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One Flaw In Woman By the time the Lord made woman, he was into his sixth day of working overtime. An angel appeared and said, "Why are you spending so much time on this one?" And the Lord answered, "Have you seen my spec sheet on her? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic, have over 200 movable parts, all replaceable and able to run on diet coke and leftovers, have a lap that can hold four children at one time, have a kiss that can cure anything from a scraped knee to a broken heart-and she will do everything with only two hands." The angel was astounded at the requirements. "Only two hands!? No way! And that's just on the standard model? That's too much work for one day. Wait until tomorrow to finish." But I won't," the Lord protested. "I am so close to finishing this creation that is so close to my own heart. She already heals herself when she is sick AND can work 18 hour days." The angel moved closer and touched the woman. "But you have made her so soft, Lord." "She is soft," the Lord agreed, "but I have also made her tough. You have no idea what she can endure or accomplish." "Will she be able to think?", asked the angel. The Lord replied, "Not only will she be able to think, she will be able to reason and negotiate." The angel then noticed something, and reaching out, touched the woman's cheek. "Oops, it looks like you have a leak in this model. I told you that you were trying to put too much into this one." "That's not a leak," the Lord corrected, "that's a tear!" "What's the tear for?" the angel asked. The Lord said, "The tear is her way of expressing her joy, her sorrow, her pain, her disappointment, her love, her loneliness, her grief and her pride." The angel was impressed. "You are a genius, Lord. You thought of everything! Woman is truly amazing." And she is! Women have strengths that amaze men. They bear hardships and they carry burdens, but they hold happiness, love and joy. They smile when they want to scream. They sing when they want to cry. They cry when they are happy and laugh when they are nervous. They fight for what they believe in. They stand up to injustice. They don't take "no" for an answer when they believe there is a better solution. They go without so their family can have. They go to the doctor with a frightened friend. They love unconditionally. They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards. They are happy when they hear about a birth or a wedding. Their hearts break when a friend dies. They grieve at the loss of a family member, yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left. They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart. Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors. They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you. The heart of a woman is what makes the world keep turning. They bring joy, hope and love. They have compassion and ideals. They give moral support to their family and friends. Women have vital things to say and everything to give. HOWEVER, IF THERE IS ONE FLAW IN WOMEN, IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH. Not Everyone Needs to Express their Grief to Get on with Living By ELIZABETH LARGE The Baltimore Sun Posted on Mon, Aug. 11, 2003 There's a name for it -- grief work. As if mourning for someone you love was a job you had to do in a certain way and when you finished you could go on with your life. The steps are laid out in self-help books and the popular press: tasks like accepting the loss, confronting emotions of despair, anger and loneliness; learning to live in the present; dealing with the life changes. And of all the steps, the one most commonly accepted is that you have to express your grief to get over it. Maybe not. Emma Sue Solloway, 59, of Catonsville, Md., says she didn't have time to sink into depression after her husband died of a heart attack 15 years ago. Grief counseling wasn't something she ever thought she needed. "My family accepts death as part of life," she says. "My two children were the saving grace when my husband died. If you're busy, you don't have time to grieve too much." Is Solloway unusual? Since Sigmund Freud published his essay "Mourning and Melancholia," it has been pretty much accepted that people must confront their feelings about the death of a loved one to adjust to the loss. Those who don't are simply repressing their emotions, and that will be unhealthy in the long run. Now, though, scientists are taking another look at how people deal with bereavement. Recent research suggests Solloway's experience isn't uncommon. How she coped with her husband's death could work just as well as seeing a grief counselor once a week or pouring her heart out to a friend. For the past decade George Bonanno, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College, has been studying the ways people deal with grief. His work, he says, is dismissed because it contradicts so much of what is assumed to be true in the field. When mourners don't show a lot of stress after losing a loved one but go on with their lives and seem happy again fairly quickly, it's commonly viewed as "maladaptive" grief, he says. "I've been arguing that there's no evidence for that. It frustrates me quite a bit." His most recent article, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , deals with information from a longitudinal study of 1,500 people. Out of that group, the researchers had data on 205 people from about three years before the death of a loved one until 18 months after. Almost half of them showed no real symptoms of depression after the loss. Because the subjects had been studied for so long, Bonanno and his colleagues knew there was nothing unhealthy about them: They were in good relationships. They hadn't been depressed beforehand. They weren't cold or avoiding types. They simply adjusted to their loss quickly and got back in the stream of things. "This isn't an abnormal pattern if half the people do it," Bonanno says. "I hear, `They're just depressed and don't know it.' That's ridiculous. Why are we so suspicious of people who seem healthy?" If you force people to talk about their feelings when they don't feel a need to, he explains, they could get worse. "It might undermine their natural coping mechanisms." But