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Bereavement

Alternative Hospice

Why Should I Join A Grief Support Group?

When someone you love dies, allowing yourself to mourn is a natural way to express your grief. Mourning brings healing, and healing requires the support and understanding of others as you journey for the knowledge of how to embrace the pain of your loss.

At Alternative Hospice, we want to aid you in this healing process. Utilizing the companioning model, developed by Alan Wolfelt, we will walk beside you as you begin this process of healing.

In addition to meeting and discussing our experiences, Alternative Hospice takes a holistic approach to grief as well. We bring together the mind, body and spirit to create safe places within ourselves to help ask the hard questions.

Symptoms of Grief

While grief affects our bodies, minds, and spirits, it also affects how we manage day to day living. Grief is different from one individual to the next. Every person will experience different symptoms at different times. Grief can bring on many changes such as:

  • Shock, denial, numbness, and disbelief
  • Anger, guilt, and loneliness
  • Anxiety, fear, and panic
  • Physical reactions such as headaches, illness, fatigue, weakness, and confusion
  • Change in sleep patterns
  • Changes in appetite, nausea
  • Uncontrollable or unexplainable fits of crying
  • There may even be feelings of relief and then guilt for feeling relieved
hospice-volunteer

Ways To Nurture Oneself

Be Gentle With Yourself

There is no limit on grief, it takes as long as it needs to take. The path is seldom clear, but what is clear is that by moving through our grief and reconciling it into our lives we find healing.

Find Ways To Express And Not Repress

Don’t hold your grief in! The Process of healing grief comes through integrating your grief into your life. Share what you are feeling with people you trust and value.

Maintain Daily Routines

Consistency is important in relieving stress. Eat, sleep and exercise with regularity, even though this may prove challenging. Drink lots of water, grieving is hard work and water will aid in the healing process.

Supportive Relationships

Reach out to others. Your family and friends are there to encourage and support you. Encourage all who have been touched by the loss to join with you in grieving. We were not meant to grieve alone.

Rely On Your Spirituality

No matter how strong we may be or feel, grief can challenge everything we hold as true. Reach out to things that give meaning, value, and purpose to your life. These will be the resources that aid you in integrating loss into your life.

Slow Down

Grief can be overwhelming. Your mind is not at the same place as your body. Recognize that you cannot make decisions and that you need more time to do simple tasks.

There Is No Such Thing As Closure

The pain of our loss will not go on forever. As we begin to reconcile the loss into our lives the pain begins to lessen.
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“Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak, Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”

– William Shakespeare

Grief Support Offers a Place to:

  • Express your feelings of grief and be validated.
  • Learn about the grief process.
  • Reflect upon your natural strengths and use them to reconcile grief into your life.
  • Sort through the emotions, stresses, and anxieties that come with loss.
    Openly struggle with difficult questions.

Grief is Normal

Grief is a normal response to loss. It is painful, and that pain can seem extremely overwhelming. Because grief is a normal response to loss it is not a “condition” that needs or can be “cured.” Nor will time heal the pain of a loss. Alternative Hospice will provide you with the opportunity to find peace and healing, by reconciling your loss into your life.

CALL US TODAY!

Alternative Hospice: 636-343-3839
Fax: 636-343-6367
Alternative Home Care: 636-432-0008
Fax: 636-283-2863