Recent Stories
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, My wife passed away two years ago. We were both in our middle 60s. I want to resume dating, but female friends tell me I need to remove all traces of my wife from the apartment before I do so. I have not been able to part with anything since she died. […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer, I’ve been reading your column for some time now, and trying to follow your advice about confronting rather than avoiding my grief through writing on AfterTalk to my dear wife, Dorothy, who meant the world to me before her death two months ago. We did just about everything together for decades, and […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr Neimeyer, My husband passed away a few years ago when my children were very young. I was fortunate enough to find a wonderful man and remarry. He has embraced ‘our’ children as if they were his own. My problem is that I am very conflicted. I want my children to grow up knowing […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer, How do I forgive the person who dumped my first-born son unconscious out of his car and left him to die? I lost my son almost three years ago; someone left him unconscious and he died in an empty parking lot alone. He was an organ donor and saved five different lives. […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer, I had a significant bereavement over two years ago when I lost my father to cancer and Alzheimers, and am still unable to talk about it or face it in any way. I have emotionaly disconnected from my grief. It overwhelms me at times but this is so unbearable that I shift […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer, I am working with a client whose husband died suddenly eleven days after the birth of their first child. That son is now just turning three and is asking incessantly, “where is my father?” The mother, nanny, etc., honor the question and respond that his father is in heaven. He is aware […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer, My colleagues and I are currently recruiting clients for a traumatic loss group in our clinic, one that draws on your approach to grief therapy as meaning reconstruction, which has strong relevance when losses are sudden and often violent. The group is designed to run 12 weeks, and is closed, meaning that […]
Continue ReadingGrieving for a Husband/Father During the Holidays Dear Dr. Neimeyer, My husband Don died 9 months ago after a rapid decline; and his lungs basically stopped working, even with oxygen treatments. His death has been hard for us as a family in many ways, as he lived only about 6 months after getting the diagnosis, and […]
Continue ReadingDear Dr. Neimeyer– My husband died just over a year ago, so on January 1st I will start my second year without him, and I am not looking forward to it. It’s not that I am immobilized by grief, as I have gotten better across the months in that department, and actually feel pretty good […]
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