Tag Archive for death

What happens to your online presence after you are gone?

March 26, 2013 No comments

Recently a discussion was going around about what advice you would give a teen about online safety. There was a report on accounts where the owner creator died. This brings up many questions that are surfacing regarding the online presence of the deceased.

Apparently few states have laws providing facebook access to accounts by spouses and children and literally there are 10s of thousands of them out there. What laws need to be created to protect the deceased and their families regarding cyber space?

So think about it, what happens to your online presence after you are gone?
Do you just live on in cyber land surviving countless facebook upgrades and live forever in cyberspace? And what are you relations going to find? grave stones1

How can family’s legally access these accounts and make the appropriate changes to close them?
Should passwords be included in Wills and Testaments so accounts may be accessed more easily?
This is another reason to be aware of what you post online because it could wind up being your cyber memorial.

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How To Handle Grief

March 7, 2013 No comments

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Good Grief…and it’s misconceptions

Last year I was going through divorce and experienced some of the heartfelt emotions and sadness related to letting go and moving on.  In that process I decided to research grieving both for my own sake and to have a better understanding of the families I serve through providing the white dove releases.  What I discovered was that I had this preconceived misconception that “time heals all”.  What I learned was that grieving, like healing, is personal and individual and that no two people experience it exactly alike.  And I learned that grief can have a lifelong negative effect on our capacity for happiness.th (5)

I also discovered some of the most common incorrect ideas that you may have been influenced to believe about dealing with sad, painful, and and negative emotions are as follows:

  • Don’t feel bad – can someone else really tell us how we should feel?
  • Replace the loss – do you think if we just grab on to something else, we will somehow feel better?
  • Grieve alone – who ever said we need to do this all alone? and why?
  • Time heals all wounds – one of the biggest misconceptions because it’s not how much time passes but what we do with that time to heal.
  • Be strong – how did being strong and sucking it up really ever help in the long run?
  • Keep busy – maybe if we just keep busy, we won’t have to feel anything and that will somehow help.

We may all know someone who for whatever reason is still grieving maybe years or decades after having loss someone.  For whatever reason they have not been able to embrace moving on.  However they, like anyone, can begin to embrace the process of healing when they are ready to and there is a lot of help and information available to help them.

One book I found to be very helpful is called The Grief Recovery Handbook, The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses…including Health, Career, and Faith by John W. James and Russel Friedman, founders of the Grief Recovery Institute and authors of When Children Grieve.  This book gives you a step by step method for recovering from grief and regaining energy and spontaneity and provides specific actions needed to move beyond loss.

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Come to find out, grieving is not just about time after all, it’s about what we do with that time.

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