“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” ~ Washington Irving

 

A Comparison of Approaches…

If you have looked through this site, you know that I lost the love of my life, Janice Mary Haas, to brain cancer on January 9, 2022. As my book says, ours was a 30-year candlelight love affair cut short. Way too short.

Most people would succumb to conventional thinking and just try to cope with their loss in any way possible.

I am not like most people.

I am a well-educated, imperfect Christian, a CEO, trained to solve huge problems.

Break it down… look at the pieces and parts… fix the problem… not just learn to live with it.

I am a VC, Serial Entrepreneur x23, and Author x29. I live and die based on RESULTS, not good intentions or attempts to gloss over a problem.

My late friend, Dr. John Edmund Haggai, Senior Christian Statesman, always told me that I redefined the “need for speed”!  He too is with Jesus now, enthusiastically preaching the Word to the newly arrived. I pray he and Jan have become great friends up there in “Eternity”.

Early on, my Grandmother taught me that “working prayers have a better chance of being answered than waiting prayers.” This advice has served me well over the years, especially now as I am picking up the pieces of a perfectly wonderful life and rebuilding for my final frontier!

My story is the same as many. Shortly after Jan assumed her new role in Heaven, I was invited by my hospice group to attend grief counseling sessions. Every week I would dial in and listen to the same horrible stories… the same flood of negative emotions… and the resulting rivers of tears that would pour out from everyone, including me. The facilitator was a skilled grief counselor, and let us all cry ourselves out until the next session. It helped a bit, but it was far from what I needed.

I was in pain, no longer in shock, but suffering from the trauma of the life-to-death battle we endured and lost. Jan was dead, of that there was no doubt. I was alive, but barely hanging on.

The GriefShare Promise: Joy in 13 Weeks…

One Sunday at church I saw an announcement for a program called GriefShare: From Mourning to Joy. Joy, this is exactly what I want! So I joined and started the 13-week program with the expectation that during this period I would find JOY — as I would be released from my grief. (If you Google the program, you will see that they allow you to take this course more than once.)

Clearly, JOY is too big a promise, but it did bring me understanding and clarity… a good first step in the right direction.

But, understanding WHY I was miserable was NOT what I wanted.

I wanted OUT of the sinking, depressing, and gut-wrenching feelings of a life shattered. And, as I found, the only way out is the way forward to building a life of Grace within Grace, as my dear friend Pastor/Dr. Lee Strawhun wrote in his brilliant Prologue. Click Here for the PDF…

For many, GriefShare is an excellent place to start your journey toward healing. Especially if the loss is recent, say within the last 3-6 months. However, remaining locked in the clutches of grief for months or even years on end can lead to serious emotional damage, even death. For the first time in my life, I understood what the medical profession meant when they labeled it, The Broken Heart Syndrome.

If you are like me, you want to see a simple comparison of benefits, laid out in an easy-to-read format so you can quickly see what each is about.

Having written Grieve With Grace and attended GriefShare, my observations on the strengths of both approaches are tabled below.

Neither program is designed to be a clinical approach to deep-seated emotional or physical dysfunction. Grief can be debilitating and I highly recommend that if you have declined to the point where you are losing touch with the reality of life, you get immediate help from a trained and licensed psychologist or other medical professional. 

Pre-Grief Is Important to Recognize…

But, if you are in what is called “pre-grief” where you are a caregiver or spouse who knows you are losing your battle, I highly recommend that you and your loved one read Grieve With Grace together. I wrote it as a love story first and a procedural second. Going through the valley of death and despair by yourself is lonely. It is also destructive, especially if you are facing Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or other end-of-life conditions.

I only wish I had not been required to write this book!

I would have loved it if someone gave it to me and said, “Once you have fought your battle with cancer and lost the love of your life, a bigger fight awaits you… the fight for your own life.” The unfortunate truth is that none of us are getting out of this alive, so we should prepare ourselves and our families now for the inevitable pain that stems from loss.

If you are currently a grief counselor or GriefShare Facilitator, please click the cover image to learn more about our complete Leadership Package. It provides you with everything you need to help struggling clients with issues not addressed in other programs. As always, we offer a 100% money-back guarantee, so if not convinced our approach is right for you, keep what we sent, let us know, and we will cancel your membership and return your money in full. No need to send anything back. If we cannot help you, we do not expect to be paid.

Brief Thoughts…

To the many GriefShare facilitators, I applaud your efforts! Many of you will think it is quite sufficient, whereas others will see our approach as a wonderful addition to the conversation.

If you have contact information for people you graduated even several years ago, I encourage you to invite them to this page, or order the Leader’s Package and host your own Grace sessions. The disks pictured are MP3 audio files that you download and can be played anywhere: car, phone, tablet, etc. The Leader’s Pack is easy to learn and easy to use.

Since COVID, there are millions of folks who have never recovered from the loss of their loved ones. Might be a good idea to invite them to a Live in Grace With Grace Session!

