MSI Press Blog

  excerpt from Harnessing the Power of Grief (Potter) Introduction Grief, the process by which we adjust to the losses in our lives, is often one of the most devastating and life-changing experiences in a human being’s life. Like all who have come before us, each of us will suffer important losses and will experience grief. A fraction of us will experience complicated grief and will benefit from professional help. Treatment of complicated grief is beyond the scope of this book, as discussed below. Most of us will experience normal grief, still very difficult, but manageable without professional help. In time, with our inner and outer resources, we will make a satisfactory adjustment to our loss. How do we do this? We harness the power of grief, and that is the subject of this book. In my career, I coordinated a hospital-based wellness program including a spousal bereavement program. Volunteers, who themselves had been widowed for at least two years, provided help and support ...

  The Christmas season has become a mixed set of emotions for us. My grandson was born Christmas Day 20 years ago -- extra annual joy! The brother of a young man we took for 6 years died Christmas eve this year of covid. This is the first year that our family is observing the holidays without our patriarch, Carl , and Murjan , our beloved cat. So, for sure, grief has wrapped itself around our holiday activities. Here, then, is an excerpt from Julie Potter's book, Harnessing the Power of Grief , that we have found insightful... Beginning to adjust You are not a stranger to this process. There are many times during your life when you have to adjust to and make your way in a new world: the first day of school, going away to college, getting a new job, marrying, moving to a new neighborhood, retiring and living in a new world with no colleagues and no 9-to-5 schedule, becoming ill or disabled at any age and living in a slower world with people surging on ahead of you, emigrating to a n...

  Excerpt from  Harnessing the Power of Grief  (Potter): The Experience of Grief and What It Might be Like for You   “I was just as crazy as you can be and still be at large. I didn’t have any really normal minutes during those two years. It wasn’t just grief. It was total confusion. I was nutty….” —Helen Hayes, Actress [ McNees ] [1]   Your individual grief experiences will differ from others’ experiences and differ from your own past grief experiences. When you lose someone, your experience of the loss may surprise you. You might envision how you might feel, or what you might think, but you will not know how you are with the loss until it happens.   The experience of grief includes general characteristics commonly experienced by everyone and personal characteristics that are particular to your own situation. Your personal characteristics will affect how you experience the more general characteristics. All these characteristics are interwoven...