© Copyright 2008 Bankrate, Inc

FINDING A THERAPIST

March 5, 2008
BY AMY BROWN-BOWERS - Banckrate.com

February, often considered one of the dreariest and most emotionally bleak months of the year, is finally over. While "February funk" can cause emotional and social hibernation, the onset of spring may give you a surge of energy to apply to lingering personal or professional challenges.

For those considering enlisting the help of a therapist, here is some advice on how to find the right professional and on how to ensure you get the best value for your money and time. The bottom line is to be a careful consumer.

"Heck, if you're spending $500 or $1,000 to get better, you should pay attention to if it's a good value or not," says Dr. Paul Kelly, a Toronto psychologist and cofounder of Clear Path Solutions.

First steps
The first step in finding the right therapist is to create a short list. Word of mouth is one of the most common search methods, says Kelly. Alternately, you can go through your family doctor, workplace Employment Assistance Provider (EAP) or simply search online.

If this is your first time going to therapy, consider going through registered colleges and regulatory bodies like the Canadian Psychological Association or the Registry of Marriage and Family Therapists in Canada.

"If people are just starting, regulated health professionals are better because there is a credentialing process, and there's also a complaints process if that's required, and they weed out the stinkers sooner or later," says Kelly. "The college is there to answer queries and to provide protection to members of the public," he adds.

Colleges and regulatory bodies also offer telephone and self-serve online referral services that allow you to narrow your search using specifications like geography and area of expertise, so spend some time thinking about any special requirements you might have before calling. Is it imperative that you see a woman? Someone around your age? Do you need him or her to share the same religious or sexual orientation as you?

Armed with a list of names and numbers, it's time to pick up the phone and have brief conversations with each therapist. Evaluate both the fit -- do they have experience in your area of concern? Do they make you feel comfortable and respected on the phone? -- and the practical concerns -- what are their hours? What do they charge?

William Cooke, a Toronto-based registered social worker and registered marriage and family therapist in private practice, encourages people to use their normal decision-making strategies -- that is if you tend to use your gut, do so here and if you tend to rely on thinking and logic, use those strategies when making your decision.

"Use the same criteria you use to say, 'How do I know I trust the mechanic I just dropped my car off at?' For one person, if it says Canadian Tire, 'That's good enough for me.' For another person, 'I'd want to go out and meet the mechanic and find out if he's a student or been doing it for a long time.' People think of this as some kind of special case -- it's not."

"You have to trust your gut. It's important to chat with more than one person. You're a consumer investing time and money," says Dr. Barbara Bresver, a Toronto-based psychologist.

Financial considerations
Therapy can be a major financial investment, but it doesn't need to be a financial burden if you do your homework.

One of the first distinctions to make is between services that are funded by the provincial government and are free to you versus those that aren't. Visits to a psychiatrist or a social worker are often available at no charge whereas visits to psychologists, for example, typically aren't.

If you have extended health coverage through work or third-party insurance, it's likely you will get some money back from visits to therapists so long as their professional designation is approved by your insurance plan. Many plans specify the types of therapists that quality for reimbursement. Kelly recommends calling your human resources department and asking about the specifics of your benefits when it comes to mental health coverage.

For a rough idea of what different professionals charge, contact their colleges as most generate recommended billing rates. For example, the Ontario Psychological Association's current recommended billing rate is $205 an hour.

When talking to therapists directly, address financial concerns early on. "You have to feel really comfortable talking about pragmatics," says Bresver. "If you're concerned with the fee, that takes away from your time together. When clients decide to come to therapy, it's a sign of strength (and) the sooner we can get down to (the therapy), the better, so it's important to get the pragmatics out of the way."

Kelly adds that most practices have a sliding scale, so be sure to ask if one is available if you're concerned about cost.

"Someone likes myself sets a standard fee with the understanding that I will never make fee the barrier," explains Cooke. "So, it means we talk. If you're not able to afford that or if your situation changes, then you would have my assurance that fee will never be the reason we can't meet."

