My Bay Area Beginnings
It’s exactly one week since we arrived in sunny San Francisco. A blur of a week because we’ve been apartment-hunting, car-shopping, and getting our bearings. I’m figuring out the Muni (tram) and ferry transits and it’s been an interesting experience after living in suburban Chicago and driving everywhere. This is change we chose. Even though…
Read MoreAre You Living Life In Your Head?
Grief has a way of parking us up in our head. When we lose someone we dearly love, or something we cherish like a job, a home, or a country we love, fear is the first response. Confused by the loss of certainty, the brain, feels scrambled. The monkey mind takes over and does not…
Read MoreTear Down Walls, Build Boundaries
I grew up in an alcoholic home. My father struggled with alcoholism for many years until AA found him and he cleaned up. I was a teenager and for me this was a painful secret I felt I had to hide from my friends. So I buttoned up and said nothing. Instead, I pretended that…
Read MoreYour Brain Deletes Stuff When You’re Grieving
In the weeks and months after my mother’s death, I thought I was going crazy. I couldn’t read a page without feeling like I’d lost my mind. Because when I got to the end of the page I no longer remembered what I’d just read. I forgot characters’ names, locations, and just couldn’t hold on…
Read MoreGrief Does Change Shape
In the early weeks and months after my mother died, I felt like I was walking around without skin. Everything hurt. The pain of loss was excruciating. I felt confused, disoriented, and ungrounded. It was the first time in life that I felt totally alone. Not just because my mother had died, but because I…
Read MoreSilence Heals the Soul
When my mother died in 2009, I wanted to hide. Solitude became my friend. Shattered by loss, I wanted nothing more than to burrow into a cocoon and lick my wounds. When friends tried to get me to go out or find other ways to distract myself from the pain, I protested and resisted. I…
Read MoreWhat is Possible if Your Grief Doesn’t Have to Have a Direction or Destination?
When we’re grieving a loss, our mind is constantly scanning for where the Exit signs are. We don’t like where we are and we can’t wait to leave that place and get to a better-feeling place. Questions, questions, and more questions jostle for space inside our head. How quickly can I move past this? What’s…
Read MoreThe Longest Journey You’ll Ever Make
It’s the longest journey you’ll ever make…and arguably the toughest. But it will be so worth it. I’m talking about the journey we all have to make as we travel from our head to our heart. From logic to letting go. From knowledge to wisdom. From figuring it all out to surrendering it. Remember that time when…
Read MoreWhen Compassion is a Really Bad Idea
When I was in my twenties and thirties, I loved being surrounded by friends who “understood” me. Naive and immature as I was, I didn’t realize that these friendships were not authentic and didn’t serve my best interests. Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean. Mona was a close friend of mine, a part…
Read MoreMy 1,689 Failed Attempts to Improve My Life
I believe with every cell in my being that I am an old soul. A part of me has known this even when I was a little girl. As I grew into my twenties and thirties, I wanted to live up to that cherished ideal. To be an old soul in a world which wasn’t…
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