#grief

#grief

My boyfriend just lost his mom suddenly and tragically. He has barely been able to function during this time, so I took on the responsibility of making the arrangements to honor her life. I knew his mom, too, so it was hard having to stow away my grief, but I know he was grateful. My boyfriend's ex showed up to the funeral.

It's a film about music. Particularly, about what remains when a musician cannot play and is left to consider the terrible sacrifices made, without conscious consent, to this all-consuming vocation that creates family pain and jealousy almost as a toxic byproduct. It's a drama to put you in mind of Glenn Gould and Hilary du Pre, sister of Jacqueline. Screenwriter Mark O'Halloran has adapted the 2013 novel Intermission by Owen Martell about renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans.

"I think it was after Uche had passed, and ... my kids and I, we just wanted to do something together, right? So we went to American Dream in New Jersey. And, so, we got our swimming suits, and we were just having a day. It was our own little family cocoon,"

My college girlfriend and I (both women) were together for four years, through a pandemic, graduation, and almost a year of post-graduation long distance. It was a very good relationship; we basically never fought, treated each other very well, genuinely liked each other, etc. She broke up with me a few months ago after realizing she wanted kids-I definitely do not.

Should I try to seek closure with a person I used to love but drifted apart from, or is it best to leave them be? There's a person I used to be really close to who doesn't talk to me any more. We didn't have a fight. We just drifted, but I still think about them all the time. We were really close from year 7 to year 12. The truth is I had a devastating crush on her. I told her about it one day; she let me down very sweetly and our friendship continued. She was the first (and so far only) person I've ever felt I loved. She's the reason I identify as bi. And I believed for a few years she loved me too, if in a different way to how I hoped.

My mom died when I was young, so I grew up spending summers with her mom in South Dakota. I loved that time with her, but I often only saw her that one time of year. I lived back in Florida with my dad for the rest of the year. When my grandma was older, she embraced the snowbird lifestyle and spent half the year in Florida to escape the Midwest winters.

Losing my brother to a substance use disorder taught me things I never wanted to learn. Things nobody prepares you for. Things that will change you in ways you never thought possible. It taught me that you can love someone so much it physically hurts-and still not be able to save them. It taught me that you can mourn someone you love long before they are physically gone, and no one tells you how helpless that feels. How humiliating.

Growing up, Melissa Shultz sometimes felt like she had two fathers. One version of her dad, she told me, was playful and quick to laugh. He was a compelling storyteller who helped shape her career as a writer, and he gave great bear hugs. He often bought her small gifts: a pink "princess" phone when she was a teen, toys for her sons when she became a mom.

When we think of rituals, we tend to think of face masks and wellness trends. But there are actually ways to use rituals to help heal grief and deal with stressful times. On this episode, Lucy Lopez, Elizabeth Newcamp, and Zak Rosen are joined by ritual expert Betty Ray to talk about creative ways to help children process grief and big emotions, how to use ritual to create safety and expression, and much more.

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn't panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother's death while flying over the Pacific.

Anastasiya Buchkouska, a 20-year-old student from western Ukraine, gently brushes away layers of snow and ice from her father's grave. She pauses, looking up at the photograph fixed to the gravestone. His face bears a striking resemblance to hers. When her father was younger, he had served in the military. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he was called up almost immediately and sent to the front line.

"Not only did their parents, their uncles, their cousins their friends, and myself lose two great men. We lost people we dearly care about and have been major players in all of our lives," Joshua said. "It's tough, it's really tough. "I'm not going to sit here and show all of my emotions. I know in today's day and age, it's easy to micro-analsze as people and pass judgement but I know what I feel, and that's what that matters to me."

'They're dead.' In disbelief, my response was unfiltered. 'What?' Followed by the F word. A wave of emotion rushed through me. My chest tightened. My body went cold. I could not immediately find the words to offer condolences, not because I did not feel them deeply, but because inside, my many parts were experiencing a collective shock. When you live with dissociative identity disorder (DID), news like this does not land in one place. It ricochets across all parts within.

For the Duplass brothers, the festival was, as it has been for many a small-budget artist trying to break out, the difference between a career and another $3 film. Without Sundance, he recently joked: I'd probably be a psychologist right now. Psychologist sympathies peek through See You When I See You, Duplass's feature film return to the festival after 16 years largely focused on acting and directing episodic television, notably for Togetherness, Search Party and the criminally underseen Somebody, Somewhere.

As Aaron Whistler, a comedy writer who had an extremely close, almost conspiratorial bond with his sister Leah (Kaitlyn Dever), Cooper Raiff gives basically the same performance he always gives, delivering his lines in affectless bursts. Perhaps the idea here is to depict Aaron's inability to work through his pain, but that requires a kind of charisma Raiff might not have - he doesn't really convey much of an inner life.

When it comes to clutter, my parents were a case of opposites attract. My dad had a shorthand saying: "ABC." It meant "always be clearing." My mother, on the other hand, loved beautiful things and collected them without much rhyme, reason, or organization. I always followed my dad's footsteps more closely. Although I hold a doctorate and have a career in academia, I started a professional organizing company 17 years ago. Today, A Clear Path has 17 employees.

At the start of A Single Man, George Falconer wakes up at home in the morning and drags himself despondently to the bathroom. There he stares at himself in the mirror, observing not so much a face as the expression of a predicament a dull harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle.

The Crown Bard in Rhyl had always been there, on the main road on the way out of town. Despite living a five-minute walk away, I don't remember ever going there in my teens, but I must've passed it thousands of times. Local wisdom dictated it was where the rugby lads drank, while the pub directly opposite was where you'd find the football crowd.

It's my mom's favorite country, and the house we share is full of treasures from her travels there, from peacock fans and silk scarves, to jewelry boxes carved from mango wood. I grew up in the UK, hearing spellbinding tales of painted elephants and mirrored palaces, and India soon occupied a special place in my imagination. Having got to 42 without making it to the promised land, this summer my chances of going there felt slimmer than ever.

Our brain interprets grief as stress. As a result, it activates our stress-response systems, especially the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system. These systems release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, which are meant to protect the body in short-term crises. In acute grief, these responses are adaptive. They help us cope with shock and disruption. If unresolved, however, the same systems can become dysregulated.

I grew up with cats when I was a little kid but my love of black cats began when I moved from New York to LA in 1996 and found four feral black cats in my back yard. Almost immediately, two female cats got knocked up and had two litters at the same time. Suddenly, we had 13 black cats, the most I'd ever cared for at once.

On the night of Boxing Day 2021, my dad's body was found near a Cardiff hostel. His death, at 55, was as sudden as it was not. For years, alcoholism had been changing the shape of his heart. He died less than a mile from his old office; top law firm, equity partner. Four miles from our once tight-knit home in a leafy neighbourhood.