This morning we held a workshop on coping with loss. I know, it’s a very broad topic, but we planned to let the session take us wherever the participants wanted to go. We began the group by writing a simple question on the board:

“What are you coping with?”

Immediately, a women sitting in the first row got up, took the marker from my co-facilitator, Litsa, and wrote under the first column: “The loss of my entire family”.  A few minutes later, the woman sitting next to her got up and wrote “The loss of my father and the loss of my relationships with my mother and my children.” Both of these women experienced the loss of their family and both expressed feeling utterly alone in the world.