I was doing a little research on Family Grief a subject I have had on my mind for a while.
Posting has been for me quite a challenge lately!
Family grief is can get quite complicated!Sometimes baby steps and getting back to basics keeps it simple. Who knew family grief can be just this easy.
If children live with criticism,
They learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility,
They learn to fight.
If children live with ridicule,
They learn to be shy.
If children live with shame,
They learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement,
They learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance,
They learn to be patient.
If children live with praise,
They learn to appreciate.
If children live with acceptance,
They learn to love.
If children live with approval,
They learn to like themselves.
If children live with honesty,
They learn truthfulness.
If children live with security,
They learn to have faith in themselves and others.
If children live with friendliness,
They learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Copyright © 1972/1975 by Dorothy Law Nolte
Children Learn What They Live
You don'tgoget over it, you go through it.
"You could save a life and possible change yours"In the United state over 114,000 plus children are in foster care, and they are waiting for good homes and a loving family. These children have been removed from their homes for so many reasons. Children of child abuse, abandonment, neglect, or just thrown out on the streets.
My PillowAs I lay on my pillow
"A ray of sunshine, a balmy breeze.
Are a gift from God above
And He also gives us faithful friends.
To warm our hearts with love"
Author Unknown
How time sure does fly by. Fall is among us, and do I dare say that the winter months are slowly approaching. Those dreadful months of most of us when it's cold, dreary and the sun sure doesn't shine.
By Jamie Sotonoff Daily Herald Staff 9/30/2010
What began as a few suburban moms fed up with the community's unorganized efforts toward drug education and prevention has evolved into the new Ela Coalition Against Youth Substance Abuse.The coalition is composed of roughly two dozen high-ranking police, school and business leaders from around the Lake Zurich area, as well as a doctor, social service administrators, parents and local PTO presidents.
Coalition member and Lake Zurich Police Chief Patrick Finlon says the group is compiling data on the use of substances like alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs and heroin among young people in the area.
"What we're really trying to do here is identify the substances being abused, and then educate the parents. Awareness is a big part of this. Not fear, but knowledge," he said. "What the problem boils down to is availability. We'll develop strategies to reduce availability."
Educating young people about these substances is another goal, said coalition member Susan Kostner, an alcohol and drug counselor and the clinical director of Ela Township's social work program.
"We're also looking at the kids doing positive stuff, and how to keep them staying positive and making them role models in the community," she said. "We have to get people involved."
The coalition was formed this summer after a standing-room-only drug education forum at Lake Zurich High School in February. The idea was to study the problems and see what ideas realistically can be put into action.
"Forums are great. People get excited and riled up, but then what? This (coalition) gives people an opportunity to get organized to address the issues," said Liz Nelson, a coalition member and a community health specialist with the Lake County Health Department.
Ideas being discussed include drug testing in area high schools, crackdowns on underage liquor sales, and educating parents about things to watch for to make sure their children aren't using drugs.
The group also is planning an educational forum for parents Oct. 27 at Lake Zurich High School, to be held in conjunction with Red Ribbon Week. The schools and businesses are getting involved, encouraging people to wear the color red, displaying fliers promoting the event, and working to increase awareness about drugs in the suburbs.
"Everyone has just rallied around this issue," Nelson said.
Drugs are a chronic problem across the Chicago area.
Recent headlines include a "Dial-A-Rock" crack and cocaine operation in Arlington Heights, an indoor pot farm in Woodstock, a "historically large" methamphetamine bust in Aurora, and a record number of heroin-related deaths in Lake County.
Roosevelt University released a study this summer that ranked the suburbs among the worst nationally for heroin-related problems. The report found a spike in the number of heroin overdoses in the collar counties up 130 percent in Lake County in the last decade, up 150 percent in three years in McHenry, and up 100 percent in just two years in Will.
As a result of all this, many communities across the suburbs, including Barrington, Mundelein and Des Plaines, have formed coalitions to address these issues. Lake Zurich's is the newest addition.
"It is in our backyard and there are kids from Lake Zurich who have died. But we have to take it a step at a time," Kostner said.
