Emotional Triggers And How To Deal With Them

a woman leaning her hand against a tree and looking away with a disappointed look on her face.

A couple of weeks ago I was emotionally triggered by a friend who brought home an important lesson. After weeks of consulting our calendars and going back and forth, she and I were finally on the phone. Two minutes into our conversation, she said, “Oh, my son just arrived. I’ll have to call you back.”…

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3 Mistakes That Complicate Your Grief Experience

When we’re grieving, we look for anything that will stop the pain. In a hurry to get to the other side of the grief experience, we can get tripped up by the three mistakes that I’m going to caution you about. When you know these three mistakes, you can become aware and see if you’re making…

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7 Ways to Help A Child Deal With Sadness

Remember the time you were a little kid and lost something? Maybe your pet goldfish died. A dear friend moved away from your neighborhood. Or a bully in school stole your collection of heart rocks and mocked you. No matter what it was, you felt that pain in your gut. You locked it away in…

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How My Aunt Would Console Joe Biden

how to consolde joe biden

A very dear aunt of mine is 93 and lives in Chennai, in Southern India. She has experienced the deaths of both her adult sons and a son-in-law. Brain tumor, stomach cancer, liver cancer. I think of her as the Biden family grieves the loss of 46-year-old Beau. I think about what she might have…

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It’s Not Happy Holidays For All

not happy holidays for grieving

It’s that time of year when everyone is writing about the holidays and grief. Or rather the grief that holidays bring on, remind us of. Most of those articles and blog posts contain similar themes, great advice, and useful tips. Do I have anything new to add? Perhaps not. Except to remind you that your…

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Why Is God Laughing?

Of the many hats I wear, one is as facilitator of a weekly group on “Reminiscences & Life Lessons” at a senior living community. I absolutely adore silver-haired, wrinkled folk and their long-winded sagas. But the downside of the job is the heartbreak I suffer every time I lose a dear friend. Ruthie and I…

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Hard Conversations around Death

hard conversations around death

In my previous post, I addressed the topic of “Anticipatory Grief.” Now meet a woman who is living it. Tersia Burger’s 38-year-old daughter Vicky suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a brittle bone disease, a genetic disorder. She was diagnosed at eighteen months and suffered 41 fractures by her third birthday. But Vicky married at age 21 and…

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