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SEE GOODGRIEF FOR MORE!

ANNOUNCEMENT OF SERVICES

For information on retreats upcoming and services available, please call me at 813-451-1818 or email at goodgrief13@YAHOO.com.

My mission is to share what I have learned along this fierce path of healing and resurfacing. I can come to your group and speak, offer readings from my book, and help you to set up and facilitate a grief support group. 

Our retreats will be small groups and on weekends. There will be guest presenters and events. We will explore common ground and find ways to connect the differences. From meditation to nutrition, we will learn ways to grow and heal.

I am happy to spend time with fellow travelers and to light a little candle in this dark and oft times frightening awakening.

Thanks.

Linda

Dealing with Grief

This is the beginning. I have decided to branch out of amateur status and become published. My book, Taming the Dragon: Dealing with Grief, is available at The Book Patch - just search the bookstore titles.

Here is a short excerpt from the book. It is during the time that Alzheimer's was overtaking my mother and I could do nothing to stop it.

 "Mom is lying face down on the table in front of her wheelchair and she is neither dancing nor singing. The gathering, meant as a cheerful little insert into the lives of the people there, has gone sour. It is a scene of carnage now, in my mind. My heart is continuing its slow, painful crumble.

I am quite literally overcome, paralyzed even, with the knowing and the feeling.
I have tried so long to force the doctors and the staff and everyone caring for her that she is sinking. They will not listen. Even friends and family do not seem to get the impact. I cannot move. I cry outside the room; for her and for me.

Later that month, I called in hospice. It was a monumental act of will to pick up the phone and share with people whose business is seeing folks, comfortably, out and over the rainbow. To tell them my mom was on her way and I needed help as much as she did.

Staff and friends alike responded oddly, in my opinion. They were almost angry that I had called in the troops. This was a kind of battle and I had no one else to help fight it. But they frowned and said how they wished I had not done that; not called in hospice. She was going and all were in denial now. I seemed to be the only one aware of the truth."

Grief Class

TAMING THE DRAGON: DEALING WITH GRIEF

a book by Linda Crear

We will be using my book as a guide for the upcoming class on grief and grieving at Agape' MCC.

Meetings will begin soon. To keep abreast of dates and details please see Agape' News. 

   You can order your copy at the Book Patch.

video blogging

hippie chick revival

Giving Thanks

It's been a little while since I've been on here.  Please forgive me; and speaking of forgiving, it is the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday they call it.  I'm not shopping.  I'm sitting and writing this instead.
My dogs are at my feet.  The door is open so we have a breeze coming through in this Tampa tropic.
We will go for a walk in a little while, the little dog and me.  We have some magazines to take to the little library box around the corner.  It's really cool.  The books are free; there's no checkout system.  You just get one if you want one and put one in if you don't need it anymore.  So that's what we're going to do.
This is my second Thanksgiving without my husband, David, and it sucks!  Big time.
We used to spend Thanksgiving Day going from my Mom's to David's Mom's and home again.
Wearing ourselves out but enjoying the visit and the food and the pictures.
Yesterday was not like that at all. My son is working and my grandchildren are busy elsewhere.  I spent the day reading and playing games - the same as most days.  I DID eat some bean pie.  It wasn't what i craved.
And i grieved.
I grieved for what WAS.  I grieved for the life i used to enjoy.  I grieved for that which will never - NEVER - be the same.
My friends are mostly back in Texas, some are in NY and Cali and points in between.  They send me love across the net.  I'm grateful for them and their thoughts.
AND i grieve that i can not reach out and physically touch them.
Maybe next year will be better; though i don't depend on it. Maybe I'll be less depressed and have friends here who will include me in their celebrations.
Maybe.
Until then, i grieve.

The First Year: don't expect much from me

Sometimes we let expectations get in the way of seeing what's real. I know that for the year following my husband's death (and beyond, truth be told) I missed a lot and i really don't know whether I contributed much to society, to the world.

So try not to feel disheartened by my lack of knowing things that you take for granted. I wasn't a real news watcher to begin with and when something as major as losing my husband occurred, everything else just sort of fell away and lost any import.

I had no idea that there was a hurricane about these parts until a tree literally fell on our house.
The deaths of several celebrities and world figures were news to me just the other day - these passings of a year or so ago.  I was unaware that the Samsung phones were exploding or that the Dixie Chicks had made a comeback!

I am saying i missed a lot.  A lot of stuff that becomes trivial when my world has, once again, been turned inside out.

I am seeing a therapist (i highly recommend someone you can vent to who does not judge).
i am tending to my physical needs as well; seeing doctors and getting things repaired.  I am even getting back into volunteering with at risk kids.  My painting is therapeutic as well as beginning to provide extra money.  All these things i am doing without the love of my life.

And it is phenomenally hard.

The goings on of the outer world are starting to interest me somewhat...with a presidential race so vile, who could miss it?
Maybe I'll catch up.  Maybe not.

Either way, i ask that you have mercy on me.  Don't expect more than i can give right now.
You can fill me in on what I've missed when the time feels right.