By Rebecca Hensler, Founder of Grief Beyond Belief Back to school. The words have so many meanings for so many people… For educators like me, it’s back to the joys and struggles of the school year. For retailers, it’s a season of school-supply and dorm furniture sales. And for most parents of kids between six […]
by Rebecca Hensler, Founder of Grief Beyond Belief Many Grieving Person’s Bills of Rights are now available on the internet, usually modified from The Mourners Person’s Bill of Rights by Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD, Director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition. One thing the various versions have in common is a passage that […]
by Rebecca Hensler [Content notes: The following entry involves discussion of suicidal ideation, suicide prevention, and a death by suicide, all in the context of grief. As always at Grief Beyond Belief, please keep comments free of religious or spiritual content.] The following is entirely the personal thoughts of the author, except where cited through […]
By Rebecca Hensler, Founder of Grief Beyond Belief I started thinking about teaching professionals about how to provide appropriate support for grieving nonbelievers a long time ago. I can’t remember when I realized we need this; maybe it was when I discovered that the UC Berkeley Extension program in The Study of Grief and Loss […]
Three months after my son Jude died in 2009, I discovered the Facebook page of a worldwide parental grief organization called The Compassionate Friends. In those dark months, their community provided invaluable support — and inspired the eventual creation of the Grief Beyond Belief Facebook page, which provided the same sort of online grief support, just […]
by Susan Lynne Mehalick This post was originally published on Saturday, November 19, 2011 in the blog Nutballgirl Uninterrupted. She posted the link to the Grief Beyond Belief public page at Facebook and founder Rebecca Hensler was so moved that she asked for permission to republish it here. A few weeks ago, a little ten year […]
An anonymous member of the closed Grief Beyond Belief Group at Facebook has generously allowed us to publish this beautiful and insightful guess post: The 18th of this month will mark one year since my mother died. Here are some thoughts I’ve gathered and wanted to share with everyone in this group. They could be missing […]
Yesterday, authors Ophelia Benson and Richard Dawkins released a joint statement opposing certain language used in the context of political and personal disagreements in the secular community. Grief Beyond Belief spaces are open to any grieving nonbeliever, regardless of political beliefs. However, in order to keep those spaces safe, welcoming and comforting we maintain strict Conditions of Participation […]
Why is it that my grief seems to give people permission to invade my personal space? A total stranger and I are talking about our work, the way strangers do. We are on the patio at a club, and we’ve both had a few drinks, so the conversation is a little less coherent and a little more […]
Sarah Parmenter’s blog entry, “The Things Nobody Tells You About Grief,” is so damn full of good advice. If you have recently experienced a loss and are at the beginning of your “grief journey,” this essay is for you. There is so much that those of us who have lived through the first few years of […]
