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Many of you have been folIowing the discussion on Facebook, this blog and YouTube about having to cope with grief as the holidays approach.

I hope the holidays are shaping up well for you. But, the holidays can be quite difficult if you’ve lost a loved one. I’ve gotten several requests to offer some help to those who are going through a difficult time as the holidays approach. So, I’ve put this free webinar together as a place for us to meet and share strength as the holidays approach.

Grief is a pure form of love. The work of grief is to find new ways to express the love for the ones who have gone, and over time, to turn the heat of the pain of loss into the light of wisdom, kindness and compassion.

Don’t suffer the pain of the heat of grief needlessly. Join us to find the best form of that light in your own life, and invite a family member or friends who needs this help, too.

We’ll share a presentation, questions and answers and suggestions on practical steps to take to best honor those who are gone and share ways to live your life with more heart and vitality. To protect your privacy, no names of participants will be divulged. You can sit and listen and not say a word, if you’d like. It will be an audio webinar, so no video of you will be taken. You can use the speaker on your computer or use your phone as your speaker. It’s actually very easy.

When you sign up by computer you’ll placed on the participant list. You’ll get a reminder of the webinar by e-mail and a link to use to join the webinar on Thursday evening, 8:00 EST. WWhen you click on that link Thursdays evening, you’ll be asked which would you like to use, your computer or your phone. Just follow the very simple directions and you’re in!

Be sure to let me know what you’d like us to include in our discussion by e-mailing at letshealthehurt@gmail.com.

Feel free to recommend this to a family member or friend. Forward this link for them to sign up for this free webinar: Healing the Hurt at the Holidays:WEBINAR But, please hurry as space is limited by the online webinar service.

See you Thursday,

John

Title: The Resilient Life: healing grief during the holidays
Date: Thursday, December 22, 2011
Time: 8:00 PM – 9:00 AM EST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Grief is a pure form of your love. The depth of the pain of your grief is a sign of the depth of your love for the one who is gone. So, it’s important for you to honor the pain. But, the heat of your pain must be transformed into the light of wisdom and growth. This is the work of grief.

The work of grief, the object of grief, is to harvest the fruits of your love, to allow your love to take its most refined and mature form. This means taking the best of the love you have for the one who has gone and finding new ways to express it. This begins with gratitude for the great gift of your love as well as finding an expression of this love in service to others who also hurt.

Grief forces us to live in the moment, even if that moment is painful. Gratitude is also a pure form of love. if you can find a way to be grateful for the gift of love in your life, the pain of your grief can begin to take a new form.

Over time, the pain of your love and your gratitude will cause a tenderness in your heart. In healthy grief, the pain slowly turns to kindness and compassion for the suffering of others. While it is perfectly normal to experience them in the short term, in unhealthy grief, the pain of grief turns to bitterness and alienation. Be mindful of these taking hold.

If you have found a way to work through your own grief, consider helping someone else by writing your experience here.

Our grief is a proof of our love. There are valuable gifts contained in the pain and powerlessness, if we look.

If you’ve weathered the pain of a terrible loss, perhaps you can help someone else who is now in the same position. If you feel comfortable doing so, comment below on how you handled this terrible pain. What did you do? What helped you? What wisdom did you gain? Thanks!

Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you can follow the conversation.

What is helpful when we want to help a loved one who is grieving? What is a common mistake and is not helpful? This brief video begins the discussion.

This is one in a series of brief videos on healthy ways to deal with grief. Be sure to watch the other videos for the upcoming webcast that will then be archived on this website. If you have weathered the loss of a loved one, please feel free to share what you did and what you learned so you can help someone else going through the same thing now. And thanks!

When my Mom passed away 5 years ago, I gave one of her eulogies. This video talks about the approach I used.

Grief is an opportunity to have love come to fruition. Love is always changing in form. The reasons we are attracted to someone grows into a new form when we marry. That form grows and changes when we become parents and launch careers. Throughout life, love grows and changes form. When a loved one dies, we have an opportunity to be witness to love coming to full fruition. It’s an important part of our relationship with the person we love who is no longer with us.

