YOU'RE STILL GRIEVING?!

"The average American believes that grief should be over in 30 days."  Harold Ivan Smith.  We seem to be very impatient with the whole grieving process.  We ask, "When will we get the old Joan back?"  A great response would be, "You don't get the old Joan back!"  We are forever changed by grief and loss.  Unfortunately, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did us a disservice by laying out the stages of grief, as if we all grieved the same way.  We don't.  Just as each person has a unique fingerprint, we each have a unique grief print.  There is no "one size fits all," when it comes to grieving.  "As long as we're dictating and putting time parameters around how intensely someone should suffer and the form it should take, then we're taking the role of dictator and judge."  Francine Shapiro.