Grief and Mediation

My beautiful sister-in-law Karin Marie Shanahan Halpern died peacefully on June 3rd in her sleep in Buffalo, N.Y. Karin was married to my brother Bruce for 33 years. Together they adopted two boys, Brian and Kevin, who are now 30 and 25 years old.

Karin was a beautiful person inside and out, kind, loving, patient, and strong. She was a loyal and wonderful sister, daughter, wife, mother, and friend. She was fun to be with and she was funny. She took care of people. She was generous with her time. She was selfless and put others’ needs ahead of her own. She let bygones be bygones and never held a grudge. Karin worked as a paralegal and then in the school system with special education students. She loved spending time with her family and her friends, reading, walking on the beach and riding her bike. Karin was a very private person yet I think she would permit me to share her story.

We had a wonderful weekend last summer at Julia and Nick's wedding in Charlottesville, Virginia and a couple of months later Karin was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive ovarian cancer called ovarian carcinosarcoma. Surgery, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy followed, but the cancer continued to spread.

Karin never once complained about her cancer journey even in her last days when the pain was intolerable. I will think of her and miss her every day for the rest of my life.

What does Karin’s life and death have to do with mediation?

As a mediator, my role is to be a neutral peacemaker and to create space for resolution—to help people move through conflict with dignity, compassion, and understanding.

Grief can be like conflict. There are complex and conflicting emotions as we grieve: for example, we can feel anger that cancer struck and yet relief that our loved one is no longer suffering. Grief also forces us to let go of a part of our identities and our future plans and dreams.

In conflict, each party needs to be heard and each party needs to have a voice. In grief, we long for the same: we need to know that our person who we are missing was significant, that our loss is seen, that our feelings are honored.

Grief and conflict call for a path forward rather than going backwards. The core elements of mediation—being present, having empathy, and engaging in deep listening—are the same tools that help us navigate grief. In both, we need to resist the urge to fix and we need to honor the complexity of our emotions.
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Will my sadness in losing Karin make me a better mediator? It may. Grief often deepens empathy. Grief makes us aware of the importance of connection and of repairing relationships.  And grief may make us more sincere, compassionate, and fully present.

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