We have all been educated to acquire things. We have been taught how to get an education, get a job, buy a house. There are lots of courses to teach us whatever it is that we need to know. But what education do we receive about dealing with loss? Where can we go to learn to deal with the conflicting feelings caused by significant emotional loss? Loss is so much more predictable and inevitable than gain, and yet we are woefully unprepared to deal with it.

Whether you suffer from the death of a loved one, the death of a not-so-loved one, divorce, breakup, being fired from your job, sexual or spouse abuse, emotional trauma, loss of trust or any other significant loss, the grief you feel can be paralyzing. Some people suffer from losses that happened 20 years ago, and some suffer from the losses we all sustained on 9/11. We are all grievers.

Grief is the conflicting mass of human emotion that we experience following any change in a familiar pattern of behavior. Grief just doesn