077 - Simply getting started

Your comments, questions, and thoughts about research.

Welcome back (or welcome).

Your comments are remarkable and thoughtful.

Last week, I wrote about talking with physicians about death notifications. And I heard back from several of you with helpful comments (read these comments!). At some point soon, when I have some time to synthesize, I’ll refine my presentation and share it with you

Professional grief is often hard.

In the conversation in the comments, I mentioned a post from Hui-Wen Sato, a PICU nurse, who talks about "professional grief" which is "the natural human emotion we feel over losses we witness and/or experience in people that we have built connections within the context of a professional relationship." It's a thoughtful read.

https://heartofnursing.blog/2024/08/05/what-is-professional-grief/

On starting a research center.

Back in June, I was thinking about grief. To be honest, I’m almost always thinking about grief. And being helpful to people.

So one day I wrote this to myself:

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You could simply set a timeline for writing a research prolegomenon. That would go to all your friends who are wanting to talk to you. about grief and life.

Right?

(And then I listed some names. And some of you are on that list.)

And you could say, “I want to be as helpful as I possible.”

I think that it means kicking off a research center that is less about grief research and more about research into how to be helpful in bereavement.

I don’t want to do the actual research into what grief is. Or how I can conquer my grief. I am not a counselor. I’m never a counselor. But I give counsel. And I try to help people understand what the next steps might be.

So, by August, we’re going to have a grief literacy thing: What would it look like to find out a community’s grief literacy and bereavement support capacity.

1. Create a working definition of grief literacy. Go find the article. Then look at the list from the UK.

2. Do a series of interviews in the community. The leaders of helping organizations. Leaders of health and death organizations. Leaders of meaning-making organizations.

So. Coroner, health commissioner, hospitals, Hospice agencies, Grief agencies, Churches, synagogues, religious spaces, Employers, Funeral homes.

3. Do an analysis of the cost of bereavement to the community.

4. Ask people what they know about bereavement to see how what a cross-section of people knows about resources and believes about grief.

5. Write a recommendation report.

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It’s August. And I haven’t done any of that. Not exactly. But I’ve been reading and writing and talking with people in difficult moments. I’ve talked with medical residents and written to you. I’ve talked with friends who keep having conversations about grief.

And I’m more aware than ever that we need to keep talking about and building resources to be helpful in loss.

So I’m sharing that note from June in August. To let you know the kind of work that I’m working on. And to ask whether this work would be helpful to you.

I’m hesitant to say this, but you can ask.

What I know about me is that I often can write better when answering a question. So if you have questions about how you can help someone in grief, ask me. I will likely not have THE answer, but may be able to offer some direction. And that will help us all. For example, I’m working on the question of what to say to Gen-Xers as they are facing aging and dying parents. (I talked about the other side of this in Hey boomer! We’re dying!)

And I’ve written some things you may have missed.

064 - On why finding words always takes work: We're walking with people in grief, not fixing their grief.

060 – Metaphors we die by: Thinking about the images we use to describe hard moments.

See you next week.

Thanks for reading. And sharing This is Hard: What I say when loved ones die. And financially supporting this work.

Jon