Graham Greene once said, "Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too." Author Joan Didion, in her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, narrates the year after the death of her husband, John Dunne, and her attempts to de...
Understanding Grief In a conference session entitled "Understanding Grieving Families," bereavement professional Paul V. Johnson highlighted both the individual and relational nature of grief as it occurs within a familial context. "Grief," he states, "...consists of the interplay of individual family members grieving in the social and relational context of the family, with each family member affecting and being affected by the others." Families sometimes erroneously believe that each member's grief will be similar to the others' because they have experienced the death of a specific...
