http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-devine/death-and-dying_b_4329830.html?m=false

How to Help a Grieving Friend: 11 Things to Do When You’re Not Sure What to Do

I’ve been a therapist for more than 10 years. I worked in social services for the decade before that. I knew grief. I knew how to handle it in myself, and how to attend to it in others. When my partner drowned on a sunny day in 2009, I learned there was a lot more to grief than I’d known.

Many people truly want to help a friend or family member who is experiencing a severe loss. Words often fail us at times like these, leaving us stammering for the right thing to say. Some people are so afraid to say or do the wrong thing, they choose to do nothing at all. Doing nothing at all is certainly an option, but it’s not often a good one. 

While there is no one perfect way to respond or to support someone you care about, here are some good ground rules. 

#1 Grief belongs to the griever.
You have a supporting role, not the central role, in your friend’s grief. This may seem like a strange thing to say. So many of the suggestions, advice and “help” given to the griever tells them they should be doing this differently, or feeling differently than they do. Grief is a very personal experience, and belongs entirely to the person experiencing it. You may believe you would do things differently if it had happened to you. We hope you do not get the chance to find out. This grief belongs to your friend: follow his or her lead. 

#2 Stay present and state the truth.
It’s tempting to make statements about the past or the future when your friend’s present life holds so much pain. You cannot know what the future will be, for yourself or your friend — it may or may not be better “later.” That your friend’s life was good in the past is not a fair trade for the pain of now. Stay present with your friend, even when the present is full of pain. 

It’s also tempting to make generalized statements about the situation in an attempt to soothe your friend. You cannot know that your friend’s loved one “finished their work here,” or that they are in a “better place.” These future-based, omniscient, generalized platitudes aren’t helpful. Stick with the truth: this hurts. I love you. I’m here. 

#3 Do not try to fix the unfixable.
Your friend’s loss cannot be fixed or repaired or solved. The pain itself cannot be made better. Please see #2. Do not say anything that tries to fix the unfixable, and you will do just fine. It is an unfathomable relief to have a friend who does not try to take the pain away.

#4 Be willing to witness searing, unbearable pain. 
To do #4 while also practicing #3 is very, very hard. 

#5 This is not about you.
Being with someone in pain is not easy. You will have things come up — stresses, questions, anger, fear, guilt. Your feelings will likely be hurt. You may feel ignored and unappreciated. Your friend cannot show up for their part of the relationship very well. Please don’t take it personally, and please don’t take it out on them. Please find your own people to lean on at this time — it’s important that you be supported while you support your friend. When in doubt, refer to #1.

#6 Anticipate, don’t ask.
Do not say “Call me if you need anything,” because your friend will not call. Not because they do not need, but because identifying a need, figuring out who might fill that need, and then making a phone call to ask is light years beyond their energy levels, capacity or interest. Instead, make concrete offers: “I will be there at 4 p.m. on Thursday to bring your recycling to the curb,” or “I will stop by each morning on my way to work and give the dog a quick walk.” Be reliable. 

#7 Do the recurring things.
The actual, heavy, real work of grieving is not something you can do (see #1), but you can lessen the burden of “normal” life requirements for your friend. Are there recurring tasks or chores that you might do? Things like walking the dog, refilling prescriptions, shoveling snow and bringing in the mail are all good choices. Support your friend in small, ordinary ways — these things are tangible evidence of love.

Please try not to do anything that is irreversible — like doing laundry or cleaning up the house — unless you check with your friend first. That empty soda bottle beside the couch may look like trash, but may have been left there by their husband just the other day. The dirty laundry may be the last thing that smells like her. Do you see where I’m going here? Tiny little normal things become precious. Ask first. 

#8 Tackle projects together.
Depending on the circumstance, there may be difficult tasks that need tending — things like casket shopping, mortuary visits, the packing and sorting of rooms or houses. Offer your assistance and follow through with your offers. Follow your friend’s lead in these tasks. Your presence alongside them is powerful and important; words are often unnecessary. Remember #4: bear witness and be there. 

#9 Run interference.
To the new griever, the influx of people who want to show their support can be seriously overwhelming. What is an intensely personal and private time can begin to feel like living in a fish bowl. There might be ways you can shield and shelter your friend by setting yourself up as the designated point person — the one who relays information to the outside world, or organizes well-wishers. Gatekeepers are really helpful. 

#10 Educate and advocate.
You may find that other friends, family members and casual acquaintances ask for information about your friend. You can, in this capacity, be a great educator, albeit subtly. You can normalize grief with responses like,”She has better moments and worse moments and will for quite some time. An intense loss changes every detail of your life.” If someone asks you about your friend a little further down the road, you might say things like, “Grief never really stops. It is something you carry with you in different ways.” 

