Posts Tagged ‘death’
Your Purpose Is Not A 5-Year Plan
The Universe only guides us one step at a time. I quit my part-time job at the retirement community eighteen months after I’d started there. It no longer brought me joy. Worse, it didn’t help me serve the seniors in the way I wanted to. But the community wanted me to continue the weekly Storytelling…
Read MoreThe Door That Opened For Me
It was the most unexpected door and it made no sense, but I walked in. December 2008. A part-time position opened up at a retirement community, a job I was neither qualified for, nor felt excited about. As a brand-new immigrant, I knew nothing about seniors in the western world: not their music or food…
Read MoreGrief Is A Journey That Grows You
We learn about the five stages of grief. We read about how the second year might feel when compared to the first. We want to get to 2022 because we believe we will be feeling much better then. What if you could let go of the need for a clear path…and let grief be a…
Read MoreDon’t Wait Until Tomorrow. You Don’t Know If You Have A Tomorrow.
When news of the basketball legend Kobe Bryant’s tragic death flashed on my phone, it felt surreal. No, I’m not a basketball fan. I’ve rarely watched a full game. And yet, his death hit home hard. My husband and daughter are huge fans of the game. But that’s not the entire reason why I felt grief well…
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…
Read More5 Ways to Support Your Loved One Who’s Dying
I’m often asked the question: “How do I prepare for the death of someone I love?” This is such a great question because we all find ourselves in that situation. And if we haven’t already, there will come a time when we find ourselves in that space. The first thing I’d like to say is…
Read MoreAttachment And The Pain Of Loss
I once received a great question from a workshop participant. She was struggling through the loss of a beloved friend. Here’s the question she asked me. “Should I avoid attachment so that I avoid the pain of loss?” The Buddhist view is that suffering is caused by attachment. They say that the more you attach…
Read MoreIs Guilt Bullying You?
Remember that big bully on the school playground who called you names? Who made you feel small and stupid? Like you could never do anything without making a horrible mistake? Guilt is a bully. It does to you the exact same thing that the playground bully did. It makes you feel small and stupid. It…
Read MoreI Know You Because I Was You
Ten years ago on the 27th of January my mother took her last breath. I was so broken by her loss that I couldn’t see beyond my next breath. Leave alone, fast forward to 2019 and who I have become today. But even through the dark fog I was trapped in, I felt the soft…
Read More3 Things That Happen When You Let Go of the Past
At the end of 2018 I did something really hard. It was letting go of a piece of my past. On Dec. 31, I said goodbye to the work I’d been doing for the past ten years in senior living. Facilitating Storytelling and Life Enrichment sessions was a fun gig, but something in me knew…
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