Losing the School Lottery Makes a Mom Lose-It All

My most recent "Murphy's Love" column in The Georgetowner deals with the aftermath of losing out in the DC school lottery. Her experience, while dramatic and catastrophizing in the extreme, falls into the category of those everyday losses I wrote about recently in Counseling Today. Humans do not deal well with loss and grief, though universal, is something no one plans for and very few make room for in regular relationships. While this grieving mom's friend (who wrote the letter) does not need to take on the loss as if it were her own, understanding her friend's frustration as part of a larger path of grieving may help her have more compassion as she waits for the (time-limited) process to move forward.