#11 Love.
Above all, show your love. Show up. Say something. Do something. Be willing to stand beside the gaping hole that has opened in your friend’s life, without flinching or turning away. Be willing to not have any answers. Listen. Be there. Be present. Be a friend. Be love. Love is the thing that lasts. 

Megan Devine is the author of Everything is Not Okay: an audio program for grief. She is a licensed clinical counselor, writer and grief advocate. You can find her at www.refugeingrief.com. Join her on facebook at www.facebook.com/refugeingrief

Also on The Huffington Post:

Health Benefits Of Friendship

Follow Megan Devine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/refugeingrief

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http://theblazingcenter.com/2016/04/the-critical-truths-no-one-told-me-when-i-asked-jesus-to-save-me.html

THE CRITICAL TRUTHS NO ONE TOLD ME WHEN I ASKED JESUS TO SAVE ME

When I was converted I made this mistake: I thought the battle was already mine, the victory already won, the crown already in my grasp. I thought that old things had passed away, that all things had become new; that my old corrupt nature, the Adam life, was gone. But I found out, after serving Christ for a few months, that conversion was only like enlisting in the army, that there was a battle on hand, and that if I was to get a crown, I had to work for it and fight for it.

It is like this: when a man enters the army, he is a member of the army the moment he enlists; he is just as much a member as a man who has been in the army ten or twenty years. But enlisting is one thing, and participating in a battle another. Young converts are like those just enlisted. –DL Moody

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http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/lack-play-reason-kids-are-depressed

Is Lack of Play the Reason Kids are Depressed?

Last week we discussed the words of psychologist Jean Twenge, who declared that the rise of depression and anxiety in Americans is a result of communal and familial decline, as well as an intensified focus on money, fame, and image.

While these are logical and likely culprits, Dr. Peter Gray believes there is another factor behind American depression, particularly the depression which affects children. That factor is a lack of play. As Gray observes in Quartz:

“Playing—unstructured time, with rules set by the kids (no adults acting as referee)—is how kids learn independence, problem-solving, social cues, and bravery. Now, parents jump in to solve the playground kerfuffle, spot with eagle eyes the dangers of tall trees and steep hills, and fail to let kids have any independence for fear they will be abducted or hit by a car.

‘Where do children learn to control their own lives? When adults aren’t around to do it for you,’ he said.

‘If you don’t have the opportunity to experience life on your own, to deal with the stressors of life, to learn in this context of play where you are free to fail, the world is a scary place,’ he says.”

Anytime we discuss the lack of play issue at Intellectual Takeout, our fans overwhelmingly agree that this is a real problem in modern America. Many of the older generation, in recalling their own carefree childhood play experiences, are quick to wish the same for their children or grandchildren.  

But there is a major difference between those days and today. The older generations were able to play in the backyard and throughout the neighborhood because many of them had a parent at home. Not an overseeing, hovering parent ready to swoop in at the sign of a scratch, but an adult who encouraged children to get out of the house and was a responsible and wise resource in the event of real trouble. The few children who didn’t have a parent at home could run with the herd and still be safe because the eyes of so many other parents were upon him.

It’s all well and good to say that children need more freedom and opportunities to play, but can this really happen in a society where both parents go to work and bring home a paycheck?

Image Credit: Old Picture of the Day

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http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/24/health/exercise-slows-mental-decline-in-older-people/index.html

Story highlights

(CNN)Mentally, we all slow down a little bit as we age. It gets harder to recall names, or we forget where we put our keys, or the car for that matter. Physically, an older brain doesn't work as fast as it used to. But scientists think there might be one thing that could help slow down this natural aging process.

A study published online this week in Neurology found that older people who exercised regularly experienced a slower rate of mental decline.

In this study, 876 people at an average age of 71 who were a part of the Northern Manhattan Study, a group of people studied for stroke and for the potential to have a stroke, were asked how long and how often they exercised in the two weeks before their in-person interview. 

Among the participants, 90% reported light exercise, such as walking and gardening, or no exercise at all. Those people were placed in the low activity group. The remaining 10% reported moderate to high-intensity exercise, such as running and aerobics, and were placed in the high activity group.

About seven years later, each person was given an MRI and a battery of tests that examined memory and thinking skills. Five years after that, participants took the memory and thinking tests again. 

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BORN FOR THIS: The Work You Were Created To Do

BORN FOR THIS

You are an INDEPENDENT CREATIVE

LET'S BREAK THIS DOWN!

Based on your answers, it sounds like you prefer a solitary workstyle. A lone wolf by nature, you thrive in environments when you work alone and are solely responsible for your results. To perform at your best, it’s important for you to have time away by yourself to think and let ideas percolate. You don’t always work as efficiently or creatively when constantly surrounded by other people or forced to collaborate; you can become distracted by other people and sometimes have difficulty delegating or splitting up discrete parts of a task or project with others.

