THOUGHTS ON FAMILY HEALING
I am blessed by the healing that has taken place since my children's abusive
mother died 20 years ago. Reflecting on the apparently strange Jewish
custom of placing stones rather than flowers on a grave, I become aware that
this signifies that life moves on.
When last year a friend told me about her prolonged estrangement from an adult child my first thought was that the books that had helped me could help her too. But, examining them closely, I discovered they were only good for parents like myself for whom painful times were (thank God!) temporary. So I looked on Amazon and found a mother who was heartbroken when one of her five children divorced his family. She found she was almost alone in her grief, wrote an book and started an online support group. Sheri McGregor, _Done with the Crying_, 2016, is a major contribution. However, McGregor's life-coaching vocation leads her (I think) to slight the healing power of tears. (Though I must stress that tears are an option for healing, not a requirement. Doka, _Grief is a Journey_, is excellent on this point.)
As one who has been acquainted with the dysfunctional night I feel called to be concerned with sorrows like those of McGregor and of my friend.