The Spring 2012 edition of Grief Digest‘s eMagazine is available online with a free registration!

To get started, get registered and then visit the eMagazine page to check out the latest edition before print copies are mailed out. You can also read past issues from recent volumes. The current issue includes articles you’ve read online from contributors such as…
- Elaine Stillwell
- Alan Wolfelt
- Nan Zastrow
…as well as photography and layout design from your friends at Centering. Check it out and leave some feedback on our Facebook page!

Once again spring is on the horizon, or at least here in Maine spring is thinking about it. It is said that up here the interval between knee-deep snow and budding flora and fauna is about ten minutes on a good day. And yet…it is always a sign of hope that the long, dark nights are finally behind us for another season as we look toward temperatures that no longer hover at the freezing mark in April.
New beginnings. Let me tell you about four people I know well whose lives …

He disappeared. He disappeared from his mechanical hospital bed, his room at the nursing home, and from the building where he had resided for the past three years. He disappeared from the unit floor where he could once be found twenty-four-hours a day on any given day of the week. Even his name plate is now missing—displaced.
Some say that as human beings we reflexively search for the person who died. It is an odd, disconnected sensation to be unable to locate someone who used to so commonly, routinely and predictably …

For most of us, grief is uncharted territory. When a loved one dies, we enter into some of life’s most turbulent and troubled waters. It is important to find people and resources who can help us find our way through these rough times.
As a grief counselor, I sometimes think of myself as a seasoned river guide. I have accompanied people down this wild-river ride many times before and although every person’s experience is unique, I have picked up a few tips along the way that you may find helpful. I …

A century ago, when life was simpler, when someone died, the clock seemed to stop ticking. Plows rested, people in town often gathered in the “parlor” of the deceased, bells rang in the village square  and friends and family told richly woven stories of days remembered. No one had to ask how to help, they just did. Women made pies and picked flowers, men made the casket and readied the carriage. No mystery to any of it; it just flowed like a river in spring.
Towns are bigger now, and times …