Information wants to be free, and so do you! You need a job where you can be in control of your hours, your schedule, your deliverables, and your results. It’s your way or the highway, and that’s the way you like it. As far as you’re concerned, the best kind of boss is no boss; you don’t do well reporting to anyone.

Not only do you prefer to work on your own, you also prefer to work at your own pace.We all know who wins the race between the tortoise and the hare—and for you, slow and steady often wins the race. Rather than motivate you, deadlines and deliverables paralyze you. Rather than energize you, stress, well, stresses you out! You are patient and thoughtful and are probably best suited for lengthy, ambitious projects where your role is thinking long-term instead of short-term.

Being the independent, creative sort who marches to the beat of your own drum, you’re not always driven by the traditional incentives typically doled out in a corporate workplace Sure, everyone’s got to make enough cash to pay the bills, but you’re not particularly motivated by money or flashy perks. More important is that you receive satisfaction from your work.

THE WORK YOU WERE BORN TO DO...

You are unlikely to find the work you were born to do in a traditional company or organization. You’re much more suited to a solo career whether as an entrepreneur (see Chapter 9 of the book on how to start a “You, Inc” business), an artist or writer (or other type of creative—see Chapter 11 on how to become a "DIY Rock Star"), a freelancer, an employee of a small startup that lets you work from home or from a shared workspace, or any role where you can be both self-empowered AND self-employed.

Other good careers for youinclude those that require a lot of patience and long term focus, like an academic, a scientific researcher, or an independent strategy consultant. As a an idealist at heart, you might also find the work you were born to do in the nonprofit sector, policy or politics, or social entrepreneurship.

TIPS

• In any employment agreement, always negotiate for maximum flexibility. Be prepared to demonstrate that you will be more effective when being left to create your own schedule and working environment.

• Since you don’t like to be tied down, it’s especially important to create your own independence, either through a full-time business or your own or just a “side hustle” (see Chapter 8) that produces extra income.

• When scheduling your work hours, be sure you include plenty of time to work alone and independently. Be careful about letting meetings fill your calendar. To avoid “meeting creep,” schedule yourself first and then add any additional commitments

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article56473378.html

Why kids today are out of shape, disrespectful – and in charge

Dr. Leonard Sax has been a family physician and psychologist for 27 years, conducting workshops around the world for parents, teachers, social workers, counselors, school psychologists and juvenile justice professionals.

He’s also a dad, and it’s from all those perspectives that he took on his fourth book, an alarm bell of sorts titled, “The Collapse of Parenting,” out recently from Basic Books.

Sax, who lives in Exton, Pennsylvania, argues that American families are facing a crisis of authority, where the kids are in charge, out of shape emotionally and physically, and suffering because of it. He calls for a reordering of family life in response.

A conversation with Dr. Leonard Sax:

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The Associated Press: What exactly do you mean by a collapse of parenting?

Sax: I wrote about an office visit with a 10-year-old boy who is sitting and playing a game on his mobile phone, ignoring me and his mom as I’m talking with his mom about his stomachache. And his mom is describing his stomachache and the boy says, ‘Shut up, mom, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And he laughs.

That would have been very unusual in 1990 or 2000. It is now common: children, girls and boys, being disrespectful to parents, being disrespectful to one another, being disrespectful to themselves, verbally and otherwise. The mother did nothing, just looked a little embarrassed. The culture has changed in a profound way in a short period of time in ways that have really harmed kids.

AP: What is the book really about?

Sax: The transfer of authority from parents to kids. I think you should treat kids like grown-ups. I think you should expect them to be mature and to behave, and I think that’s what it means to treat someone like a grown-up, among other things, although the phrase to treat someone like a grown-up is ambiguous.

It’s not about the abdication of authority.

For example, it’s common now in this country to find parents who are chauffeuring their 8-year-old or 12-year-old around to various schools, among families that are choosing a school, and the parent functions as educational consultant. The parent makes a recommendation, but the child makes the final decision. I know of cases where the kid was clearly making the wrong decision and the parents knew it but nevertheless felt completely powerless to overrule their child. The child is the one who suffers.

AP: What are some other examples?

Sax: The same is true with regard to a cellphone in the bedroom. You now find kids at 10, 12, 14, 16 years of age who have their phone in their bedroom at two (o’clock) in the morning. You take the device at night and you put it in the charger, which stays in the parents’ bedroom. No child should have a phone in their bedroom unsupervised.

That’s not just my opinion. That is the official teaching of the American Academy of Pediatrics in guidelines published (in) October 2013. But you would be astonished, or maybe you wouldn’t be, how many parents find that an impossible recommendation. They feel that they have no authority over their child in many domains.

AP: You refer to the value of family dinner.

Sax: Research shows having a family meal at home without distractions is important. Every day. Not doing that indicates that time spent at home with parents is the least important priority. It doesn’t matter. It can be overlooked and forgotten.