My View of Grace vs. GriefShare… 

Grieve With Grace: 6 Sessions OBJECTIVE: Quickly replace the negative feelings of grief with GRACE — to help you move forward by building a bridge across your rapidly flowing river of tears. Understanding your feelings is secondary; rising up and moving beyond the grasp of helplessness and hopelessness is the prime goal. It is based on cause and effect. You take immediate action to eliminate the negative feelings through GRACE. STRATEGY: Grace offers a simple strategy for life after grief. It is very action-oriented. The audiobook reinforces the theme and the daily emails are all focused on ACCEPTING personal responsibility for your life, knowing that the Lord is there to help you across the chasm of despair. Grace is very much a self-healing process driven by AWARENESS and ACTION. Belief is secondary. The 5 Stones of Grace are used to build a bridge above the valley of despair. Stone by stone you do the work as the Lord carries you: GRATITUDE: The first step is for you to discover how a grateful heart is a healing heart. The power this single word has over the rest of your life is nothing short of breathtaking. You will never be happy with your loss, but you will become eternally grateful for having lived and loved. RESILIENCE: This is not a “do it to you” word… it is something you become through the fire of pain and loss. You must believe you WILL bounce back… and with prayerful decisions, be stronger than before. AUTHENTICITY: Who you see looking back at you in the mirror is a very big deal. If you see a broken man or woman, or if you see a perpetual victim, your soul will suffer the loss of hope… and it will show on your face. The truth is, we are always BECOMING… we never stop GROWING… in faith… in our beliefs… in our confidence and in our relationships. For many, knowing our purpose and mission in life is a given. But for many, the idea of releasing our purpose into the world is anything but settled. Being the BEST you possible, even in the face of crushing loss is possible with His help as you walk in Grace. CREATIVITY: This is the capital C in GRACE! To exit grief quickly you must get VERY creative VERY soon. Doing things you have never done is a great first step. Going places you have never been changes both your destination and your heart. Love to knit? Take up painting. Love to paint, then visit 5 museums. The point is you will always be the same if you do nothing different. A time of healing requires a time of growing. EMPATHY: Putting yourself in another person’s shoes to feel, really FEEL what they feel… what they experience… and how they react… will remove YOU from the victim list faster than any other thing you can do!

GriefShare: 13 Sessions OBJECTIVE: Normalize and understand your grief through sharing, commiserating, and talking out your feelings in a safe setting where tears are shed and your deepest emotions are exposed. The prime takeaway is that you understand that you are not alone and that others have suffered as you do. It is based on scriptures to support the work. As you understand your situation, you begin to accept your loss. SCRIPTURES: You reach a greater understanding of your situation by watching video presentations and discussing other people’s circumstances. GriefShare is very much focused on your spiritual beliefs, and you place your hope for emotional relief in your scriptural convictions. If you are a devout believer, then you will be healed of your grief. Sharing is very much a God Heals belief, and your actions are secondary. The 5 elements of grief are the subject of understanding, and by sharing your grief, you feel you can better carry on: DENIAL: At first, you will deny your loss, believing it happened to someone else—but no, you will understand that it is you who has been hurt and there is a reason for your pain. You move from shock to trauma. I found that this stage is crippling, especially as you try to eject yourself from grief, while others in your group are stuck in denial. ANGER: Denial moves to anger with everyone, including God Himself for taking your loved one. You lament. You demand to know WHY. You learn there is no WHY, only the stark reality of your life as it is now. For many, anger turns to a feeling of betrayal which moves on to bitterness. BARGAINING: For many, this is the hard one to get through. Bargaining is when we start to make deals with ourselves, or perhaps with God. “Give me back what I lost and I will… “Many get lost in the cycling back and forth from Denial >> Anger >> Bargaining. In GriefShare you will learn this is normal. Nonetheless, it is corrosive. Some see bargaining as “let’s make a deal” and live a life of “If Only…” DEPRESSION: A universal definition of this stage of grief might be “Sadness and longing are what we think of most often when we think about grief. This pain can be very intense and come in waves over many months or years. Life can feel like it no longer holds any meaning which can be very scary.” If sadness turns into clinical depression, you will need professional help. ACCEPTANCE: Over time, you will understand that your life is as it is, and you must accept it. It is not forgetting or even agreeing that life as you know it has ended, and you must accept your “new normal”.

Almost 3 Years Later…

Of course, I miss my precious wife of 30 years. The bonds we shared over the vast sea of time are unbreakable. I love her dearly to this moment.

In the grand scheme of things, I wish I would have never had to write this book. It took a huge emotional toll on me and my family.

So, have I “moved on” or have I “moved forward”? I believe this is a matter of semantics — letting go of the past vs. making peace with the past.

In the end, the past is where it should be, behind us.

My heart goes out to those who suffer compound losses — one loss right after another — you cannot get your balance, but you must.

I just turned 79 and I can tell you a fact that may have escaped you… life is NOT an endurance test… it is NOT a continuous trial by fire designed to burn you down… to discourage you… to break your heart.

Life is meant to be lived. None of us today are getting out of this alive. What we do to live in Grace with Grace matters.

We will all suffer enormous losses over our lifetime. God willing, there will be many more in my life. No, I do not welcome the Old Croaker into my home! But the longer we live, the less life we have ahead of us.

I wrote Grieve With Grace to shorten my time in grief so I could spend more time in Grace. When you learn to raise your State of Grace, life starts to take on new meaning… it starts to make sense again.

 

“I wrote this short song to honor my beloved wife. It is a prayer for healing… for a life after grief… to love and be loved again. Please click play, listen while you consider our offer to help you move from anger, denial, and depression to the life you love.” ~ Eric Richard Haas, Author x27