Dr. Tonya Andrews

“Was I dreaming, or did this really happen?” There is a reason grief can leave us feeling confused, forgetful, and disconnected from reality. One of the most common grief symptoms I encounter in the counseling room is something I call grief fog. People tell me they cannot concentrate. They walk into a room and cannot remember why they went there. They lose their train of thought in the middle of a sentence. They read the same paragraph three times and still have no idea what they just read....

Grief is cultural. So is occupational grief. When we talk about multiculturalism in counselor education, we often think about race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and geographic community. We should. But our understanding of culture cannot stop there. Military members and first responders belong to distinct occupational cultures, and within those cultures are subcultures shaped by branch, department, region, role, and generations of tradition. They have their own language. Their own...