Finding a good fit
During your first few meetings, pay attention to the fit, just as you would in other types of personal and professional partnerships.

"Sometimes things start low, but by session three, the fit should be really very good," says Kelly. "If they go and it doesn't feel right by the third session, they should get themselves a different therapist for sure because the odds of the ongoing therapy leading to benefit are much, much reduced."

To determine if the fit works for you, Kelly says there are four key things to evaluate:

1. Do you feel heard, understood and respected by the therapist?
2. Did you work on and talk about what you wanted to work on and talk about?
3. Do you feel the therapist's approach is a good fit for you?
4. Did the session feel right?

At Clear Path Solutions, each of these items is rated out of 10 by the patient both after the first visit and after each subsequent visit. An average score of nine out of 10 per item is necessary for an optimal fit, Kelly says. "If it's below 32, the odds are strong that the therapy won't be useful, there won't be any significant benefit or that the person will stop coming. If it doesn't feel right for them, then it isn't right.

Know your therapist
Here's a list of some common mental health professional titles in Canada and what they mean:

© Copyright 2007 Toronto Star

WHEN THE ONLY THING LEFT IS HOPE
For desperate relatives, giving up is hard to do but sometimes hope triumphs over reason, making it impossible to heal and move on
August 25, 2007
BY FRANCINE KOPUN
Feature Writer

Sixteen years after her 4-year-old son Michael went missing from a playground in Victoria, B.C., Crystal Dunahee maintains a room for him.

She's put away his toddler toys and the pile of unopened birthday and Christmas gifts. The clothes he wore as a 4-year-old have been emptied from the drawers, but the room is there for him if he is ever found, as she still hopes he will be.

"Our life hasn't come to a screeching halt," says Dunahee, 46. "We bought a business, we built a new house. We had a room built that is Michael's room – it's important to keep hope alive, to let Michael know and other children know that your parents won't give up."

Giving up, it turns out, is hard to do. When loved ones are missing, hope often triumphs over reason – at times to a dangerous extent.

In Utah, 19 days after six men were trapped when the walls of the mine they were working in collapsed, searchers are still drilling boreholes in an attempt to save them. Three men have died in the rescue attempt.

On Thursday, Ontario Provincial Police called off the search for Christina Calayca, the 20-year-old Toronto woman who vanished Aug. 6 while jogging in Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, saying they do not believe she was a victim of foul play. Her mother has vowed to continue the search, saying she believes her daughter was abducted.

The Utah miners; Calayca; Cedrika Provencher, the 9-year-old missing for three weeks in Quebec; 4-year-old Madeleine McCann, who was snatched from her bed in her family's holiday apartment in Portugal – reports of missing people have recently flooded the news, along with the desperate hopes of their families.

The pathos of their hope moves us.

Hope is essential to the family of a missing person, says Matthew Vienneau, a Toronto man whose sister, Nicole Vienneau, 32, vanished in Syria in March.

"You have to have a little bit or you'll never keep searching or keep looking. Not having hope would lead to depression or despair."

As necessary as that hope is, Vienneau believes it can also become a destructive force.

"We are starting to sort of see where people want to keep doing things that just don't make sense or just because they feel a need that they have to keep doing something. You keep searching, holding to irrational unlikely scenarios."

Hope can cripple. Months after a bomb went off on Air India Flight 182 in June 1985, killing all 329 people on board, one mother continued to sit by the phone, waiting for her children to call.

Another checked daily for mail from her husband, refusing to believe that he hadn't made it home, that he wasn't just visiting relatives in India.

In her waking hours, Lata Pada, a Toronto choreographer and dancer, understood and accepted that her daughters Brinda, 18, Arti, 15, and husband Vishnu had died in the crash off Ireland. The remains of her daughters were recovered. Her husband's never were. At night, her mind played tricks on her.

"It took me years before I stopped dreaming that my husband would suddenly arrive at the doorstep one day," says Pada, 59.

Medical science has come up with a diagnosis for those who, despite all evidence to the contrary, cannot accept or move on from the death of a loved one: complicated grief.

