Someone you love has died.  This presents you with one of the most challenging experiences any human being can face -- coping with the loss of your loved one in your life.  In these pages, you will learn about your grief (experiencing your reactions to the loss of your loved one) and your mourning (making necessary readjustments to ultimately fit that loss into your life).

Learning how to grieve healthily, and to mourn so that you can learn to live adaptively in the absence of your loved one, is no simple task.  It often requires more work, takes more time and is more impactful than most people anticipate.  Yet, with accurate information, sufficient time, and proper support, most mourners can accomplish this painful but necessary task.  The problem is that these three resources are all too frequently in short supply as a direct resuult of the enormous amount of misinformation existing about bereavement.

This not only doesn't help mourners, it actually hurts them.  It will be extremely helpful for you if you can be aware of the twelve most important insights that need to be maintained by mourners and those who seek to help them.  Then you can better appreciate the true realities of your own particular bereavement, respond more effectively to what you encounter in it, and have more appropriate expectations of yourself along the way.

Insight #1  Your grief is as personal and unique as your fingerprint; no one else will have the same bereavement experience as you and there is no one "correct" way to respond to loss.

Insight #2  You are dealing with more than one loss when your loved one dies.

Insight #3  The depth and breadth of your acute grief reactions to the loss of your loved one should not be underestimated.

Insight #7  The circumstances of your loved one's death will have a profound influence on you.

Insight #9  It is a myth that healthy mourning means totally "letting go" of your lost loved one.

Insight #10  Others will not necessarily understand what you are going through or know how to reach out and support you.

Insight #11  Because children do not respond exactly like adults does not mean that they don't need to be given information about the death, or to be included in the family's activities and discussions around it.