An important part of grief is finding a way to keep the best qualities of our loved one alive in our own life after they have gone. It’s important not to suffer the pain of grief in vain. As we said in an earlier video, we need to be sure that the heat of the pain of grief produces the light of wisdom and growth. Finding a way to keep the best of a loved one alive in our own words and acts towards others is one of the ways to do so.

I’m looking in to how to best provide a webinar next week on grief so we can explore these topcis in much more depth. These short videos are intended to get the heart and mind moving, not to be the ultimate answers to a topic as big as life (and death) itself.

Be sure to subscribe below to my blog to get notices when new posts appear.

How have you seen the best of a loved one who has passed on carried forward by your acts, or the acts of someone else?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that grief is something to “get over,” as if it were a cold! Grief is finding a new form for love.

Don’t suffer needlessly! Be sure to capture the gift hidden in your own grief. The “heat” of the fire of grief has to be turned into the “light” of wisom and growth.

The Holidays are the best of time of year for many of us. But, for many others, especially those who grieve the loss of a loved one, the holidays can be particularly painful. This is the first in a series of brief videos on how you can approach your own grief during the holidays, and how to help someone else who has lost a loved one.

If you’ve weathered this before in your own life, help someone else by telling your story below. Feel free to suggest other topics for more videos in comments below or write me at letshealthehurt@gmail.com.

Uganda: In the case of Uganda, there is a rich culture and deep pride that will allow the country to arise from decades of rebel war and deprivation the people have suffered through. It is the perfect example of the spirit of resilience arising from great loss and tragedy. Experience has shown that there is nothing wrong with Uganda that can not be solved by what is right with Uganda and her people. Efforts to help, then, must be centered around bringing out the strengths of Ugandans, the dignity of Ugandans, and not importing “solutions” from somewhere else.

For 23 years, the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led a macabre and vicious campaign of cruelty throughout northern Uganda in an effort to overthrow the government.  The primary methods of recruitment of these criminals was to kidnap children and turn them into soldiers and sexual slaves.  The children were typcally forced to commit atrocties against their own families to fracture family bonds and brainwash the children into submission.   The LRA bizarrely claimed that these methods would help institute the  rule of the 10 Commandments in Uganda.  Leaders of this psychopathic cult have been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In October, 2011, President Obama announced the dispatch of 100 US advisors and special forces to apprehend the criminal leaders of the LRA cult to bring them to justice.

The Unity Project-Uganda: The Unity Project has launched a major initiative in war-torn northern Uganda.   A “Unity Assembly” composed of 9 schools, public health, micro-enterprise, community organizations and media outlets has been created as a vehicle to begin a process of sustainable development and community healing in Lira, Uganda.  The district Ministry of Education has asked that the Unity Project’s efforts be extended to all the schools in the district.  This pilot effort holds great promise as a model for reconstruction throughout northern Uganda, the region and any post-confict area.
The Unity Project will engage youth in a series of service activities to launch a locally based sustainable spiral of growth for the Lira area of northern Uganda. Together, our partners reach many tens of thousands of young people. From our Unity Assembly of partners, we engage youth in service activities that build upon locally identified needs which also align with the Millennium Development Goals. This service activity “mines the gems” of potential strengths, talents and character in our youth. These “gems” are then refined through our expertiential “Transformation Exercises” into practical personal skills that can be used to provide a vision for a life of useful service to the community. In the process, the community benefits from the service and strengthens its institutional and community capacity through the growth of the Unity Assembly.

Working with local, national and international experts and agencies, youth will b involved in designing an implementing a needs survey around key development issues. They will then work closely with these experts to analyze the data, craft and implement a community-wide intervention. Youth will be central to the design and execution of an important community building initiative. Not as passive recipients of aid, but as active participants in their own development, youth will step into roles of being agents of change building competence, hope and the foundations of a sustainable and prosperous community.