Michelle Hines, the Lake Zurich mom who spearheaded the effort for the initial forum that led to the Ela coalition's creation, applauds her community for not trying to sweep the problems under the rug.
Instead, she said, a lot of people are ready to face them head-on.
Raising awareness and education is the key, she said.
"Not every community is willing to do this," Hines said. "It is time-consuming ... but it only takes one person to get it started. It's not all me; it's the community. We were called to come together, and we came. We just have to keep it rolling."
Anyone interested in becoming involved is invited to attend the next meeting, at 10 a.m. Monday at Ela Town Hall, 1155 E. Route 22, in Lake Zurich. For information about other upcoming meetings, call Kostner at (847) 540-8380.
To much to read to much to investigate -- but what I have seen on 60 minutes tonight makes me happy!
Just wanted to share.. Unbelievable amount of money they have donated globally for the children of our future!
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
A day of courage, a day of change for me, the fact that Jonathan is not coming home for dinner tonight, he isn't going to call me, he won't be poking me on Facebook from his computer downstairs and he won't be saying. "I love you "Ma".
I don't have to accept this fact, I just have to learn how to live with this fact.Two things I have found today that may just help parents with children, teens, young adults that have issues with alcohol and drugs. An entire community and a wealth of information can be found here -- I thought I would share this post I found.
"You see a mother should not loose a child, it changes her life forever."Intervention I found out this show was going to air this evening.. May "God" bless this family.
Drugs have the power to both destroy and heal.
When we speak honestly and openly with our children about drugs.
It's a win win situation as they can change our world into the future.
Special Stories within the books of his belongings!
"The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love.My son was not heard, my son would not speak... his decision to journal his life was his choice. Yet that next tomorrow never came.
A Mother's Poem
I found for Katie & Michael
A Mother's Child by Mom
A mother's child is every breath that she takes, walking hand in hand, they are every step that she makes. And as their steps will grow to strides, still a child, in mother's eyes.
Every ache and pain they shall feel, mother will share and with love she will kneel. She will pray to God to take care of her child, to protect and guide them through every mile.
Her child is the very core of her soul, from baby in arms to an adult they will grow. For to a mother, her child will stay, the precious infant she held that day.
The following story was shared with me yesterday. I urge you to read this post in it's entirety. Looking from the outside into a world he does not know. He truly hit the nail on the head!
[quoted text]
When our first child is born, a loud voice says, "Runners, take your marks!" We hear the starting gun and the race begins. It's a race we must win at all cost. We have to win. The competition is called "I'll race you to the grave." I'm currently racing three sons.
I really want to win. Not everyone wins.I'm soon going on stage to speak before a crowd of parents and loved ones impacted by the death of a child. My address is titled, "The Myth of Getting Over It." It's my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this? You don't get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal, an unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different. You don't want to get over it. Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child's life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again.
Loosing a child is devastating and living with this loss at sometimes unbearable. Life’s took a turn and as my son; despite his ongoing efforts to get away from this disease of alcohol & drug addiction died making just one bad choice. Many journals he left, many stories he told. Over Two and a half years after the fact, certain circumstances change, this blog will continue. This disease of drug addiction and alcoholism sees no color, no gender, no age, nor income bracket; it brings its death to those we love. It is a simple matter perhaps, but dwells in our back yards. These are "The Children of our Future" – in my words enough said for today
The following was sent to me the other day from my friend Debra. I am grateful for her friendship and thought I would share as no matter how hard you think it is to get through this day. "Grief is Important"
Debra had a good friend of hers read this at MargaretAnn's funeral.
It Will Change Your LifeBy Dale Hanson Bourke
My friend’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes.
“You’ll never regret it,” I say finally. Then I reach across the table, and squeezing my friend’s hand, I offer a prayer for her and me land all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way in to this holiest of callings.
I really don't know the answer to that question all I know is that Jonathan is gone two and a half years today and I am "ANGRY" - I am angry that he really isn't coming home. He didn't just go off to college, he didn't travel the world, he hasn't called in a very long time; and the memory's are coming back, the painful one's of the day that changed my life as a mother forever!
