Where can I get grief support?

Many hospitals have breavement counselors and support groups.

It's important for that question to become: Where can I get quality, well-informed grief support and here's why. Just because you can get medical care doesn't mean it's quality medical care. Same with grief support. Sometimes the best grief counselors I know are a neighbor who is kind and compassionate, empathetic and will listen more than talk. Sometimes the worst grief care is in a professional setting. But then again, I might need a professional, a psycologist or psychiatrist, because they specialize in one type of grief - like loss of a child or invisible loss, like miscarriage or parental alienation - and understand it better than just a good listener.

There are so many sources of grief support. I'll start with walking outside and having my feet on the earth and being in the cathedral of nature, wherever that's accessible. If that's a little pocket park in your city neighborhood, or if that's getting down to the water somewhere or if it's been with big trees or whatever kind of landscape is available for you to help to connect with a bigger story, the cycle of life and death that is everywhere around us. 

It can be really easy in the devastation of one's own fresh grief to think that you are the only one who's ever experienced such a rupture in the fabric of your life. Being in nature helps to create a bigger story in which you're placed. In addition to that, sources of grief can be other folks grief stories, especially myths and poems and ways that people have understood grief and bereavement beyond the individual and psychological. It's sometimes helpful to look at ways other people, other cultures have made meaning in their grief. 

Then, of course, talking to others who are bereaved. Oftentimes support groups, that are now widely available online, as well as support groups that might be found in person or just connecting with other people who have experienced a similar kind of death or source of grief in their life can be helpful for some. It can be overwhelming to be in the midst of others' grief when you're in your own fresh grief. It can be useful to find those support networks where there are people who are one year, two year, five years, 10 years down the road that you're just starting to walk. 

There are also many professionals who may be skilled in assisting through either therapy or guided art or writing projects. We're in a time where there's a full range of options to access support for grief.