According to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study, the bereavement process can go awry in 15 to 20 per cent of all people who suffer the loss of a close loved one.

Left untreated, complicated grief is associated with clinical depression, suicidal thoughts and actions, substance abuse, cancer and heart disease.

Dr. Katherine Shear, the lead researcher in the University of Pittsburgh study and now a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University at work on a book about treating grief, says that when a family member goes missing, it triggers a different set of responses than the death of a loved one.

It sets off something called a "separation response," similar to the one a toddler feels when mom or dad leaves the room. It's not often activated in adults but when it is it ignites an urgent need to find the missing person, says Shear.

The danger is remaining stuck in the separation response phase even after death is confirmed.

"The person who holds on to one outcome tends to get frozen in time, frozen in grief," says Toronto marriage and family therapist William Cooke, who also conducts grief and bereavement counselling.

Rigidly hoping for a particular outcome can prevent a person from accepting what is truly unfolding. But dynamic hope – hope that adapts to the situation as it changes, can heal: A person hoping against hope that a relative diagnosed with terminal cancer won't in fact die can shift to hoping that their loved one will die as comfortably as possible.

Pada is familiar with the process of shifting hope. She spent days by the Irish seaside after the Air India bombing, hoping for the return of her husband, whose remains were never found.

Since then, her hope has been transformed, into hope for justice for the victims of the bombing.

"The one hope we've held onto is the inquiry, so that in the future there will be lasting changes."

Dunahee's hope has a firm place in her life, but it hasn't taken over her life: "We can't give up, and we have moved on," she says.

Vienneau says his family's hopes have waxed and waned several times.

"Early on, we had some great successes – we found Nicole's last location after one or two days. We had lots to follow up on and you're pretty certain that something is going to lead someplace so that gets you excited, but then as you follow up on all those, and all the obvious trails, and then the less obvious trails ... I guess the hope dims that you'll find any answer at all.

"You sort of have a culture from movies and so on that everything can be solved, there's always an ending of some sort. The lack of an ending is what's tricky."

The Toronto Sun
© Copyright 2006, Sun Media Corporation

SACRED PASSAGE
ROADSIDE MEMORIALS ARE AN EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC GRIEVING FOR A TRAGIC LOSS
Friday, January 13, 2006
Tag: 0601131116
Edition: Final
Section: Lifestyle
Length: 87 lines
Page: 48
BY JOANNE RICHARD, TORONTO SUN

The sidewalk memorial to slain teen Jane Creba dismantled earlier this week continues to reappear as gestures of support and condolence keep her memory alive.

Impromptu memorials make the bold pronouncement: Someone we love died tragically right here -- and it was wrong, says Toronto bereavement expert William Cooke, who ascertains that these spontaneous expressions of grief, often erected at roadsides following a tragic traffic accident, are a growing and widespread phenomenon in North America and are fast becoming part of our grieving process in the case of tragic loss.

"I believe the impromptu memorials for Jane Creba, like the memorials for Holly Jones and Cecilia Zhang, are a dramatic form of community non-violent protest. Whereas the flowers and wreaths at roadside memorials are almost always put there by those directly connected to the person who has died, the flowers laid for Jane and Holly and Cecilia and so many others are brought by those of us who never knew them," says Cooke.

"They symbolize two important, opposing things: Our standing with these girls and their families and our standing against those who perpetrate these acts and against the forces we often feel so helpless to stop.

SPONTANEOUS SHRINES

"With one solitary rose, we say 'yes' to life and 'no' to senseless, violent murders," says Cooke, a Toronto registered marriage and family therapist.

According to Cooke, generally, spontaneous shrines are erected not only to protest to the world against tragedy, but to mark as sacred the place of death and to provide a warning to others.

A memorial site overflows with flowers, hand-written notes, stuffed animals and balloon, for 11-year-old Holli-Lyne Toulouse killed only days ago by a car at a crosswalk.

"Place matters to us. We often call it sacred ground where earth meets heaven," says Cooke.

