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One of the most selfless things you can do in life is to care for your parent in their later years, but doing this also shapes your days in ways you may have never anticipated. Suddenly, your whole schedule revolves around their needs, medications, doctor visits, meals, and just being there for them. Even the small things, like adjusting their blanket or making their favorite meal, become part of your daily normal. Not forgetting the fact that a parent is the one person you’ve had your entire life. So, naturally, you have some expectations of what happens after the loss of a parent. What will most likely surprise you, as it has for many people, is that moving forward won’t be just about grief. A lot of people talk about how tough it gets for them to figure out what life looks like now, how to get back to having time for themselves, and dealing with strange feelings like guilt or relief that come afterward. But why would you even have any guilt or relief at all when your parent passes away? How Family Relationships Shift During Caregiving Caring for a parent changes how your family interacts, especially when siblings may have different ideas about their care and responsibilities that may not always feel fair to everybody else. Some of you may be able to get more involved than others, and this also causes some frustration or resentment. All these feelings linger inside of you even after the loss of a parent. You might find that those difficult times cause estrangement with other siblings, and that you still feel hurt or guilty about. Finding ways to get back those family or friendship connections you lost while you cared for your parent is not always easy. Most of the time, parents [...]

Looking for grief therapy in Grapevine, Texas? If so, we can help. Grief is a complex and awful thing to go through. Usually, there is no coaching on how to help someone through grief because our culture treats death in avoidant ways. It is only at the funerals or memorial services that people openly speak about the lost loved one directly, about mortality and the meaning of life. From then on, many try to avoid these topics as best they can. Death and grief are heavy topics, and it can be uncomfortable to navigate them. Unfortunately, we cannot avoid them, though. We should be able to support grieving friends as they deal with their loss in ways that aren’t complicated or hurtful. Helping a Friend Through Grief Grief isn’t an emotion that passes. When a person loses someone they loved, they will grieve that person for the rest of their lives. The first thing to know about grief, then, is that it never truly passes. Grief changes over time. At first, people might feel highly emotional, stressed out, and unstable. Weeks afterward, they might be withdrawn, quiet, and depressed. Months after that, they might be stuck in depression, or they might appear to have moved on, even if they are only masking their emotions. Grief is a unique process for every person. There are several things, though, that we can do for grieving friends that will hopefully help them. At least, we will have communicated that we care about our friend by trying any of these suggestions. Don’t be afraid of messing up. It’s always better to try and help a grieving friend than to avoid the topic entirely. Give space for complicated feelings and awkwardness Grief is messy and awkward. There is no training for it and no [...]