My life purpose is to work with individuals and groups to transform suffering into joy and happinessand restore the mind, body, and heart to wholeness.

Grief isn’t good or bad, or right or wrong. Grief just is. Grief is the array of emotions we feel in response to losing someone or something we love or value in our lives. They key to how well, or how “good” we’re going to do after a loss is mourning. Mourning is the outward expression of our internal feelings.

Virtual Workshop Sunday April 21st, 2024 at 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM presented by Mary L. Robinson, MA, CT, owner MLRobinson & Associates. To register email Mary at mary@marylrobinson.com In this workshop you will learn the definitions of grief, loss, and mourning and how they apply to our own lives and to the lives of those we love, live with, and support in our communities. Human beings grieve when they lose someone or something they love or value.  There’s no way around it. What we do have some control over is whether or not we mourn.  Mourning is the expression of our thoughts and feelings after a death, or any type of loss, ideally expressed through talk.  Talking helps minimize the potential for residual trauma and pain. The challenge for those of us who are grieving is finding someone who can listen. The challenge for those of us supporting people who are grieving, is to tolerate, and not act on the feelings induced in us by those in pain.  This is far easier said than done.  In this workshop you will learn the art of listening and the art of mourning so you can support and soothe yourself and be […]

February 24th, 1974 If you know a child or teenager (and I hope you don’t!) who has had a parent, sibling, or other important person in their life die, consider sending a sympathy card designed specifically for them. 49 years ago today my father died of cancer. I was 14, he was 46. After my father died I received the following sympathy card from a neighbor: “Dear Mary, I am so sorry for your great loss. I always think unhappy times are the hardest for young people to bear. But I think they have a way of making one grow up with a lot more compassion. The thing that helps me feel better when I’m sad is to think that nothing – feelings or situations – good or bad, last forever. Take Care. Sincerely, Eleanor Schenck.“ I don’t know if this was the only sympathy card I received from an adult after my father’s death, but it is the only one I kept. It is yellowed and well-read. I held on to it like a lifeline, for it gave me hope that something good could come out of something so incomprehensible and painful. The good that eventually came from my […]

The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread all over everything.” C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed Though C.S. Lewis was writing about the death of his wife Joy, his words describe how I felt during the first year after my mother’s death.  In fact, it was only after passing the third anniversary of her death from pancreatic cancer that I felt like I was finally recovering the full use of my brain and body.   I can’t speak for other daughters who lose their mothers during what one would consider the normal course of events — I am an adult, my mother was 79 —  yet I felt consumed by grief.  As if I wouldn’t be able to speak for a year after witnessing her suffering and her death.  My cheek against hers, breathing with her as she took her last breath.  To this day I cannot think of her illness and death without weeping. Why and how could I be so bereft?   I remember saying to a board member at the time whose mother had died the year before, how caught off guard I was by the depth of my sorrow and […]

This is a transcript of a speech given by writer and performer Aaron Freeman on NPR News “All Things Considered”. You can listen to it here. You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy is created in the universe and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, ever vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid the energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. And at one point, you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of […]

For years after my father died my mom carried on at the holidays as if nothing had changed. Her intentions were good — to keep things the same and not bring any sadness into the room.  But things weren’t the same, there was a person missing. My dad.  The person who sawed off the bottom of the tree to fit into the tree stand.  And who wired the tree with lights and watched as we all decorated it with the familiar ornaments and sipped hot chocolate.  Except now I was the one trying to saw off the bottom of the tree and get the lights on just so the way my mom liked. His missing presence lodged itself like a lump in my throat and sometimes it was all I could do not to cry.  Not to cry. But here’s what I’ve learned since then – it’s IMPORTANT to have and express all of your feelings.  Not just the ones that make other people comfortable.  And not just to have them, but to express them whether by talking, writing, drawing, pounding on a pillow or kicking a ball.  When we express our feelings it helps discharge some of the kinetic […]

“Don’t leave me!” the little girl with pink ribbons in her hair sobbed as her aunt and young cousin said good-bye to her at the Denver airport. I was returning from a Bereavement Skills Training conference in Colorado and was sitting next to the little girl and her grandmother. The grandmother was holding her and attempting to comfort the young child as she cried. “There, there,” said the grandmother. “Aunt June would not want you to cry.” And so it begins. The “denormalizing” of a normal response to grief. When we lose someone or something we love, we grieve. Yet as a society we are so quick to try to take away pain and sadness, to “fix” children who are hurting. I turned to the little girl and said, “You sound sad. You’re going to miss your Aunt.” She looked at me with her eyes wide open and solemnly nodded as her sobbing subdued and she nestled into her grandmother’s chest. Pretty soon she was playing and singing with her grandmother. Grief is a normal, natural response to loss, any type of loss. Most often when we think of grief we think of death. But as human beings we grieve […]

This workshop will be helpful to anyone supporting or working with individuals coping with loss or overwhelming experiences.

