Grief After Homicide: Surviving, Mourning, Reconciling

By Alan Wolfelt

If someone you love died by homicide, your grief is naturally traumatic and complicated. Not only might your grief journey be intertwined with painful criminal justice proceedings, you may also struggle with understandably intense rage, regret, and despair. It's natural for homicide survivors to focus on the particular circumstances of the death as well. Grief After Homicide offers suggestions for reconciling yourself to the death on your own terms and finding healing ways for you and your family to mourn. After a homicide death, there is help for those left behind, and there is hope. This book will help see you through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781617223044

Book preview

Front Cover of Grief After HomicideBook Title of Grief After Homicide

© 2021 by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Companion Press is an imprint of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, 3735 Broken Bow Road, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526.

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ISBN: 978-1-61722-303-7

CONTENTS

Welcome

In the Immediate Aftermath

Traumatic Grief

Do I Have PTSD?

PART 1:

Your Grief Over the Circumstances of the Homicide Death

Pronounced, Prolonged Shock and Psychic Numbing

Helplessness and Powerlessness

Fear, Anxiety, Dissociation

Explosive Emotions

Physical Symptoms

Seeking Information and Understanding

Interacting with Law Enforcement, the Judicial System, and the Media

Homicide Grief and Secondary Victimization

Homicide Grief and Grief Overload

PART 2:

Your Ongoing Grief

Your Unique Life

Searching and Yearning

Unfinished Business

Guilt and Regret

Sadness and Despair

Three Forgotten Truths

Mourning Your Grief

Mourning Need 1. Acknowledge the Circumstances and Reality of the Death

Mourning Need 2: Embrace the Pain of the Death and the Loss

Dosing Your Mourning

Mourning Need 3: Tell Your Story of the Death and the Life of the Person Who Died

Using Ceremony and Ritual to Engage with the Six Needs of Mourning

Mourning Need 4: Develop a New Self-Identity

Mourning Need 5: Search for Meaning

Mourning Need 6: Receive and Accept Help from Others

Caring for Yourself While You Mourn

Caring for Yourself Physically

Caring for Yourself Cognitively

Caring for Yourself Socially

Caring for Yourself Spiritually

Working Toward Reconciliation

A Final Word

The Homicide Griever’s Bill of Rights

WELCOME

There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.

— William F. Halsey, Jr.

Someone you care about has died by homicide. I’m deeply sorry for your terrible loss.

As you know, homicide creates a grief like no other. Your normal and necessary grief has been made naturally complicated by the horrible circumstances of the death. What those circumstances are will vary widely among the readers who find their way to this book. Homicide is the act of one human killing another, whether intentionally (murder), unintentionally (manslaughter), or sometimes ambiguously, in the case of uncertain or suspicious causes of death, as well as some military deaths. No matter where the death of your loved one falls on this spectrum, I welcome you to this important discussion and source of support.

My first goal in writing this book is to help you feel seen, safe, and comforted. Our culture isn’t very good at acknowledging and supporting grief in general, and it’s especially bad at helping people affected by stigmatized types of death. Unfairly, deaths by homicide carry the burden of such a stigma. Even when the people who died in these awful situations are entirely innocent in what happened, and even though the friends and family members left behind are not to blame, survivors often experience social discomfort (and are sometimes even ostracized) because of the circumstances of the death.

Have you had friends and family members avoid you since the death? Have you felt