"When a senseless, tragic death occurs, through accident, suicide or murder, we have no chance to say goodbye. We feel robbed -- we are bereft and often very angry. And so we feel compelled to return to the very place that the person drew her last breath. Some go to say goodbye; others to say a prayer. We try to give that treasured loved one what she deserves -- a safe passage. In marking the place, a life is honoured. That life matters."

Cooke, a member of the Bereavement Ontario Network, says roadside memorials often mark the sacred intersection where life met death, serving as a sober reminder of the vulnerability and frailty of life.

'ALL THE LOSSES'

"They communicate to us a dire warning: Someone died at this very spot on the road. Slow down! It could just as easily have been you."
Memorials, symbolizing a life snuffed out, usually in youth, "let you grieve the person lost but also grieve all the losses in your own life too." There are so few rituals today that allow us to grieve and, like funerals, memorials give people permission to express all their grief and make a statement against the horror and ugliness of it all by counteracting with something beautiful -- the flowers.

"People are making an affirmative statement about life in the face of death," he adds.

The phenomenon of erecting shrines in the memory of a loved one is not new in the world.

"In certain Catholic-centric cultures, like Mexico and Spain, shrines at the side of the road are common. In tragic accidents, no rites were given so mourners feel a direct obligation to assist that person's dying and help them get into heaven," says Cooke.

Dr. Margaret Fisher, who teaches at Queens and U. of T., says she's seeing an increase in roadside memorials. "These are physical tokens; symbols that give expression to the heart-wrenching grief that these people are feeling."

Memorials may in fact replicate the community that gives people a sense of belonging and coping -- "it creates a community of connection, of suffering together," says Fisher, a registered marriage and family therapist who has run bereavement groups. "And it allows us to empathize with the family and friends who have suffered such an enormous loss."

And, she adds, roadside shrines are poignant reminders of our own mortality and "remind us that we too are finite creatures; that it could happen at any moment -- one moment you're laughing and talking and the next moment you're gone," she says. "We personalize the accident and victims -- this could be my child. It levels us, sobers us and makes us realize that we're all vulnerable."

Illustration:
1. photo by Stan Behal
2. photo by Mark O'Neill
Strangers and friends leave flowers and stuffed animals at makeshift memorial for 15-year-old Jane Creba who was slain on that spot on Boxing Day; memorial marks the scene of a pedestrian accident that took the life of Holli-Lyne Toulouse, 11.

Maclean's Magazine
© Copyright Rogers Media Inc.

Four Dates, One Therapist
Marriage counselling used to be for couples who were married. Not anymore
LIFE
November 07, 2005
BY REBECCA ECKLER

At age 28, Jessica (all names have been changed), who works in publishing, and her 32-year-old boyfriend Mike, a businessman, starting seeing a marriage counsellor at Jessica's request. Neither Jessica nor Mike, who had been dating for 14 months, were thinking about getting married or even engaged. They simply wanted to stop fighting constantly. "The therapist did help," says Jessica, who lives in Toronto. "He taught us ways to fight better, if that makes sense. Of course, we did end up arguing over who had to pay the bill. I thought we should go 50-50, but he thought that because it was me who wanted to go, I should be the one to pay." The relationship didn't last. "We weren't good for each other," she says. "Therapy helped me realize that."

Sally, 33, a lawyer, and her ex-boyfriend Fred, who works in banking and who is also 33, went to a marriage counsellor after two years of dating. "Looking back, it was a red flag that something was not right in the relationship. It was his idea to go. But he didn't want to continue because he thought the therapist was siding too much with me," says Sally. "We would talk about a fight we had the night before and I think because he was seeing her individually as well, he thought she would have more of an alliance with him, which wasn't the case, and that made him even more frustrated and angry and harder to live with." After a brief engagement, they broke up. "I don't think it helped us at all, but it was worth a shot."

Toronto psychotherapist and couples coach Catherine Wood says she has more and more twentysomething couples making appointments to see her. "People have been scared by years and years of hearing about divorce statistics. They realize this isn't an illusive thing. They realize that that could be them," she says. Brian Zelt, a Calgary psychologist, agrees that couples dating today have grown up hypersensitive to divorce. "They don't want to go through that."

