so many people could devote a week or 3 days to such "unrecoginized" "unpaid" "universal" work? I believe I have a few of the answers.

Celebration & Loss

It was my 91 year old friend's birthday the other day. He's now living at the Veteran's Hospital Palliative Care Center so I made him a cake to share with lots of people. I thought of people's allergies, I thought of his multiple brain tumors and the recent strokes he'd had. I thought of the swirl of people now around his life--he'd lived alone for 30 years until now. So I decided to bake a
'sad cake'. I figured he'd get a kick out of my telling him the story of how the cake got its name and sure enough he and all the folks I invited in to join us giggled and laughed out loud. As we sang to him it was so clear that this ritual of eating on special days (birthday, anniversary, etc.) brings such comfort to people. In its own way celebratory cake makes it possible for us to fully participate in the joy of life as we face death. The 'sad cake' name? Came about because it's a cake that looks absolutely full and beautiful as it comes out of the oven and then as it cools falls flat and isn't so beautiful any more. Sprinkled coconut all over the frosted cake softens the blow.