Managing Your Grief
Holistic grief recovery is a healing concept that encompasses the combination of spiritual, cognitive, emotional, physical, and social attributes in grief consultations (Fireman, 2010). Grief is experienced through emotions, thinking, physical, social, and spiritual responses which come and go in terms of the intensity depending on the reaction to loss (Fireman, 2011.) The experience and expression of grief may vary widely between individuals and across different cultural groups (Stroebe, Gergen, Gergen, & Stroebe, 1992). Neimeyer, Prigerson, and Davies (2002) noted that grief is itself a social construction and vast differences exist between societies relative to how grief is shaped. Research reveals that cultural and social traditions, beliefs, religion, and family make a difference in recovering from grief (Bougere, 2008).
Recovering from a significant emotional loss, means acquiring the skills needed to deal with a loss directly (James and Friedman, 2009). Recovery is finding new meaning of life after the loss. James and Friedman (2009) suggest most grievers have not been given the necessary tools to make correct choices in responding to loss. Fireman (2011) developed the holistic grief recovery scale for the purpose of aiding people in becoming aware of what their individual knowledge is concerning their grief process. Upon completion of the scale, grievers should have an understanding of where they are in the grief process and how to move forward with the healing process. Holistic grief recovery is one key to coping with awareness of how one reacts to loss.