This is an interesting article about how when parents find out their child has a disability, their initial upbeat attitude can result in being alone with the problem afterwards.
I've met alot of people who berate themselves for going through a grief process after they receive difficult news. Our society sometimes denies us those healing processes due to cultural mores.
As members of a church, we can help families and individuals coping with such situations by understanding that grief is not a linear process. Prayers, the offer to listen to them for ten minutes and hands on support such as meals, can prove invaluable to such folks as they journey through their individual process.
4 comments:
Just don't assume *everyone* needs to grieve. I knew a pediatrician who always told parents about a new diagnosis by saying "I have some important information to give you." NOT "bad news," because that wasn't his decision to make.
When we got our newborn son's diagnosis, it was serious in a lot of ways, but it wasn't the worst-case I feared--he would live! I sincerely wanted to celebrate that. So it hurt when I realized that some church members could only rejoice in their own notion of "good news." Everything else was "so sad." That's not support.
As my friend says, "I never even considered feeling guilty or ashamed about my child's disability, until so many well-meaning people kept saying I mustn't."
That's such a good point - that I've made in other places on this blog. I have wrriten about how it's a form of ableism to make that assumption.
Not even my DH really understood when I celebrated after finding out I had Parkinson's. My church friends almost all sighed and said how sorry they were, but I was so upbeat for having found a diagnosis, I wouldn't let them drag me down!
I need to really take what Penny said about her son to heart, as I'm sure I've been guilty of saying those easy words that didn't help and only made things worse.
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