http://ping.fm/Dkuol http://ping.fm/hAM4n

"The very act of putting the Sympathy Pin on, is a self acknowledgment that you are not feeling "normal" or "okay" and that this is quite reasonable. You need to allow yourself time to grieve. In Western societies we do not enjoy strong and structured community support, as we go about our often isolate lives. The Sympathy Pin allows others to recognize where you are in your life at this time and that you need them to bear with you."

This is quite interesting idea. Not sure how well this would work if others don't recognise what the pin means. I came across it in the context of the Australian Bushfires, and the need to recognise those who are grieving.

~ THis is an attempt to post via Ping.fm to my blogs. It sort of worked....

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

- Shel Silverstein

This was posted elsewhere, and I like it so cross-posted here.

Church trained to help slain woman's family deal with grief

This relates to the horrible story of the 9-month pregnant woman killed & left in a park. But the reason I am blogging on it is not due to the murder, but because of the information and discussion about grief.

"In order to work through it, you have to face it," Johnson said. "You have to face the fact that there's a loss, face the fact of what you feel. And it's in facing it that you begin to move toward forsaking the pain of it.

"You don't lose the event, you don't lose the relationships that are tied into it -- relationships are eternal," he continued. "But you can move beyond the immediate and the long-term pain that is associated with that particular loss. That's where the Grief Recovery process begins to help people work their way through it, by working through that pain."

Bishop F. Josephus Johnson II, Senior pastor of The House of The Lord (The family church), makes some good points ~ they are of course from the position relevant to God, but Christian, Athiest or Other there are some really good points about grief, griveing and working through the process.

"One of the things we say a lot is, 'Time will heal all wounds.' And time really does not heal anything," Johnson said. "We give the example in Grief Recovery that if we believe time heals things, then when you get a flat tire, just go out and get a chair and sit by it and see whether the flat fixes itself. It's not going to do that. You have to make informed decisions and choices in order to be able to heal certain things."

It doesn't matter if it was last week, last month or last decade ~ or in fact still to come, mourning a loss that is yet to come ~ or if it is about death at all.

Grief is about loss, and there are many precious things that can be lost.

How do we deal with it?

Grow from it?

Survive?

BBC News: Coping with death on the web  ~ How the internet is affecting the way we mourn.