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What the Ocean Can Teach Us
I took my two girls to the beach a couple of weeks ago, anticipating a week of fun in the sand and sea. Thankfully, that hope was rewarded. What I did not expect, but got anyway, was a lesson in surrender. My youngest daughter is just 4 years old, but from her first experience at…
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Why the Holidays May Have Been Hard for You
And How to Take Care of Yourself in the Aftermath In the Celtic tradition of Samhain (pronounced ‘SAH-win’), on the date when the night was equal in length to the day, it was believed to be a holy time when the spirit world and our physical were close enough to touch. Much like Samhain, the…
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Identifying Our Traumas is Only the First Step
Many of us can identify what activates us. We say to our friends and family, “that is where my wound is” pointing to a behavior or situation that has left us emotionally vulnerable and raw. We tell them so they know to treat us gently- to change their behavior for our well being. This is…
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Why Grief Coaching?
Grief hurts, but that doesn’t mean feeling grief and pain are wrong, despite what so many people may convey to you through words or actions. So often, we put on a mask to hide our true feelings to protect the people closest to us and, even more tragically, to protect ourselves from the people closest…
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Bright-siding- What is it and How Do You Respond?
If someone has ever come up and said to you, “Well, at least they are not suffering anymore,” or “He/She is in a better place now,” you’ve been bright-sided. For family members who were ill for a long time you might even hear, “Now you can get back to your life.” Bright-sided. Any sentence that…
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Mending the Past and Changing the Future by Healing Yourself in the Present
In a recent We Can Do Hard Things podcast episode, Kaitlin Curtice says, “Our healing is directly connected to those who came before and those who will come after.” Many cultures share an understanding that the “sins of the father” gets passed down through the generations. In practical terms, violence, substance abuse, and absence are…
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Grief Is a Backpack
When we lose someone we love, it’s like we’re handed a heavy backpack to carry for all the days to come. This is our grief. Over time, we can build the emotional strength to shoulder it more easily, but we never put it down. For some, this may come as an unpleasant shock. After all,…
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Broken Glass Wisdom
“You see this goblet?” asks Ajahn Chah, a Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put…
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What is “Disenfranchised Grief” and do you have some?
When we think about grief, we often think about the death of someone we or someone we know cared for, but did you know a person does not have to die in order to experience grief? Disenfranchised Grief is defined as “grief that is not usually openly acknowledged, socially accepted, or publicly mourned.” Because Western…
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“Be Curious, Not Judgmental”
Despite frequently being misattributed to Walt Whitman in pop culture, this quote stands alone as profoundly good advice. In a recent reference, Ted Lasso uses the quote as an important lesson about the assumptions we make about others and their consequences. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole show and certainly important advice…
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