By communicating that time at home as a family is our highest priority, you are sending the message that family matters. So many kids are in the race to nowhere, trying to add things on to their resume through extracurricular activities with no sense of why. They just burn out at 15 years of age.

AP: What about time spent in the car?

Sax: No earbuds in the car. You commonly have this and kids are not engaging with their parents. Everybody’s in a rush. That time in the car is precious. The time in the car is for you to listen to your child and your child to listen to you.

My 9-year-old daughter and I know the lyrics to almost every song from “Mary Poppins.”

AP: What types of things can parents do to help a child or teen become a fulfilled adult?

Sax: The first thing is to teach humility, which is now the most un-American of virtues. When I meet with kids I ask them what they think it is and they literally have no idea. I’ve done that from third grade through 12th grade. The high school kids are more clueless than the third-graders.

They have been indoctrinated in their own awesomeness with no understanding of how this culture of bloated self-esteem leads to resentment. I see it. I see the girl who was told how amazing she was who is now resentful at age 25 because she’s working in a cubicle for a low wage and she’s written two novels and she can’t get an agent.

The second thing is to enjoy the time with your child. Don’t multitask. Get outdoors with your child.

The last thing: Teach the meaning of life. It cannot be just about getting a good job. It’s not just about achievement. It’s about who you are as a human being. You must have an answer.

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http://easyhealthoptions.com/doctor-told-salt-probably-wrong/

What your doctor told you about salt is probably wrong

It is conventional wisdom in allopathic medicine that reducing salt intake is essential for heart health. The doctor crowd, especially heart doctors, have literally scared the American people away from salt.

But studies are increasingly showing that low-salt diets are not only ineffective in affecting heart health, but are actually hazardous to our overall health.

A 2014 Cochrane study showed that “there is insufficient power to confirm clinically important effects of dietary advice and salt substitution on cardiovascular mortality in normotensive or hypertensive populations.”

In 2011, a health study reported in Journal of American Medical Association found that those who ate less salt were the most likely to die from heart disease — five times more likely, in fact, than those with the highest salt intake.

A study published in the journal AMJ Hypertens found that “[r]estricting sodium (salt) intake causes insulin resistance (which leads to diabetes and heart disease). Restricting salt can promote diabetes and heart disease.

“In fact, research studies have routinely found that sodium significantly improves insulin function. According to one study, ‘an abundant sodium intake may improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, especially in diabetic salt-sensitive, and/or medicated essential hypertensive subjects.’”

According to Dr. W.C. Douglas, a low-salt diet is deadly. He reported in his May 27, 2011 newsletter “Daily Dose” that “one study found that seniors with the lowest salt consumption had the highest risk of bone breaks and early death.”

In the book “Salt Your Way to Health,” David Brownstein, M.D., states: “Researchers studied the relationship between a low sodium diet and cardiovascular mortality. Nearly 3,000 hypertensive subjects were studied. The result of this study was that there was a 430% increase in myocardial infarction (heart attack) in the group with the lowest salt intake versus the group with the highest intake.”

Why? He says that low-sodium diets predispose one to having a heart attack because of multiple nutrient deficiencies of minerals, potassium and B vitamins.

We now have some more data on salt’s actual benefits. A study in the March 3 issue of Cell Metabolism shows that dietary salt helps the body defend against microbes. In other words, it helps with immunity.

The study showed that “[a] high-salt diet increased sodium accumulation in the skin of mice, thereby boosting their immune response to a skin-infecting parasite. The findings suggest that dietary salt could have therapeutic potential to promote host defense against microbial infections.”

The study came about after researchers found that patients with bacterial skin infections showed a high accumulation of salt in the infected areas. In their subsequent experiments, researchers found that mice fed a high-salt diet showed an increase in the activity of their immune cells called macrophages. This increase promoted healing in the mice that had had their feet infected with a protozoan parasite called Leishmania major.

The researchers concluded: “We also think that local application of high-salt-containing wound dressings and the development of other salt-boosting antimicrobial therapies might bear therapeutic potential.”

We do not use or recommend refined salt from the grocery store. We use sea salt, which contains 17 minerals.

Unrefined natural sea salt is different from common table salt, which is chemically treated and stripped of minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Not only does natural sea salt add flavor to your favorite foods, but it can also help with many different health conditions. According to the book “Water & Salt, The Essence of Life” by Barbara Hendel, sea salt has been shown to:

• Help reduce the acidity of your tissues.
• Help stabilize irregular heartbeats.
• Balance blood sugar levels.
• Revitalize nerve cell communication with your brain.
• Help with the absorption process in your intestinal tract.
• Prevent muscle cramps.

When shopping for sea salt, be sure that it has not been refined or boiled to produce the crystals. The sea salt should be harvested and allowed to dry by evaporation in order to be labeled “natural.”

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