Wood charges $120 an hour (therapists charge anywhere from $100 to $180 an hour) and couples come to her for periods ranging from three to 10 sessions. "It's always the million-dollar question -- how long will they have to come see me," she says. The contentious issues are fairly standard: affairs, sex, money, in-laws, friends, how much time they spend together.

One of the first questions she asks a couple is, "Do you want to get out, or do you want to work on it?" They come to see her because "either they've made a poor selection and choice in person, or they simply don't have good communication skills with one another, or it's a combination of both."

Jocelyn, 36, and Kyle, 37, both artists in Calgary, went to a couples therapist while they were dating. "We had moved in together and all the sparks seemed gone. I knew I still loved him, and I knew he still loved me. But he started becoming, how shall I say, way more friendly with another woman than I felt comfortable with. We broke up for four days over it, and realized we were both miserable. But I had trust issues after that. It was my mother who suggested we see someone. I think if I had brought up everything I wanted to say at home, we would have ended up in a miserable fight." It worked for them. Three months later, they eloped. They've now been married for almost two years.

William Cooke, a Toronto social worker and registered marriage and family therapist, says one reason more and more young couples are seeking counselling is because the whole phenomenon of therapy has become "more of a resource, like having a financial planner, or personal trainer." But there is only so much a couples counsellor can do. "People will come in and ask, 'Is he the right one for me?' or wonder if they should 'stay in it,' " Cooke says. "That's not the therapist's job. The therapist is there solely to help them get the tools to figure that out on their own. We're not plumbers who can easily fix the problem."

More and more of his clients are also couples in their 20s and early 30s, not married and not intending to marry. "Another group that's growing is people getting out of relationships who see me before they get into their next one, so as to not make the same mistakes." Cooke says that in 75 per cent of the young couples he sees, the woman has initiated the sessions. Couples in therapy, he says, tell couple friends who are fighting they should see a therapist, and "that's why it's caught on."

Sally says she wouldn't go to couples therapy again. "It made me really uncomfortable. Especially when he started asking about our sex lives. I know sex can be an issue, but the therapist was a man. I was like, 'Hello? I don't want to talk about my sex life with two men!' "

Jessica doesn't share her opinion. "A healthy relationship is the most important thing in a person's life. We spend hours and hours and hundreds of dollars fixing our hair and our bodies," she says. "To spend a few hours and a few hundred bucks on something that could last the rest of your life? What's wrong with that?" Jessica is still single. "I have to meet a guy I really like before I take him to therapy. I'll know I really want to make it work with someone when that happens."

The Toronto Sun
© Copyright 2004, Sun Media Corporation

JOURNEY THROUGH GRIEF
CONFRONTING THE UNRELENTING PAIN OF LOSS HELPED DIMINISH IT
Monday, November 15, 2004
Tag: 0411150787
Edition: Final
Section: Lifestyle
Length: 82 lines
Page: 48
BY JOANNE RICHARD, TORONTO SUN

NED LEVITT has endured what every parent dreads -- he buried his child.

Then he descended into a purgatory of pain, anguish and self-persecution, the black hole of grief. "I left the world for a very long time -- I was absolutely devastated, torn apart and self-destructive," says Levitt, a 57-year-old Toronto franchise lawyer.

But salvation came.

Levitt transcended the grief by ascending a mountain of emotional and mental agony, befriending the pain along the way and then claiming the mountain in her memory. And Levitt chronicles his journey in No Mountain Too High: A Father's Inspiring Journey Through Grief (ECW Press), a truly uplifting story that is all about life -- but that which begins with death.

His daughter Stacey, 18, died tragically nine years ago when she was hit by a car while out jogging in Toronto. She was thrown 10 metres through the air, landed on her head and never regained consciousness.
That was the beginning of the end of Levitt's "charmed" life as he knew it: After identifying her body at Sunnybrook Hospital, enduring the funeral and sitting Shiva, he awoke into the unrelenting reality of grief, guilt, anger and sorrow -- and a shattered life without his daughter.

