Thoughts on love, loss, and liberation

I recently experienced my sixth Mother’s Day without my mother’s physical presence on this earth. It was easier than the past five have been. This was the first year I haven’t cried. I spent much of the day thinking about five of my friends who’ve lost adult children over the past few years, especially my friend Cindy, who lost her daughter just over a month ago. I also reached out to our nephews, who lost their mother, my sister-in-law, last June, remembering just how difficult that first Mother’s Day is without the person you were so dependent on for [...]

How has loss served as a catalyst for transformation in your life or in the lives of those you love? How do you navigate the seasons of grief in your life? What do you find most helpful? Spring is my favorite time of year. I’m comforted by the longer, warmer days watching delicate spring flowers slowly opening their colorful blossoms, necks craning towards the sun in hope of brighter days. As the season changes from winter’s darkness, I, too, am experiencing the subtle resurrection from dusk into dawn. And this year, I’ve felt its power more deeply than ever. [...]

What do the anniversaries of the people we’ve loved and lost have to teach us? In this blog post, I’ll share how I’ve come to understand how love, loss, and liberation are intertwined, and how, if we keep our hearts and minds open, these experiences have the power to transform us. February is a poignant month for me. It is both the month my mother was born and the month she died. Some days, I can’t believe it’s been six years since she departed this earth, and on other days, it feels like yesterday. That’s the power of anniversaries of [...]

One of the best pieces of guidance I’ve ever received is “go slow to go fast.” And when it comes to navigating grief, wiser words were never spoken. When a loved one dies, a cherished relationship ends, we lose a job that’s brought us meaning, or a beloved family pet passes on, it can be especially hard to navigate the holidays, especially with the all the hubbub that accompanies the season. The first holidays after the loss of a loved one can be particularly challenging as we feel a visceral sense of their absence as memories of holidays past return. [...]

What I’m most grateful for this Thanksgiving is that I am finally regaining my health, I’m able to breathe again, and I’m reemerging into life. It’s been a very challenging six months. Shortly after my book launched in May, I grew very ill, and spent the rest of the summer and fall visiting doctors, getting scanned, poked, and prodded, and occupying hours in emergency rooms. Everything I’d planned to do to get my book out into the world including book events, podcasts, being active on social media, and writing regular blogs fell by the wayside as I had to shift [...]

It’s been a busy few weeks with the virtual and in-person launches of my new book, Catch Me When I Fall: Poems of Mother Loss and Healing.  My heart is full of gratitude for all of you who came to one of these events and for everyone’s continued support.As I was reflecting on the things I’ve learned on my grief journey in preparation for my book launches, I came up with nine key revelations on navigating loss. These are not in any order of priority, but hopefully, you’ll find them helpful.  In future newsletters, I’ll dive a bit deeper into [...]

While recovering from a nasty case of COVID which has compromised my lungs the past few weeks, I've had a lot of time to rest and reflect.  I've literally been in the inner sanctum of my home for five weeks, venturing out only for occasional short walks or to go to the doctor’s office. During this time, I've been thinking a lot about what drives me and about my source of power.  Is it my ego, or is it my soul? And I'm learning how to understand the difference.  I'm one of those people who feels most days like I'm either being shot [...]

I had a rough night last night, struggling to breathe for several hours, so I've cancelled facilitating two team sessions today, and I've gone back to bed. I'm not surprised I've had a serious flare with asthma following COVID, but for more reasons than one. Our lungs hold our grief. February is a challenging month for me. My Mama died five years ago on February 15th and the 26th is her birthday, so I am cycling back around the spiral of grief, in an ever-widening gyre. For me, that is how grief works. We touch into it when our [...]

I don’t want to jinx anything, but we’re in contract on selling my condo I’ve owned since 1997 after being listed for just over a week!  We got a cash offer over asking price and a 10-day escrow. And I’m $10,000 short of having it paid off after years of sometimes scraping to make double payments to get it paid off before my wife, Julie and I retired. Suffice it to say, we couldn’t have asked for better news from our realtor when she called us on Friday. But there’s a deeper story about the condo about letting go and [...]

I’ve just finished reviewing my last set of proofs for my new book, Catch Me When I Fall, which goes to press in a couple of weeks. My brother-in-law was kind enough to do a read-through to suggest any final edits I might have missed. He sent me an email earlier this week with his comments, “It is such a gift to walk the road of your grief and growth with you,” he said. “For me, the emotional spiral traced by the book mirrored the widening gyres of the goshawk.” His metaphor was a great example of the process [...]