A word about grief groups

I miss him.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a joiner. Possibly the last ting I joined was the Girl Scouts and I quit when I saw some of the girls being mean to other girls. I’m not sure I would have used the word hypocrisy, but they were not following the Girls Scout promise to be kind to others. Yes…that’s the kind of judgmental scold I was at the age of 9.

When Randy died following hospice care, I got all kinds of info from Kaiser about grief services. At first I wasn’t interested, but I gradually came to think that it could be helpful to have people to talk to who actually had some real understanding of what I had been through and what I was feeling. And I thought to myself: how about just this one time in your life you take what’s offered instead of insisting on doing everything by yourself.

So now I belong to three grief groups - one is a zoom meeting where people sort of check in and respond to some kind of prompt/question.

Another group is also a zoom meeting but there is less audience participation - grief counselors share power point presentations that offer all kinds of resources, summaries of relevant books, activities, and ways of thinking about loss. I have been surprised by how helpful that group has been. Power Point slides? Really?

The third group is online writing - sort of like blog posts. It’s a group of people who have lost their partners to cancer.

Some of the things in all three groups are not particularly relevant to me and some of the participants talk about things like signs they’ve received from their loved ones, which I find hard to listen to. But there are nuggets I have found valuable, and the differing perspectives have been a useful way to get out of the doom loop I get into.

Anyone who might be interested: Kaiser offers free groups and resources to anyone and cancercare.org has online groups as well.