'NEARLY LOST MY MIND'

He could barely go on. He didn't want to go on -- but he couldn't bear the thought of his wife, Cheryl, and two remaining daughters suffering another overwhelming loss.

"I nearly lost my mind -- I called my brother in Florida six times a day. There was no relief from the grief, nausea and pain."

He faltered, raged, cursed, cried an ocean of tears, pleaded and bargained with God, and then, in his desperate quest to survive, he faced his pain head on and clawed his way out of the frightening depths of despair, devastation and darkness: "You must run into the fire, not away from it. You diminish the pain by feeling pain," says Levitt. "There is no way out of the pain -- you have to go through it, fight it and dominate it. You must find meaning."

Levitt's journey of survival, healing and redemption involved finding a reason to go on: First he published a collection of Stacey's poetry and entitled it I Am A Rose, and then he began to reach out to other bereaved parents.

Then, 14 months after Stacey's death, in his unrelenting determination to make meaning of his life and loss, Levitt travelled to Mexico to complete Stacey's unfinished climb up Mt. Ixta, where he left a memorial to her: A box containing copies of her poetry book, and note paper and pens for fellow climbers. Stacey had embarked on a challenging climbing expedition mere months before her death but was unable to make it to the top of the 17,000-ft. mountain because of stormy weather.

No Mountain Too High tells the story of who Stacey was, the special bond of love between Levitt and his daughter, and the joy of connecting with her spiritually -- on and beyond the mountain. Although gone physically, Stacey, an outstanding student, poet and athlete, became his saviour from the heart-breaking aftermath. And he emerged a crusader.

BRUTALLY HONEST

"I decided not to hold back in the book -- when your heart is broken, it's open," says Levitt, who is brutally honest about his journey to heal his broken heart.

"Now I live a very joyful life -- even though I have suffered greatly. I still carry pain, but it has transformed me and has given me joy. I've learned many lessons from my tremendous personal loss and I've gained compassion and understanding," he says.

"I miss her everyday and think of her all of the time, but it's with joy," says Levitt, who's been married for 37 years. "I'm healthy, ambitious and doing things. I paid the price and now I want joy and I carry a message of hope."

Levitt wants to inspire others to overcome their problems -- whatever they are. He has found salvation in helping others cope with bereavement, loss and survival and is a frequent speaker for bereavement groups.

"For me, the work I do brings meaning to an otherwise meaningless situation and has helped me get through it and move on," he says, adding that Stacey's poetry has comforted people all over the world and continues to do so -- on the mountain and throughout the vista beyond.

Connect with Levitt at the Web site Iamarose.com.

Illustration:
1. photo by Alex Urosevic
NED LEVITT holds a picture of his daughter Stacey who, in the summer of 1995, was fatally hit by a car while out jogging.
2. 2 bookcovers

The Toronto Sun
© Copyright 2004, Sun Media Corporation

DEATH OF A CHILD
Monday, November 15, 2004
Tag: 0411150794
Edition: Final
Section: Lifestyle
Length: 31 lines
Page: 49
BY JOANNE RICHARD, TORONTO SUN

DEATH of a child is an "assault to the natural order of life," says grief specialist William Cooke.

"When we lose a parent, we lose ties to the past; when we lose a partner or friend, we lose ties to the present; when a child dies, we lose our ties to the future.

"It is widely felt that the death of one's child is the most devastating of human losses -- children are not supposed to die before their parents," says the registered family therapist in Toronto who holds his Masters in social work and theology.

HELP NEEDED

Help is often needed to navigate this journey. "Not necessarily professional help, but help from wide and experienced guides who can help us navigate the terrain of the journey of grief and mourning."

According to Cooke, "Words quickly reach their limit when it comes to comforting a grieving parent. Even more important is the courage to stand alongside and be steadfast, when all words fail."