God I love Anne Lamott.  On Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and any holiday for that matter, I post very carefully on social media.  On Mother’s Day this year Anne Lamott wrote “here is my annual Mother’s Day post, ONLY for those of you who dread the holiday, dread having strangers, cashiers and waiters exclaim cheerfully, mindlessly, “Happy Mother’s Day!” when it is a day that, for whatever reason, makes you feel deeply sad. This is for those of you who may feel a kind of sheet metal loneliness on Mother’s Day, who had an awful mother, or a mother who recently died, or wanted to be a mother but didn’t get to have kids, or had kids who ended up breaking your hearts.”    Some people love Mother’s Day, others could take it of leave it.  Ever since my mom died  of pancreatic cancer in 2008 I’m neutral about it.  I don’t need Mother’s Day to remind me I miss her or to think of her.  I miss her and think of her every day.  Every day.  My mom was 44 when my dad died of cancer in 1974.  I was 14.  She became my best friend, my hero, […]

The death of a parent is a trauma for a child or teen.  A parent is a child’s first attachment, first love, the person they depend on for their very survival and often it is the very person to whom they would turn to for support after a loss. The dictionary defines trauma as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. Behavioral health professionals more broadly define trauma as resulting “from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being”. Traumatized children fill our classrooms and our neighborhoods.  Nearly 35 million U.S. children have experienced one or more types of childhood trauma.  In a nationally representative survey of 12- to 17-year-old youth, 8 percent reported a lifetime prevalence of sexual assault, 17 percent reported physical assault, and 39 percent reported witnessing violence.  Almost half the nation’s children have experienced at least one or more types of serious childhood trauma, according to National Survey of Child’s Health.   This translates into an estimated 34,825,978 children nationwide, say the researchers who analyzed the survey […]

A mourner is perforce, a person with a story. The pity is, how very rarely it gets told.” Christian McEwen The first Thanksgiving after my mother died, I spent with my godmother Ginny and her family. I had known Ginny my whole life, of course, and her three daughters were like cousins to me. They were all there, one of them with her own three daughters! Growing up we had spent many holidays and birthdays together, so we were a lively crew, and everyone contributed part of the meal. I brought some of the traditional items from my childhood, creamed onions and an apple pie; my favorites because my mom always made them. As the day and evening wore on, I mentioned my mom a few times, hoping someone would chime in and tell a story about her. “Remember when Betty…” or “Your mother was the best pie maker!” But no one followed my lead. No one bit. By the end of the evening, I was exhausted and went up to my room and had a good cry. It was then I realized how badly I had wanted and needed to talk about my mom, especially this first holiday without […]

“How can I prepare my children” a friend asked when he found out they’d have to euthanize their beloved dog Rocky who was dying. Here is what I said: Always tell the truth. Be sure not to say “Rocky went to live on a farm” or “the goldfish went on vacation.” The death of a beloved (or even not so beloved) pet is often a child’s first loss. It is an opportunity to provide some education about death and what to do with all the feelings that accompany a difficult loss. You can say “You know how Rocky has been having trouble walking and eating and isn’t able to play outside with anymore? Rocky is very sick and is suffering. When that happens sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to euthanize him – which means we help him to die so that he is no longer suffering. Be sure not to tell children their pet is being put to sleep. Use the word “euthanize” and explain what it means in simple age-appropriate terms. Here are some tips to process the death of your pet: Be sure to take time as a family to share memories about Rocky. Parents […]

One Father’s Day when I was about 13, I had the idea that my gift to my dad was to remove all the rocks from the dirt trench lining one side of our house, where my parents planned to put in rose bushes. My dad was going to use the rocks I removed to build a stone wall in front of our house, like the ones in New England my parents loved so much.  After one day of working in the dirt and rock pile I felt like one of the kids from the movie Holes, and was ready to throw in the towel. I was already regretting not just buying my dad a nice tie!  It took me all summer to finish that project but by then my dad was too sick to plant anything in the newly cleared dirt, and the stone wall was just a foot long, ending in a tumble of scattered rocks. He died the following February. I know it may seem blasphemous, but I’ve kind of liked having Father’s Day “off” all these years. Especially when I got older and had a beach house for the month of June every summer at Long Beach Island.  I could enjoy a leisurely Sunday in the middle of June while my housemates were racing home, heading north on the Garden State Parkway, to spend Father’s Day with their dad.  Often dads they didn’t even like.  I remember after my dad died and my friends would tell me stories about their dads… how their dad drank, or hit them, or never said he loved them, or touched them weird.  I would think to myself why did my~ dad have to die?!  Why did the nice and good dad have to die and not their lousy fathers? They felt similarly. I know that Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day, and other certain holidays can be a trigger for some people to miss that person even more.  I’ve heard people say “I just want to get through the day.”  Or “maybe I’ll just stay in bed all day.”  But for me, I don’t need a special day to miss my dad. I miss him every day.  Not a day goes by I’m not aware there is a missing piece, a missing dad in my life.  I miss him when I see a dad holding his daughter on his shoulders, or teaching…