In subsequent phases, we will direct these newly developed strengths and the ability to identify community needs toward employment and business creation. Our work is intended to establish the first rung of the ladder to stimulate the personal capacity, community networks and institutional strengths to lead to security and prosperity. In doing so, our methds also strengthen the foundations of democratic and cooperative community problem solving, the foudnation of prosperity.

In parallel to this work in Uganda, the Unity Project is launching chapters in high schools, universities and community organizations throughout the US. Soon, these sites in the US will be linked online with the our partners in Uganda creating a dynamic learning community of peers all taking action to transform their own communities and join together in projects with a global reach.

Currently in Uganda, we are focusing on 4 “Legs” that support the over-all “table” of this project. These are:

1.) Education: This involves the training of teachers and the staff of partners in the Unity Project’s resilience building Transformation Process to be incorporated into school curricula and youth programs.

2.) Economic Development: Once youth have gained some skill identifying community needs and built their own strengths to meet those needs, they are far along the path to envisioning a life’s work. They have reason to finish school and the basics to envision a business that can help their community. We are creating a teams to explore a number of prosperity generating initiatives in Lira, Uganda: a farmers’ cooperative, an online store of local women’s crafts, and entry level IT services. These can then finance the project making it grounded in the community and sustainable. In exchange for particiapting in these income generating activities we ask families to their keep their children in school and participate in Unity Project capacity building programs. In this way, the project can become self-sustaining while building capacity.

3.) Health: Working with our local partners as well as local, national and international agencies, we are developing service teams in each of the following themes: malaria eradication, HIV/AIDS, water purification, gender violence and maternal and child health. One of these themes will be chosen by the partners as the focus of the youth efforts to begin in the fall of 2012.

4.) Learning Community: A significant innovation of our methods involves mobilizing young people to help define the information that is needed to create meaningful service plans. Youth will be directly involved in defining the information needed, collecting and analyzing it as well designing and implementing relevant and manageable service activities based on information they collected. In this way, a learning culture can evolve that is built upon the feedback of accurate and relevant data, cooperative reflection and planning and the united action and assessment of results. This process will greatly increase the effectiveness of the community and build local capacity.

The Lira District Ministry of Education has requested that the Unity Project extend this initiative to all schools in the district. We have also been invited by the Council on Higher Education in Rwanda to provide this model as a best practice example for the development of security and economic development in the region.

We have been approached by many high school and college students asking to do internships with the Unity Project. An application will be available soon when our website update is completed.

We welcome inquiries into this work. Also, we are now launching Unity Project chapters in the US to implement this resilience building model to develop youth capacity. Feel free to ask how you can start a Unity Project chapter in your community. Also, we are very grateful to those offering to help raise funds to support this work. Thank you! If you would like to have a lunch or dinner to raise funds among friends and colleagues, we’ll be happy to help you do so.

We’ll be posting more as this rapidly growing movement takes shape!

“We have struck gold!”          ”Pure Perfection!”            “Extremely well-presented”

Keynote: “A Resilient Vision for 2021.”

John Woodall, MD

With moving and uplifting examples from work with young people after 9/11 in New York City and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, this keynote is a wake up call  to actively promote resilient unifying strengths in families, schools, communities, businesses and institutions of higher learning when the crises of our time create a pull toward extremism and despair.  Powerful and transformative, this electrifying keynote presentation offers participants a life-vision and a guiding compass as we enter a challenging decade.

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Decades of hard-knocks clinical and field experience give substance to “walk the talk.”

With invaluable and effective tools in hand, participants become agents of resilience and hope.

“As the confusion of our time pulls more people to despair and extremism, we will need growing numbers of competent leaders who can speak to our common humanity and show the way to a practical and inclusive vision for the country.  This is the promise of hope for America and the lesson from 9/11 we need to carry forward into the next decade.”

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"The crises of our times are pulling people to despair and extremism."