when Bonanno says people who repress their grief often get through their bereavement just fine and show no lingering depression, he also adds, "There are many styles of coping in the world, and they all have their pluses and minuses." For instance, he says, some studies have shown that people who repress their emotions may have physical problems. Psychologist Margaret Stroebe and several researchers in the Netherlands conducted two studies that essentially agree with Bonanno's findings. The researchers followed recently widowed men and women over two years to see if talking to others made any difference. Using a second group of widows and widowers, they studied whether keeping a journal about the bereavement shortened the period of mourning and its psychological effects. Stroebe and her colleagues determined that people who share their thoughts and feelings after the death of a loved one -- either by talking to others or writing about them -- don't adjust to the loss any better than those who don't. Time healed as well as anything. (It should be pointed out that these bereavement studies dealt with normal mourning. A death from violence or the loss of a child may present a whole set of problems beyond uncomplicated grief.) "It's not that talking and writing never helps," Stroebe says. "Most bereaved people do this naturally. Sometimes it will bring relief or help a grieving person see things differently; but sometimes it will just be ruminative expression, and this may, if relentless, be maladaptive." It might, in other words, just make the mourner feel more depressed to dwell on the loss. Three recent combined analyses of bereavement studies have come to the same conclusion: People can quite successfully on their own find ways of coping with loss. Grief counseling and therapy are "typically ineffective, and perhaps even deleterious, at least for persons experiencing a normal bereavement," wrote psychologist Robert A. Neimeyer in a survey of current research published in the journal Death Studies . That is, talking to a therapist didn't seem to help and sometimes hurt. Naturally, these are fighting words to counselors. Mila Tecala, a psychotherapist and director of the Center for Loss and Grief in Washington, says flatly that she's seen the Stroebe article, which appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and doesn't agree with it. "People seek me out," she says. "They have a need to talk. Their grief has to have an outlet." She says of a patient who came to her after the death of his wife, "He can't do enough crying in my office; it's the only place he allows himself to cry. Outside he has to be a `man' about his grief." To make things even more confusing, for every study that shows confronting emotions doesn't help, another one could be cited that seems to demonstrate the opposite. Daniel Segal, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, found that people who wrote about their grief were less hopeless and less depressed compared to a control group after one month, and continued to be after a year. "The act of verbalization requires you to organize your grief in a therapeutic way," he says. "It puts some structure on it and makes some meaning out of it." So why the conflicting results? Perhaps part of the problem is that participants in randomized studies don't choose to talk to someone or write about their grief because of a need for it, but are assigned to groups who either verbally confront their feelings or don't. Therapists are usually the first to admit that grief counseling isn't for everyone. "My neighbor's way of dealing with the death of his wife is to go to church and pray," Tecala says. "He doesn't need therapy. You have to allow people to grieve in the best way possible for them. You cannot force people to do what you do to help themselves. People in therapy have to believe in the process." Despite the conflicting studies, the researchers seem to agree upon one thing. Time may be the best healer in the long run, but meanwhile each of us has to find a strategy of coping with grief that works for us. Written word helps wounds heal Pouring your emotions out on paper could help wounds heal quicker, researchers say. It is thought that writing about troubling experiences helps people deal with them, in turn boosting the immune system work more effectively, researchers told the British Psychological Society conference. They say these findings offer a cheap and easy way to help patients heal faster. Skin Punctures In the study, 36 people were given a small skin puncture on the arm. Half were then asked to write about the most upsetting experience they had had, spelling out how they had felt. The rest of the study participants wrote about trivial things, such as how they spent their free time. Both groups spent 20 minutes a day for three days writing. The wounds were examined two weeks later. It was found that the group who had written about their emotional experiences had smaller wounds, meaning they had healed more quickly. Those whose wounds were healing more slowly were found to have higher levels of stress and psychological distress. Easy to administer Suzanne Scott, from the Unit of Psychology at King's College London, who led the research, told BBC News Online: "These findings have implications for the development of relatively brief and easy interventions that could have beneficial effects on wound healing. "The theory is that there's a long-term health benefit. She added: "It's easy to administer because the people don't need to have gone through some awful experience, they just need to write about their most upsetting experience." Psychologists say stress also influences how people recover from surgery.They say high stress levels mean people recover more slowly. Professor John Weinman of King's College London told the BPS conference: "These research findings can help patients and will be important for developing interventions for patients undergoing different types of surgery." "My own take on grief is that it is often most useful to attempt to remain flexible, that is, neither wallowing in nor avoiding grief, but addressing it in small chunks each day while trying to function productively the rest of the time." -Kurt W-
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