A friend of mine were conversing the other day, what she said to me stunned me, as she has lost a child as well. I am grateful that we spoke that day. This is what she said.
Anger is part of the grief you feel, along with sadness, frustration and guilt. Those feelings are all normal and eventually the grief will fade and become part of who you are!
"Whoa... maybe I did a little too much..."Unfortunately, that's all you have time to think... now what you don't know is that you've passed out from the drugs unrelenting assault on your entire system... soon your breathing will slow and eventually you're heart will stop.
Very, very painless "And then you're dead! Perfect and painless!" In fact the bliss that one would feel before they died of a heroin overdose would be immense not painful.
Honestly, that is the worst pain in the world when they bring you back from an overdose it's countering the effects of a drug that was made to treat the pains of certain amputees or grievously injured men during the war (a.k.a. morphine).So, in conclusion, an overdose from heroin is not painful being revived most definitely is and if one should find themselves experiencing that pain they should consider themselves lucky! Credit to the above posting was found on WIKIANSWERS
SPIDERSThere is a story about a kind, quiet man who went each morning to the river to refresh his spirit. One day while there, he saw a poisonous spider struggling in the water and he picked it up in his cupped hands a moved it to shore. As he placed it on the ground it stung him. Thankfully, the poison did not affect him lethally as it might have.
Just an Opinion -
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all.
People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts.
Feelings are disturbing.
People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous.
Pain is meant to wake us up.
People try to hide their pain.
But they’re wrong.
Pain is something to carry, like a radio.
You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it.
That’s what matters.
Pain is a feeling.
Your feelings are a part of you.
I remember when we spoke one day over 2 years ago maybe you don't remember me. That is okay! So many mother's with tears. I remember when my daughter attended your sons funeral and how sad she was, then just few month's later my daughter had to attend her brother's funeral.
I am sorry for your loss. I am grateful for all you have done to speak out about this horrific tragedy.
My son did not know! I did not know.
Do your children know how powerful Herion is an how available it is in your own backyard?
This is a sad situation, get yourself involved in your community, make a difference this coming new year!
"This is how powerful heroin is."Street Drugs A Drug Identification Guide
In September 2007, 18-year-old Nick Beinlich overdosed on it in the Buffalo Grove home of his Stevenson High School classmate Matt McGovern and never regained consciousness, dying five days later.
Four months later, River Forest police found McGovern in a shopping center parking lot, slumped over the steering wheel of his car with a needle dangling from his arm.
Just think about that. A friend essentially died in his house, and that didn't stop McGovern from using. It wasn't enough to scare him straight, wasn't enough to shame him straight, wasn't enough to force him to face his addiction.
A friend essentially died in his house, and yet, McGovern went back to heroin. Just think about that.
But the power of heroin didn't stop there.
In September 2008, another Stevenson friend of McGovern's, 18-year-old Phil Capone of Vernon Hills almost died of an overdose, saved only because his mother found him unconscious in time to summon medical help.
Then in April this year, another Stevenson friend, 19-year-old Eddie Sivkov of Buffalo Grove, died on the floor of his bathroom a few months after completing a two-week rehab program.
And two months after that, Lincolnshire police arrested McGovern and charged him with possession of heroin after an auto accident. The 20-year-old driver of the car in which McGovern was riding also was allegedly high on heroin.
Two months after a second friend had died. Less than a year after a third friend almost died. And if the police account is correct, McGovern was still on heroin.
If you're clean, you ask yourself, how could that be? Two high school friends die. Another almost dies. You're arrested once. With all of that happening, who in his right mind would still be using? How could that be?
The answer, unfortunately, is simple. Someone with a heroin addiction isn't in his right mind.
As Jamie Sotonoff's reports sharply described last week, we're facing an epidemic of heroin abuse in the suburbs and in our schools. And it's leaving death and shattered lives in its wake.
Much more needs to be done to combat it. More attention and more funding is needed to try to get addicts off it.
But as McGovern's story clearly illustrates, the most effective way to get off heroin is to never get on it in the first place.
That's a message our community and our schools and parents need to underscore ~ read the article
Posts
All Comments