In an increasingly complex world, how do we create dynamic unity between diverse people to release our undreamed of potential to solve the problems we face?

From expert consultation and partnership with the US State Department running trauma response programs in the Balkans, to work with the City of New York after 9/11 and state and local agencies after Hurricane Katrina to create resilience building programs for kids, to convening the “Resilient Responses to Social Crisis Working Group” at Harvard University, Dr. John Woodall has led a series of initiatives transforming crisis into opportunities for united growth in families, communities, businesses and entire cities, regions and countries.

Dr. Woodall’s unique experience informs his call for the nation to identify despair and extremism as dangers to our personal happiness and to the stability and health of our democracy.  His call is for all of us to participate to develop leaders who can unite us around the best of human nature and to fulfill the real promise of America as the hope of the world.

The crises of our time are increasingly pulling people to divisive extremism and despair.  The result has been a near paralysis of governance, rising social tension and difficulty getting our private lives to work.  Young people, in particular, want no part of a world plagued by division, despair and extremism.  In an increasingly complex world, how do we create dynamic unity to release the undreamed of potential we all have to solve the problems we face in our families, schools, universities, businesses, the country and our beleaguered world?

Drawing on extensive clinical know-how, field work in crisis areas around the world and the finest academic centers, Dr. Woodall weaves the best of his vast practical experience with cutting edge research in the neurosciences, psychology, human development and organizational systems to present a very human and richly informed path out of the troubles we face.

Whether the focus is on individual transformation, couples and families, community organizations, academic settings, business or professional organizations, his approach is refreshingly alive and intimate while offering a practical vision of hope and the tools to make that hope real.  His presentations are intelligent without sounding academic.  Passionate and hopeful without being preachy or naive.  He makes his subject matter come alive in a very accessible way so that anyone can feel like positive change is possible in their life.

“People walk away admitting that they have been transformed. ”

* Keynore addresses are easily adaptable to the needs of particular audiences.

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What people are saying:

“What a fabulous speaker!”                                               “Spellbinding speaker!”

“John is a wonderful man.  He should be bottled and shipped.  There is not a corner of the “civilized” world that does not need to hear his message.”

“It was wonderful!  John seems to “walk the talk.”

“…he is able to reach those from 1 to 92.”

For more information on Dr. Woodall’s availability for Key-Note addresses,

e-mail:  jwoodallmd@gmail.com

Click here for a fascinating radio interview with Dr. Woodall on building resilience in families.

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Workshops:

“The Resilient Power of Unity”

Inspiring, transformative and practical, Dr. Woodall shows how to move vision to action.

Working globally to create cooperation and unity. Here, Palestinian and Israeli youth.

Unleashing the power of unity is the brightest promise of America.  Undreamed of resilient potential is released when the key principles of dynamic unity are applied in a group.  What we need in America is far more than diversity training.  No student should leave college and no employee can be considered competent in the 21st Century without the experience of dynamic unity with others to serve as a vision for their life’s work and a guide as to how to bring out their best and the best of others.  This fun, inspiring and hands-on interactive workshop begins the transformation of the school, family, business and university culture toward a new level of competence using the resilient power of dynamic unity.

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What people are saying:

“This was the most helpful class I have ever taken.”

“I am hoping I can remember every little morsel of information from the day.  You have a great message to convey…”

“This workshop has so much to offer.  This is my second time to sit through it.  I’ve learned just as much or more this year!  GREAT!”

“I’m excited to take the knowledge I gained and put it into action.”

“I found the workshop to be very inspiring and was especially impressed by your genuine warmth towards everyone who attended.”

For more information on Dr. Woodall’s availability for workshops for your organization,

e-mail:  jwoodallmd@gmail.com

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Transformational programs for youth:

“Reach UP! 2021”

Partnership with the City of New York to build resilience in kids after 9/11.

Dr. Woodall founded the Unity Project to launch a global movement of competent young leaders experienced in creating united and resilient communities.

