Introduction to Moorings, for Jewish bereaved
Rooting yourself as you walk in grief
These newsletters come from having personally suffering losses, doing grief work, and then training and working
with hundreds of people as the Bereavement Coordinator of Hospice of Seattle and later at Lions Gate Palliative
Care Ward in North Vancouver.
They come from speaking on the phone, meeting individually and with families, leading many different kinds
of grief groups, instructing in a Palliative Care Training Program for health care professionals, facilitating
workshops with hospital teams, from my private therapeutic practice, and hearing many, many stories.
All those who shared their lives with me echo in these pages.
Motifs, questions, and concerns rise in the first year of mourning that surface time and again.
Much of this you know instinctively. It's common sense. Practical stuff.
But when in this time it helps to see it written down, remember it once again, and hear it from outside oneself.
It helps to know that you're not losing your mind, that what you're experiencing is 'normal'.
It helps to stop, feel and know that you're on the spiral walk of mourner.
And it helps at times to lean up against something for a little while, take a rest on the road,
catch your breath, and look around yourself before pushing onward.
So walk gently. Hang on tightly. And at the same time, loosen your grip from time to time.
That's part of it too. And let these Moorings hold you for a while, when yours are gone.
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