He highly recommends a film by Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan called In America. "It's a beautifully told story of a young, healthy family making their way in a new world as they mourn the loss of their son and brother. This film takes us into the lives of a mother, father and two young daughters as they struggle to live and to mourn."

The Toronto Sun
© Copyright 2004, Sun Media Corporation

DON'T BE AFRAID TO REACH OUT FOR HELP
Monday, November 15, 2004
Tag: 0411150793

BY JOANNE RICHARD, TORONTO SUN

CHILDREN AREN'T supposed to die.

Bereaved Families of Ontario offers hope and helps the healing begin. "It takes great courage to reach out," says Janet Wilson, executive director of Bereaved Families of Ontario-Toronto. "We try to create safety and commonality so bereaved parents feel understood."

Wilson knows: Her 26-year-old son, Simon, drowned three years ago while travelling in Indonesia. "People need to know there's hope -- that you can go on living and dealing with life."

"The pain is there as much as it ever was but it becomes more manageable. You learn to bracket it but you never get over it."

Through Wilson's traumatic grief journey, she got her Masters in social work and changed careers -- from running a women's shelter to heading the provincial office of Bereaved Families. "I wanted to make Simon proud of me and to do my little bit to make a difference ... Life is so precious."

At the volunteer-based organization, bereavement support is offered through self-help and mutual aid. Parents and children share their grief with other bereaved families. "Their common loss often helps them to reconstruct their shattered lives, to communicate again with one another and to go on living with the memories of their lost child."

More than 1,000 trained volunteers who are themselves bereaved facilitate the programs -- "their courage to help others is tremendous. They relive their loss every time they reach out." Volunteer health professionals support the facilitators and advise on programs.

To reach Bereaved Families of Ontario, call 416-440-0290 or visit Bereavedfamilies.net.

The Toronto Sun
© Copyright 2004, Sun Media Corporation

THE HEALING PROCESS
Monday, November 15, 2004
Tag: 0411150795
Edition: Final
Section: Lifestyle
Length: 59 lines
Page: 49
BY JOANNE RICHARD, TORONTO SUN

GRIEVING THE death of a child is a nightmare worsened by the fact that "we live in a death- denying culture," says Ned Levitt, the bereaved father and author of No Mountain Too High.

Levitt says that society's discomfort with death leads many people to avoid and isolate the bereaved because they don't know what to say or do. "We have so little education and experience in the language of loss, we worry that we will say the wrong thing, so we bring greater hurt upon the griever by not saying anything at all."

Many people who are struggling with loss become isolated from the very human contact and support they so desperately crave and need, he says.

The bereaved need time, attention, kind words and, most importantly, someone to listen to them. Levitt offers this guidance.

Tears: Have the strength to let the person cry in your presence without offering solutions -- perhaps offering only a hug.

Touch: Within the bounds of good judgment, many people benefit enormously from touch and embrace when they are in pain from loss.

Acknowledgment: Empower the bereaved by acknowledging their pain."We should not say that we understand, if it is a loss we have not experienced, but we can always confirm that we are aware they are in pain from that loss."

Speaking: Let the bereaved speak. "The very act of talking about the pain, the deceased and the nature of the loss, is therapeutic. Being a good listener is much more valuable than offering advice."

Time: "Time, by itself, will aid the healing process. But how that time is spent will make all the difference," says Levitt. "Working through issues, making an effort to reinvest in life, taking a new, more fulfilling path in life will all hasten the healing process and help the wound to heal with a healthy and clean scar."

LOST

A feeling of emptiness,
a hunger.
Something just beyond reach,
unable to grasp.
A black hole,
falling slowly,
nothing to hold on to.
A feeling beyond fear.
Helpless and lonely,
Plunging deeper into the dark,
unknown depths below.
A shimmer of light,
small and faint.
Hope,
an ending,
a beginning.

by Stacey Levitt, January 1990, reprinted from I Am A Rose.
Stacey was born May 19, 1977, and died August 30, 1995.

Illustration:
3 photos
STACEY LEVITT was an adventurous young woman, living life to the fullest.