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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Don't Move On: A Saner Way To Deal With Grief
The most striking aspect of this part article part review is how it resonates across cultures and continents. How to deal with grief, whether one’s own or a loved one’s, is still as painful and bewildering as grief itself.
The article reviews two new books by psychotherapists, both of whom have worked extensively with people in mourning. The books are full of stories and advice about how to manage grief, the common pitfalls that accompany tragic loss, and the many misapprehensions associated with it.
Both books, while acknowledging the universality of grief, have a more significant message: the need to accept the aftermath of grief without delving into its rights and wrongs.
Problems arise, as the article points out, when grief is treated as something that has to be resolved. As one of the psychotherapists mentioned says, however well-meaning, friends and family must resist the urge to 'hurry' the mourner’s distress — even if it persists beyond what the world deems reasonable.
Another noteworthy point the books make is about how grief support (wrongly) focuses on encouraging sufferers to ‘move on’. Instead, they suggest, the better way to survive grief is to let the pain be and not rush to ‘get over it’.
In this context, the article mentions the road trip undertaken by James Robinson, NYT's director of global analytics, after the untimely death of his five-year-old son. The poignant but cathartic story narrates how the family collected 'commemorative objects' along the way, thus allowing each member to express their feelings about the tragedy.
This is precisely the kind of ‘non-destructive’ way to deal with grief that the psychotherapists are advising mourners to emulate. As they put it, a wiser way to deal with grief is to ‘tend to it’, until it outgrows our minds — however long and whatever form it may take.
