Grief Relief

One of the most difficult realities that pastors, counselors, or any effective community and church leader will invariably face in their service to families is; how to comfort those who have lost someone they love, or who have experienced other significant losses -- such as job, home, or spouse (through death or divorce).

Many mothers experience the "empty nest" syndrome when the last child has left home. One must also consider the loss of separation experienced by many children when they leave home. Bolby (1969) saw what he believed was a universal and specific syndrome of reactions to separation and loss in his studies on the separation of children from their parents. In his studies he identifies three stages -- protest, despair, and detachment -- as essentially the same for all separations.

A common element of separation is stress. Kubler-Ross (1969) and others have developed the delineation of the stages of grief and loss in relation to the loss experienced by the death of a loved one. The stages that Ross delineated are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. When a person is permitted to and even assisted in experiencing and resolving these various stages through a broadly defined time span, healing and restoration can occur. cc Significant life transitions or transitions of any kind are an opportunity for pastors, psychologists, counselors and lay-leaders to help hurting people fully experience grief relief and enter into that process which leads to comfort and victory.

This book has been specifically written to help the counselor, pastor, lay-leader minister, and the hurting person to:

• Recognize the Grief Relief process,
• Accept it as normal, and then
• Learn how to work through that process with the transforming and sustaining power of Jesus Christ.