End of Life and Coping with Loss
Music and Mortality: Six Ways That Music Heals Us
Music and sound are among the world’s earliest medicines to cure illness and help restore wholeness to those suffering from mental, emotional or physical distress. Chanting, meditative music, and nature’s sounds are a few forms of music that serve to uplift, energize...
Life Lessons from ‘Five Minutes to Live’
Many of us are old enough to remember witnessing the explosion and fall to earth of the space shuttle Challenger as it unfolded 30 years ago. Others of us may have seen the unforgettable video of that event; either way, the image of the spacecraft’s smoky fireball...
Give Sorrow Words
Rituals give meaning to the painful and precious opportunities we are given to express and move through grief after we’ve lost a loved one. Many such opportunities may be missed because of our upset, confusion and sense of being adrift that so often accompany...
When Grief is Your Companion
At a widow and widowers support group that I helped facilitate one of the participants reflected on recent and personal encouners as a widow, and what it was like to experience the pain of other people’s reactions such as avoidance and withdrawal of social contact. ...
Quotations on Grief and Grieving
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, Love leaves a memory no one can steal.” - taken from a headstone in Ireland "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the...
1,440 – Count the Minutes
Recently, during the bereavement group that I co-facilitate at a local hospice, clients talked about the emotional pain they are going through as they come to terms with the loss of their mate. For some, the death of their spouse had come suddenly, when they least...