In response to the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and to sustain the transformation process of an institution over time, Reach UP! 2021 offers the unique service learning methods of the Unity Project that give the ongoing means to help young people develop the resilient skills that promote the experience of dynamic unity.  Young people take charge of their lives to build toward a vision of a compassionate world in 2021.   Linked to youth worldwide through an online learning community, dynamic unity is modeled and reinforced through service to others.

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What people are saying:

“What a feast to the imagination!  I found myself totally absorbed….  It is a very comprehensive guide to enlightened decision-making based on solid principles.  It is practical and just sufficiently conceptual, coherent with the use of the bowl metaphor, simple to understand … without the compromise of depth or quality.  With the design you have successfully modeled Out-of-the Box thinking for the students and the Advisors here.  Wow!”

*

“People are always willing to give me a ‘map’ ‘here’s what to tell students about the dangers’ — now, with the Unity Project there is a resource for HOW to get there!  What I needed was a CAR.  From now on the journey will be easier with some reliable transportation.”

*

“The two fingered table exercise WOWed the SADD chapter at BFHS at about 7:25 this morning.  Can you say emPOWERED!?!?!?”

*

“I am very excited about John Woodall’s Unity Project. It’s a realistic and appealing approach to strengthening and increasing “resiliency” in children. It is realistic and appealing because it meets the needs of a wide diversity of children, hooks them in, and engages them in interpersonal exercises that demonstrate the power of group support. I highly recommend the Unity Project for any middle and secondary school organization that is interested in increasing student involvement and the “resiliency” of all its students. Many young people who lack the ability to endure tragedies and crises now have a means to adapt and move on.

Thanks Dr. Woodall!”

*

“I have been pursuing a much needed classroom initiative like The Unity Project during my thirty years in the teaching profession.  I am eager and energized to begin this new initiative in my high school this year. It is a new vision on the horizon which is exciting.

It is thorough, well-thought-out and easy to follow.  John is a pleasure to work with and explains everything so well with a professional attitude and respect for all.”

For more information on bringing the Unity Project to your youth organization, contact:

margodeselin@unityproject.org

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More Comments from Participants in Dr. Woodall’s programs:

“Dr. Woodall speaks to the business of challenge, challenge in life and the resiliency with which we can discover the hero inside to meet and resolve those challenges.”

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“Dr. Woodall is gifted to see inside people’s turmoil and pain, and not only see it, but understand the root,”

“When you can understand the root, there’s usually a solution. He seems to be able to speak several languages. He’s able to transcend boundaries and reach many different groups. He’s not just focused on one group, one age, one religion or one gender – his field and perception is so broad, he’s able to hit a lot of different areas.”

*

“As a physician and a psychiatrist, a “diplomat” and a founder of social programs toward unity and self-discovery, he manages in a very unique way to combine the medical with the neuro-scientific with sociological and spiritual well-being. We don’t often come across this authoritative combination. He gives you concrete solutions – ways to change behavioral patterns – not just fluff. This is not about a revival, it’s not about a lecture or subject matter – it’s about a process. People walk away admitting that they have been transformed. ”

*

“I think Dr. Woodall has an innate ability to cut to the heart of the matter, across gender, religion, socio-economic barriers, to allow the person to see that there is a choice to empower them in their lives.”

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“For me, I think he offers the opportunity to take ownership of our lives. In this world today, there are a lot of helpless feelings that the government is too big, the world is out of control, and when you walk away from being in a workshop with Dr. Woodall, you feel that you can make a difference in your life and in the lives of those you love.”

Related posts:

• On ReachUP! 2021, the Unity Project’s initiative to build a national vision of compassion and cooperation and reject extremism, click here.

• To discover the Compassionate Identity in response to the challenges of life, click here.
• To learn more about the Unity Project, click here.

• On a post-partisan America, click here:

All Rights Reserved, John Woodall, MD,©, 2011

John Woodall, MD(copyright), 2011