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Hospice East Bay Grief Support Offerings

Grief is painful, messy and disorganized. It's also an expression of love and human connection. Let us help you navigate the journey and find meaning in the experience.

A resource by Hospice of the East Bay

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Perhaps the greatest gift handed to us by the grief process is the opportunity to move forward into a new understanding of ourselves. When we emerge from grieving the loss of a loved one, we embrace our lives from a slightly different perspective. From this new vantage point we find ourselves re-engaging in ways we never expected or even thought possible. The process of grieving can be a time of rebirth, renewal and growth. Hospice of the East Bay continues to grow alongside the adults, children and teens we guide through their grief experience.

All service are virtual until further notice - contact Hospice East Bay's Grief Services Program at 925-887-5678 or email griefservices@hospiceeastbay.org for more information.

Our Inspiration

We don't do death well in our country. We see death as a failure of some kind rather than an expected outcome. Because of our discomfort with the inevitable, grief is viewed as a temporary, if uncomfortable, price to pay for loving someone who died. Our culture only allows open expression of that grief for specific periods of time. If your grief process cannot be contained within those expectations, you are told that your process is abnormal or defective and you need to seek professional help. My formative experience with death was as a young man living in San Francisco during the earliest phases of the AIDS pandemic. I was faced with having to come to terms with mortality - mine and that of those I loved. Day after day, friends were dying and, while the world was ever-so-slowly coming to terms with the disease and how to treat those suffering from it, those left behind were disenfranchised from their grief experiences simply due to cultural ignorance and biases about the disease itself and those afflicted by it. This left those needing support feeling abandoned and unworthy of compassion. This made such a profound impact on me that I chose to dedicate my career on helping grieving individuals find their own personal meaning of the experience. This is the foundation that all of our grief support services are based on. We accompany our clients on their grief journey and we stick with them when the journey takes unexpected turns. We support our clients in their understanding of their experience without trying to change their narrative. We do not see our client's grief as pathological or being defective by design but rather an extension of the love they share with the person who has died. This is accomplished through a wide and ever-evolving selection of grief support services that put the client in charge of the experience.
FREE

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