TEN WAYS TO HELP YOU COPE WITH GRIEF

1. Plant flowers either at the cemetery or in your own yard to help heal grief and create beauty.

2. Plant a tree in the community, your yard or at a location special to you and your loved one. This helps to give a consistant, growing reminder of life’s cycles and the continuation of life.

3. Light a candle in a window or special place every night in your loved one's memory. Symbolically it represents the continuation of the light of love.

4. Write in a special journal your expressions of grief and various feelings. Journaling offers a secret, safe and healing way to deal with your grief.

5. Make a memory box by decorating a small box to hold memories that remind you of your loved one. You can keep it for yourself or give it to a loved one.

6. Celebrate with a special meal on the eve of a loved one's birthday or anniversary date. Invite family, friends, neighbors to share your loved one’s favorite foods. Pass around pictures and tell stories about your loved one. Stories help you to treasure the memories and pass on messages to others. Love shines through stories.

7. Share your photos and stories with grandchildren and ask them to draw a picture about it. Frame their pictures and hang them up with the children.

8. Volunteer to work for a cause that held special meaning for your loved one and dedicate that service to their memory.

9.Donate money to a local school for a scholarship in your loved one's name. Each year a student will receive the award in memory of your loved one.

10. On the anniversary of your loss, sing songs and play music that your loved one enjoyed.
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VNA
Bereavement Support Group

An ongoing Bereavement Support Group will be held the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month from 6-7:30 pm at Blair Park in Williston, VT.
The support group is free of charge and open to anyone in the community who is grieving the death of a loved one.
For more information, please contact Pamela Jensen, M.S.,
Bereavement Support Group Coordinator, at Hospice of the
Champlain Valley, 860-4410

The group is sponsored by Hospice of the Champlain Valley, a program of the Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties