Jacksonville Center for Grief and Loss

01/02/2025

For all who are grieving as 2025 begins...

may this year find you remembering your loved one with more love than pain.

10/01/2024

Robin Williams's daughter said this about grief...

09/29/2024

Please be aware:
Halloween can be an especially difficult time for parents who have lost a young child.

09/17/2024

Love this.

07/15/2024

We live in a culture that is impatient with the pain of grief. But you don't have to suffer in silence. Reach out. Www.jaxgrief.com

07/15/2024

vulnerability doesn’t mean telling others what happened to us from across a cafe table or from behind a microphone

and then going home from the experience feeling just as alone as you did before

vulnerability means allowing your human heart blanket to get sewn to other heart blankets

it’s about connection

we don’t share for status
we do it for synergy

we don’t confess for clout
we do it to build community

we tell our tale
to invite others
to tell theirs

it’s the sacred cycle
of storytelling

we gather in a circle of trust and
say “here is my journey”

then we listen to
the other journeys
that are shared

we take space
then we give space

we pour
then we absorb

we speak
then we listen

we are storytellers
then we are witnesses

vulnerability isn’t just about
grave digging in our past
to expose our skeletons

it’s about sewing quilts

here is my patch
here is your patch
here is their patch
here is us

here is our story



~ john “patchwork heart” roedel

art by the ab-fab
Paula Jones Fine Artist

05/12/2024

04/07/2024

It’s funny, grief, isn’t it? How you die with them. Whoever you were before has gone. Your ghost walks the earth. You look the same, sound the same, but are not the same. You don’t breathe oxygen the way you did before. You negotiate life under an ocean. Drowning as you do your shopping, drowning as you ride the bus, drowning as you go to work. You can’t live with this, you think. No one could live with this. It’s unliveable. Then there are moments when your head rises above the water. You find something funny, laugh. A glimpse of your previous self. Until you are submerged once again.

― Charlotte Levin