Purpose.This Group Is Being Developed To Help Christians

I chose the GriefShare support group because as nurses we will need to help our patients and their families with the grief process when a loved one passes away. On March 29, 2014, I met Claudette St. John, the group leader, at 6:45pm at Northwest Christian Church in Acworth, GA. Rick Baldwin also attended the meeting. The group meets from 7-8:30pm. Claudette shared that she has been doing grief support classes for the past 20 years and the past 3 years she has been doing GriefShare at Northwest Christian. She lost her teenage daughter in a car accident 20 years ago. She expressed that there really are not any rules, other than just respecting each individual. She tasks herself with keeping the meetings on track and has a democratic leadership style. GriefShare is a Christian based program consisting of 13 weekly session. Participants do not need to attend all 13 sessions, the sessions can also be done individually. A workbook is given to those that are participating in the program. GriefShare’s goal is to help those experiencing grief, work through the process and recognize the different aspects of grief that they may encounter.

The book, Lament For a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff talks about his pain and grief after losing his 25-year-old son (Joy, 2009). His son died while on a mountain-climbing expedition. Dr. Wolterstorff has several books published during his career as a philosophical theology professor in Yale Divinity. However, he wrote Lament for a Son with a different journal style since it is a personal thing for him. The book is similar to a journal as he narrates the events that happened before and after his son’s death. The emotions expressed in the book are common among people who lose close relatives. What matters is how a person handles the issue. Kubler-Ross invented the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptancethat explain the escalation of grief when stricken by bad news (Axelrod, 2004). The paper looks into the book and its relation to the five stages of grief.

Death is a universally experienced phenomenon. In the United States alone, over 2.6 million people die each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). For practitioners, it is of utmost importance to better understand the process of grief to develop better interventions for bereaved individuals.

The Cokesbury United Methodist Church grief support group follows a thirteen-week curriculum from GriefShare, however, new members can join in at any time as each week has a “self-contained” lesson. The topic for the week I attendee focused on the “why” of losing a loved one. Through following this curriculum, the group seeks to equip members with “essentials to recover from the hurt of grief and loss.” (GriefShare, n.d.) The group focuses on helping members rebuild their lives after they experience tremendous loss and grief through facing the challenge together. (GriefShare, n.d.)

You are cordially invited to a Trauma and Grief Support Group. This education and support group will provide materials and discussions on a variety of topics to assist individuals in their grieving process.

Kathya Vasquez Mendoza ,Booth 6: Therapeutic Response to Clients Experiencing Loss, Grief, Dying, and Death

Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of

Little by little, hour by hour, day by day, people die. The people that die could be loved ones, strangers, friends, foes, just about anybody! Death is a terrible ordeal that one has to go through. Although people die every day the loss that someone feels changes them; as well as those they love, those they were close too, even those they don’t know. How can something that is so frequent effect people in tremendous days? Shouldn’t death be expected? Though people are always cautioned to expect the unexpected, when something catches you by surprise however, it can throw you for a whirl. After the death of a loved one, one of the main emotions felt is grief. This leads one to ask quite an important question: what exactly is grief?

In her seminal work on grief and grieving, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the concept now very well known as the Five (5) Stages of Grief, enumerated chronologically as follows: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In this concept, Kubler-Ross explored and discussed the normative stages that people go through when they experience the loss of a loved one and feel grief as result of this loss. It is also through these stages that people are now more aware of their feelings and thoughts when experiencing grief and the loss of a loved one. While the stages of loss are mainly developed for grief experienced with the death of a loved one, it is a generally accepted framework in understanding feelings of grief when an individual experiences the loss of a significant individual in his/her life. The discussions that follow center on the discussion of Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief, applied in the context of the Story of Job in the Bible.

You know what grief is.  And the only thing you can say, 'All right, I have experienced that emotion.  I recognize that emotion.  Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.'" (pg 72)

People cope with the loss of a loved one in many ways. For some, the experience may lead to personal growth, even though it is a difficult and trying time. There is no right way of coping with death. The way a person grieves depends on the personality of that person and the relationship with the person who has died. How a person copes with grief is affected by the person 's cultural and religious background, coping skills, mental history, support systems, and the person 's social and financial status. The definition of coping is described in the text as the “constantly changing (dynamic) cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage internal and/or external demands exceeding the resources of the person (Peterson, J., Johnson, M., Halvorsen, B., Apmann, L., Chang, P., Kershek, S., & Pincon, D.,2010, p. 435). This emphasizes that coping behaviors go beyond routine, adaptive behaviors.

This essay explores several models and theories that discuss the complexities of loss and grief. A discussion of the tasks, reactions and understanding of grief through the different stages from infants to the elderly, will also be attempted.

In the future, sibling loss groups and other, more generalized grief groups will be established. Groups will be run primarily at GCC's planned counseling office, with an eye toward future expansion into public schools, health care centers, and senior citizen organizations. Groups in these community settings will be part of GCC's outreach program, and will be provided at no charge.

Grief is something that every person from every walk of life can share- everyone experiences it in some shape or form. Even Jesus has been shown to grieve- for example, he grieved Lazarus. It is not just you who will comfort others; others will comfort you as well. Furthermore, it is not just people who mourn. God mourns for His people as well, and cares for us. As a whole, the phrase “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” means this: we all see evil and experience it (both from internal and external sources). God sees our sorrow and comforts us with the knowledge that things will get

The program that I am developing as defined by my research findings pertains to older adults or elderly persons who have suffered loss and what can help them cope with, heal from, and experience growth throughout their grieving process. This program is designed to enhance my church, to be an addition to an already existing church. Those who staff this program volunteer their time and are a part of the church staff. Damianakis (2012) shines light on the influence of spirituality and religion in assisting older adults grieving the absence of their partner within the framework of a model of group psychotherapy, which has produced many positive changes in these grieving ones’ self-identity, their grieving the absence of their partner, and becoming socially connected again with others (Damianakis, 2012). I am also incorporating Hayward’s (2014) points regarding a connection between religious uncertainties with mental health succeeding grief among older adults. The ones who harbored a greater amount of religious uncertainty stated that their symptoms became more severe, but those with less uncertainty stated that their symptoms were either steady or getting better throughout the same duration (Hayward, 2014). Kim et al. (2011) mentions that the discovery of meaning played a major role in inducing distinct variances in personal strength around 6 months after an older person’s partner passed away. Possessing greater religiosity was precisely connected to a greater degree of personal