Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something beloved. It spans the emotions of numbness, disbelief, separation anxiety, despair, sadness, and loneliness.

Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions. Common to human experience is the death of a loved one, whether it be a friend, family, or other companion. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement often refers to the state of loss, and grief to the reaction to loss.

Losses can range from loss of employment, pets, status, a sense of safety, order, or possessions, to the loss of loved ones. Our response to loss is varied and researchers have moved away from conventional views of grief (that is, that people move through an orderly and predictable series of responses to loss) to one that considers the wide variety of responses that are influenced by personality, family, culture, and spiritual and religious beliefs and practices.

Bereavement, while a normal part of life, carries a degree of risk when limited support is available. Severe reactions to loss may carry over into familial relations and cause trauma for children, spouses and any other family members: there is an increased risk of marital breakup following the death of a child, for example. Issues of personal faith and beliefs may also face challenge, as bereaved persons reassess personal definitions in the face of great pain.

While many who grieve are able to work through their loss independently, accessing additional support from bereavement professionals may promote the process of healing. Grief counseling, professional support groups or educational classes, and peer-led support groups are primary resources available to the bereaved. In the United States, local hospice agencies may be an important first contact for those seeking bereavement support.

Grief, or Bereavement, is the sense of loss accompanying the death of a loved one.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
• 2 Unsourced
  • 2.1 Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
• 3 External links

Sourced

• I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Grief, l. 1 (1844).

• Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightning's shaft has smitten and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech. "Afterward," when the storm is spent, he may venture to open his mouth; "afterward," when the morn has dawned, he may seek "to justify the ways of God to man;" for " afterward" the sufferer will be prepared to hear, and "afterward" the sufferer himself may be able to extract sweetness from bitterness, music from mourning, songs from sorrow, and " the peaceable fruit of righteousness " from the root of wretchedness and woe.
  • George C. Lorimer, in Isms Old and New: Winter Sunday Evening Sermon-series for 1880-81 (1881), Ch. 6: Pessimism, or The Mystery of Human Suffering, "Unwise Comforters", p. 147

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Thu Sep 3 17:11:03 2009